Animation Monday: Gravity Falls Not What He Seems

By Nathan Young on March 17, 2015

I know, I am a little late on this, but I wanted to really talk about this big episode of Gravity Falls, probably the biggest episode in the entire series! Last Monday, DisneyXD aired the episode called “Not What He Seems.” The episode delivered big ratings for the network, with the episode being the #1 series telecast on record in total viewers and the #1 animated series telecast in Kids 2-11/Kids 6-11. That means plenty of adults watched Gravity Falls, along with the kids. Let’s get to the review!

The episode begins like any other episode on Gravity Falls, but things take a turn fast! We see Grunkle Stan down below the Mystery Shack beginning some countdown to open the portal. Not long after that, government agents takes Stan into custody, and the kids were going to DHR, until they escaped by forcing the car off the road. The twins are successful in entering the Mystery Shack undetected, and they discover something very bad about Stan. He did steal those toxic chemicals, and he had plenty of false ID’s and he even faked killing himself, bad!

The police are unsuccessful in getting Stan to talk, and meanwhile we see the gravity anomalies that makes everything float in the air that is not tied down. Stan does get Soos to guard the vending machine to the underground secret room, but the twins knows how to get around him too. Soon, they discover the secret rooms under the Mystery Shack, and the twins are hurt that Stan has been lying to them. Stan escapes being in custody thanks to the gravity anomalies, and while the twins discover that the portal could destroy the universe, and they are manual overriding the machine, Stan arrives and tries to tell Mabel and Dipper that he is a real and good person.

The last five minutes were epic! Somehow, Stan got Mabel to trust him, and not hit that shut off button. Soon, the clock hits zero, and you think the characters were killed, nope! Soon, we see another guy come from the portal, and Stan drops a bombshell. We now know that the mysterious man with a rifle over his back was Stan’s long lost twin brother, and he is the author of those three books, with six fingers, and the episode ends. Wow! If you have not seen any episode of Gravity Falls, get started by watching this episode and you will be hooked!

So, it will be a while until the next episode, probably this Summer. Creator Alex Hirsch loves the fans, and many of them got the secrets correct before it was shown on TV. Apparently the arrival of the lost twin brother will have big effects on Gravity Falls. Alex Hirsch says the second half of season two will have the fans “faces melted off by the second half.” I can’t wait!