7 Things To Know About The ‘Gravity Falls’ Series Finale

Nivea Serrao February 12, 2016, 8:00 am

As the countdown to Weirdmageddon Part 3 continues, Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch, co-stars Jason Ritter and Kristen Schaal (who voice twins Dipper and Mabel Pines respectively), and composer Brad Breeck gathered at a Gravity Falls press event to discuss their time on the series and share what viewers can expect from Monday’s series finale.

Here are seven things we learned:

1. Grunkle Stan is hoping to be the one who saves the day for once.
“He’s a character with a gigantic chip on his shoulder,” says Hirsch, of Stan wanting to save the day. “He’s spent his entire life in the shadow of a better, quicker, smarter twin brother, and he’s intensely frustrated by everyone treating his brother like a hero all the time. At least at the beginning of the episode Stan’s desire is, ‘Maybe I’m the hero this time. Maybe I’m the chief.'”

2. The stakes are a little higher for Stan—at least emotionally.
“Stan has a very complicated relationship with the concept of family. He started out really caring for his brother and then when his brother shut him out, he decided he really hated family,” explains Hirsch, of Stan’s feelings when the series began. “He lived alone for a long time, and the only real family he had was Soos. When Dipper and Mabel showed up, it was kind of a second chance for him to have that relationship. Over the course of the series, Stan has regrown a damaged heart. He still feels very conflicted about his brother, but he has come to see what family is, and that’s something that both shows growth for him but also puts him in a difficult place in the finale. Even though he’s made up with Dipper and Mabel, he and his brother still have unresolved issues, and that’s something that’s unresolved and screwed up inside of him.”

3. Dipper will be in a tough place…
“One of the scary things is that Bill is invincible. The journals, Dipper’s best resource, are destroyed and Ford is frozen,” Ritter said about the character’s situation in the finale. “He’s hoping for some kind of solution to this invincible evil that is seemingly all-powerful and that everyone he loves and cares about makes it through.” But lucky for the Pines twin, he’s got his sister at his side again, which is one of the big lessons his character has learned over the course of the series. “Dipper has started to embrace himself and all of his faults and has come to realize how important Mabel and family is to him, and what a huge part of his life she is.”

4. …But Mabel may have other concerns.
“Mabel probably wants a good sandwich,” joked Schaal, when asked about her character’s hopes for the finale. “I don’t think they’ve had lunch. I know she’s a little bit hungry.”

5. Mabel is coming to terms with growing up.
“She’s learning that she isn’t going to be a kid forever and she’s going to lose that piece of her innocence,” said Schaal. “Even though she is so perfect as Mabel, that Mabel changes. Everyone can’t stay a kid, and everyone is going to become a different person in every phase of life. The show really eloquently draws [on] that, and everyone can relate to that moment when you realize you’re losing a piece of your identity. Mabel’s going through that right now and that’s a hard lesson, at least in the landscape that she’s in.”

6. Everyone has an idea of where they’d like their characters to be 30 years in the future—if they survive the finale.
While Hirsch didn’t want to say if Dipper, Mabel and Grunkle Stan would make it past the hour-long episode, he did share what Grunkle Stan would want done with his dead body. “His final wish would be that his body is taxidermied and placed like it’s about to pounce on the Mystery Shack like a puma.” Schaal imagined that “Mabel would find the love of her life when she’s 28” and that her character would be “a really cool teacher who teaches inner city high school.” Hirsch, who liked this idea, added, “Mabel’s got all the puppets.” Ritter said that Dipper would probably become a treasure hunter in the vein of Indiana Jones. “[Dipper] is a guy who’s hungry to solve mysteries, so he spends a lot of time trying to prove to everyone outside of Gravity Falls that all of these things really did happen.”

7. Alex Hirsch is open to returning to Gravity Falls in the future—though not just yet.
“I do love these characters and that’s part of why I didn’t want to continue forever. I wouldn’t want to take them to a place I didn’t believe in,” said Hirsch. “That being said, it’s not inconceivable that one day we may return to this world because they are such rich characters, and with a little bit of time away from it, it’s possible there may be a special or something. But I think when people watch the final episode, they will see threads in that episode that one imagines could potentially be addressed in some future form, whether it’s in a comic or a special, or it’s something a 100 years after I die with robots reconstructing the show and remaking it themselves. Right now, I’m content with where it is, but I can’t say what Future Alex may do. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Watch a featurette of composer Brad Breeck discussing his inspiration for the various sounds he created for the show’s characters.

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The Gravity Falls finale will air Monday, February 15 at 7/6c on Disney XD.