Review: Wander Over Yonder ”The Rider”

Spoilers Below

Sylvia’s old friend ”The Rider” is in town and the reunion could not have come at a better time because the stagg’s been a bit bored with Wander’s ”do good” adventures. To try and cure that, Rider offers to bring along both Wander AND Sylvia in his latest adventure to break-into Lord Hater’s lair and steal treasure. As long as there is a thrilling adventure, Sylvia is in. As long as there is an opportunity to help someone, Wander is in.

The trio head to a bar to find coordinates on Hater’s vault and those coordinates come on a floppy disk. Do you kids know what a floppy disk is? In any case, the team gets there instructions and hijack a ship through an intergalactic space chase that ends up right on the door steps of where Hater keeps his treasure. During the course of the trip, it’s clearly obvious that Sylvia prefers the high octane adventures featuring Rider versus the boring shit that Wander usually dishes. This comes to a head when the three end up at the lair and Wander clearly gets forgotten when trying to get inside to get the treasure, leaving the little guy to go off on his own.

Sylvia begins to worry about the whereabouts of her pal Wander whom is on some planet making friends with a giant worm. We come to find out that Rider was only using Sylvia to get to the treasure, and he was going to screw her over and make off with the cash by himself instead of giving it back to their rightful owners which is the song and dance he told Wander and Sylvia in the first place to bring them along for the ride. An alarm shows off, and both Sylvia and Rider are taken into custody by the Watchdogs and Lord Hater, but Wander shows up with his new worm friend and is able to save everyone using a birthday cake. The vault explodes, all of the money goes back to their rightful owners, and Rider is right back where he was…alone.

We’ve got one more episode in this first season run of Wander Over Yonder and it airs next week on Disney XD. This past week we’ve got to see a lot of the series, and moreover the last few months as well. It seems as though Disney XD has finally started to respect this series again after a slew of time slot changes, and it’s right on time to exhibit the real talent that works on this series. ”The Rider” is one of the show’s best episodes yet, which is scary to think that Craig McCracken and crew are really JUST getting started in terms of what they can really dish out for the network.

The episode itself had a little bit of everything that acts like more of a film than it does an animated series. Action, drama, comedy, suspense, and more comedy all make plays in ”The Rider”. Speaking of ”The Rider”, I liked Will Arnett’s role in this series better than I liked his BoJack Horseman on Netflix. Think almost a more brash and more scummy take on Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story, and you’ve got a rather accurate take on the character. At first I almost rooted for him, even thought ”Hey, I’d like to see him in a spin-off”, but then he pulls that shit in the end and you’re like ‘AHHHHH’. Wander does come off as annoying, not gonna lie, but this week you couldn’t help but feel for the little guy and he was trying to come to grips with a future without Sylvia. Thankfully, that notion would come to pass, and Wander Over Yonder proves that it might be an even stronger series with 30-minute runs versus its more typical 12-minute varieties.