Adventure Time ran for 9 years, 10 seasons and one Minecraft themed special. As nicest of guys Jonathan Holmes wrote, it influenced a whole heck of a lot of similar, brightly colored, emotionally complex shows in the coming years, substantially impacting the media landscape for a cartoon about a boy and his dog. I was a sophomore in high school when it first aired in 2010 and still vividly remember the ad campaign asking “WHAT TIME IS IT?!” So yeah, I’m bummed. Even though my watching habits tapered off after a few years, the end of Adventure Time is the final show of that phase of Cartoon Network’s history.
That sentence probably makes no sense so I’ll explain. As series get canceled and producers and executives get shuffled around a network’s direction and style will change with it. For example, probably the most well-known “phase” of Cartoon Network was when shows like Dexter’s Labratory, The PowerPuff Girls and Ed, Edd n Eddy aired (It also had that awesome city with all the characters living in it!) Yes, the shows had their own narratives, styles, and showrunners, but together they contributed to the channel’s identity, something you could point to and say, “Yup, that’s a Cartoon Network show.”
Source: Destructoid With Adventure Time over, a phase of TV ends and I’m less of a child