you come across an oasis of hope.
Gravity Falls begins life as your standard Disney TV Adventure/Mystery Cartoon, and in the course of its two season run, becomes a rich landscape of philosophical introspection that ends with the clash between Reality and fantasy for dominion of our souls; aka, Weirdmageddon. It’s the story of Dippers and Mabel Pines, fraternal twins who are sent by their parents to spend the summer with their Grand Uncle (grunkle) Stan who makes a living running a tourist trap called the "Mystery Shack" in a place known for weird phenomena, the town of Gravity Falls, Oregon.
Although the exhibits in the "Mystery Shack" are fakes and forgeries created by Stan to fleece tourists, Dippers soon discovers a mysterious 3rd volume of a journal by an unknown author researching the many real paranormal events, characters and objects around Gravity Falls.
This is not Yogi Bear!
In the pivotal 11th episode of season 2 the twins discover that the Grunkle Stanford they've known up to now is actually Stan’s long lost fraternal twin Stanley, who only assumed his brother's identity as he took up the life long quest to rescue him from Bill Cipher, a wish granting incorporeal demon of chaos from an alternate reality. Bill Cipher is an animated cyclopian triangle monster that is the image of the “all seeing eye” on the back of a dollar bill, and is a recurring nemesis who offers faustian bargains, uses mind control and possesses people all in an effort to break through into the real world.
In the next episode, we learn that the real Stanford Pines is a six fingered paranormal researcher with 12 Ph.Ds who moved to Gravity Falls to study it's paranormal phenomena. Deciding that the weirdness is bleeding thru from another dimension, he creates a portal to examine the source. When the portal was activated for a test run, his engineer and partner, McGucket gets his head sucked in. Stanford managed to pull him out, but McGucket began to act strangely. He spoke in backward ciphers and issued a strange warning: "When gravity falls and earth becomes sky, fear the beast with just one eye."
Stanford began to hear voices and felt that he was going insane, so he asked the only person he could trust - Stanley - to come to Gravity Falls. Stanford realizes that the dimensional portal he built would allow Bill Cipher to take real form, and bring about the end of the world, so he asked Stanley to hide the first journal far away from Gravity Falls to prevent anyone from being able to operate the portal. Stanley doesn't understand, and becomes upset at his brother for telling him to move all the way to the other side of the world after they had just met for the first time in ten years. Stanley then takes the first journal and threatens to burn it with a lighter. The two begin to fight, and as Stanley's back was burned on the portal's control console in the process which results in him getting his "tattoo" and accidentally activating it. Though Stanford tried to apologize, Stanley punches him in retaliation and curses him for being a failure as a brother. He pushes him back out of anger, causing Stanley to be slowly drawn into the portal. Sacrificing himself, Stanford pulls Stanley out, throws him his first journal, and disappears into another dimension. Stanley spends the next 30 years trying to find the other 2 volumes of his brother's journals so he can reactivate the portal and rescue his brother.
It is pretty clear that the twin protagonists, Dippers and Mabel, represent the duality of mind and emotion, head and heart. Dippers is rational and analytic, while Mabel is charismatic and warm. But unlike Dippers and Mabel, Stanley and Stanford although having the same duality, did not make the transition from childhood with their fraternal bond intact. After an argument over whether they should stay together, or seek separate futures, Stanley is falsely accused of trying to sabotage his brother's chance to enter his dream school and is disowned by his father.
Although Stanford does well at "Backupsmore" College, they both became lost without the other; Stanford as a scientist with 12 PhDs whose research led him to be trapped in alternate universe, and Stanley as a professional con artist having one dream after another crashing against the hard realities of this world. Stanley eventually uses Stanford's journal to open the portal and liberate his brother Stanford from his exile, but in doing so he weakens the boundary between reality and chaos, and threatens to let Bill Cipher and the forces of evil spill into our world. Their Relationship is no better than it was when Stanford was lost in 1981. Instead of thanking Stanley for his help, he scolds him for following his heart instead of heeding the warnings he wrote in the journal. He puts Stanley on notice, that he can only stay in Gravity falls until the end of Summer so he can care for their grand nephew and niece. After which he is no longer welcome.
As their Summer draws to an end, their 13th birthday approaches, bringing with it an end to childhood and the beginning of their teenage years. Mabel is troubled as her plans for a birthday celebration crumble, and she realizes that her teenage years may be rougher than she thought. Turning to her brother Dippers for comfort she overhears Stanford offering to make Dippers his apprentice and keeping him in Gravity Falls. Mabel is heart broken at the thought of being separated from her brother and takes up the time traveler's offer to live in a time bubble where it's summer forever. This becomes her gilded prison, and inadvertently allows Bill Cipher to become corporeal in the three episodes titled "Weirdmageddon." In these final episodes, the twins begin being separated, the journals are destroyed or their grunkles are captured and lost. Dippers overcomes extra-dimensional monsters, post apocalyptic wastelands, and madness bubbles to find their way back to his sister, and together they defeat Bill Cipher. The final scene Mabel and Dippers, united together, board a bus leaving Gravity Falls.
Dippers: "Ready to head into the unknown?
Mabel: "Nope, let's do it."
Deep, huh?
EPILOGUE:
Mabel’s prison is a fantasy bubble that gives her an endless Summer in childhood. As it bursts and she is released, and two characters from the fantasy survive into the real world, the Hunky Bro’s.
“Wo!
Wait, did we survive?
Are we real?”
And as they sit on a park bench looking out over the hellscape of chaos that is Gravity Falls, the hunks reflect on their existence:
“Jean-Paul Sartre postulates
'Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.'”
“Totally righteous, bro!”
"I know!"
