Editor’s Pick: Our Top 10 Favorite Episodes of Gravity Falls

The recent news that Gravity Falls will be coming to an end in early 2016 (don’t worry, it’s okay), has made us very nostalgic, so we want to look back at the history of the series and our very favorite moments.

We’ve compiled our list of our 10 favorite episodes of Gravity Falls. (It should be noted that this list was incredibly difficult to cobble together, mostly because every episode of Gravity Falls is so gosh darn wonderful.)

10. “Boss Mabel” (Season 1, Episode 13)

This episode is a pure delight. It’s one of those “slice of life” episodes that centers almost exclusively on the daily goings-on at the Mystery Shack and it crystallized one of the show’s biggest conflicts: The fact that Stan would rather promote phony attractions than actually display any of Dipper’s amazing discoveries. It also features some of the best Mabel-centered jokes in the entire season (we love that her business strategy is based on ideas that were already outdated in the 1980s). Plus, there’s an amazing subplot, involving Stan competing on an old-fashioned game show. There’s so much to love about this episode, and it is one of the lightest and zippiest stand-alone half-hours in the entire series.

9. “The Hand That Rocks the Mabel” (Season 1, Episode 4)

This is a wonderful episode, which aired early on in the show’s run, and introduced us to one of the series’ biggest threats: diminutive maniac Gideon Gleeful, the son of a used car dealer and amateur psychic. This episode sets up a number of things, including Gideon’s altogether unhealthy interest in occultism, the fact that Gideon has access to one of the all-important journals, and his romantic obsession with Mabel (not to mention antagonism towards Stan). This episode taught us that villainy could come in any form, a theme that would be repeated throughout the series.

8. “The Stanchurian Candidate” (Season 2, Episode 14)

This was one of the last stand-alone episodes before the series’ mythology took over and it was a total blast: it featured the return of Gideon, a plot inspired by classic paranoid thrillers like The Manchurian Candidate and Blow Out, and maybe our favorite resident of Gravity Falls: boring everyman Tad Strange.

7. “Bottomless Pit!” (Season 1, Episode 14) / “Little Gift Shop of Horrors” (Season 2, Episode 6)

Yes, it’s kind of a cheat to include two episodes in one slot, but these two episodes, which feature a loose “anthology” structure comprised of smaller stories—with titles like “Soos’ Really Great Pinball Story (Is That A Good Title? Do They Have To Be Puns Or Whatever?)”—emphasize the malleability and unpredictability of Gravity Falls’ format, and pay homage to groundbreaking, highly influential series like The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone.

6. “Gideon Rises” (Season 1, Episode 20)

This episode had it all, including an astronomical cliffhanger that had to wait a whole year (!) to get resolved: Stan, venturing into a secret passageway behind the Mystery Shack’s vending machine, aligns the three journals (which create a blueprint for some kind of huge portal) and says, “Here we go!” This was a whole year before the show would return. Agony, it was! But as tantalizing as that cliffhanger was, the series also laid the groundwork for the huge upsets in season 2—including the fact that the twins trusted Grunkle Stan with the journals (how wrong they were!) and the imprisonment of Li’l Gideon. This was an epic season finale, for sure, and while its giant set pieces (like Gideon’s robot) were dazzling, the smaller moments were just as powerful.

5. “Into the Bunker” (Season 2, Episode 2)

There are a few things that make “Into the Bunker” special: First and foremost it’s relentlessly scary, taking most of its cues from John Carpenter’s sci-fi thriller The Thing, in a way that really makes you appreciate just how far Gravity Falls was able to go. And second, it set the tone for the second season: this wasn’t going to shy away from the increasingly knotty mythology in an attempt to make it accessible for those just joining the series. Instead, it was going to dive even deeper into that world, uncovering new clues while unraveling even stranger mysteries. In many ways this episode is the mission statement for the second season and proof that Gravity Falls is one of the most idiosyncratic, singular animated series of all time.

4. “The Inconveniencing” (Season 1, Episode 5)

This marvel from the first season can also be quite shocking and scary (this time its touchstone is paranormal ‘80s slasher movies), but it’s also very sweet. One of the things that make Gravity Falls so brilliant is that it’s poised in that time between childhood and adolescence, when every kid wishes they were adults but still clinging onto those powerful memories of the past. And this episode makes that perfectly clear, with Dipper trying to act cool for Wendy and the rest of her high school posse, while being forced to bring up an embarrassing childhood memory (to defeat some ghostly attackers, of course). This episode is also one of the more gleefully surreal episodes of the entire series, with Mabel’s sugar-induced cosmic voyage remaining a standout. (Several of those characters appeared in a recent episode; a testament to how unforgettable and fun they were.)

3. “Tourist Trapped” (Season 1, Episode 1)

This is it: the episode that started it all. Looking back on the first episode, it’s amazing how much of the series was already so well-formed: the juxtaposition of the Mystery Shack’s fake amazingness and the incredible things happening outside of its walls; Mabel’s boy-craziness; the fact that a larger mythology existed apart from these weekly adventures. It also introduced us to the gnomes, which would go on to become an Internet sensation and recurring characters on the show. (We loved their cop show shenanigans on the recent episode “The Last Mabelcorn.”) It’s hard to watch this episode and not get immediately hooked. It’s just so, so good.

2. “A Tale of Two Stans” (Season 2, Episode 12)

This episode, which served as the conclusion to a cliffhanger that was planted four-months earlier, was largely told in flashback (again: demonstrating how many different types of story you could tell within the Gravity Falls framework). Instead of lessening its power, this device actually increased it. The answer to the big mystery of what was waiting on the other side of Stan’s portal was revealed: it was his twin brother, Ford (Stanley and Stanford). Of course, Gravity Falls is all about doubles—not only Mabel and Dipper or Ford and Stan, but also the real world and the fantastical world, the side we show to people and the one we keep to ourselves, and some very literal doubles (clones, shape-shifters, and the like). But investing so much time in Stan and Ford’s lives makes Stan more sympathetic (he was doing it to try to right a past gone wrong); it also makes Ford a character who the audience can get behind wholeheartedly, instead of having to build up to that familiarity, as is the case with most television characters. The tone for this episode isn’t exactly rousing; it’s more somber and melancholy. And it’s for this reason that it’s one of the series’ most profound and memorable installments. It doesn’t matter how old you are–growing up is hard, getting along with your sibling even harder. And that’s before you factor in inter-dimensional rifts.

1. “The Time Traveler’s Pig” (Season 1, Episode 9)

This was the a-ha episode of Gravity Falls. It’s an episode that might seem like a stand-alone adventure (Mabel wants to win a pig at the fair, Dipper wants to impress Wendy, and a time travel element is introduced), but at some point a character (fan favorite Blendin Blandin) travels back in time to earlier episodes (“Tourist Trapped,” “The Legend of the Gobblewonker,” and “Headhunters”). While this idea of visiting previous episodes is cool in and of itself, if you go back and watch those episodes, you can see Blendin in the scenes that he visits. This establishes the grand mythology of Gravity Falls and the way that the episodes work, full of inside jokes, gags that hint at upcoming events, and cryptic references. Even from this early in the show’s run, it was blowing peoples’ minds (ours included). Also of note: this episode introduced Waddles, Mabel’s lovable pet pig and essential member of the Mystery Shack team.