Warning: this review contains spoilers, but also effusive praise.

Gravity Falls is a clever, clever show.

And by that, I’m talking about how it succeeds at introducing cosmic horror in a format palatable to Disney audiences, while simultaneously keeping all of its teeth intact. At a glance, it’s an extremely safe production. The characters are clearly cartoonish, designed without a single thought towards realism. Proportions are off, expressions are goofy, and while everything is of high quality, Gravity Falls is unmistakably a thing for kids.

Which it really is. Brimming with adventure and familial relationships, the two-season show, which just recently aired its final episode, revolves about a pair of twelve-year-old Californian twins: Mabel and Dipper Pines. In the beginning of the first season, they’re deposited in the care of their crotchety Grand Uncle Stan, who runs a tourist trap in middle-of-nowhere Oregon. Unsurprisingly, friction occurs.

But soon homesickness and a longing for urban civilisation are supplanted by curiosity, when Dipper discovers a mysterious journal and Mabel finds herself kidnapped by aggressive gnomes. (You can’t make these things up.) A rescue is staged, epiphany strikes: things are not what they seem. The episode ends, kicking off a chain of “monster-of-the-day” scenarios. Some of these are clever, many are silly, and even more evoke the feel of weird Americana.

Along the way, the kids do what kids always do in cartoons like this: they bond. With each other, with their Grunkle Stan, with the often absurd supporting cast. A little like X-Files, except that Mabel is almost nauseatingly cheerful and Dipper is a pre-pubescent with a hopeless crush on the unattainable older girl. It’s cute, likeable, and utterly innocent, except for the cryptic, unsettling imagery teased throughout, visuals that don’t quite match the overall cheeriness of the show.

Then, we meet Bill and things get weird.

In the build up to Bill's introduction, we see references to him, warnings to avoid interaction, accounts of how he manifests in dreams. We see his image repeated in Dipper’s journal: a demonic triangular being with a single eye, not unalike the symbol for the Illuminati. And then finally, he is summoned by a megalomaniacal child, and we meet him in the flesh for the first time.

Irreverent and nasally, Bill is not immediately frightening. A little disquieting, sure, but nothing worse than the menagerie of monsters so far. Very quickly, however, Bill disapproves that initial notion. He is sociopathic and malevolent, completely unconcerned with anything but his own agenda, cruel and seemingly enamoured of the chaos he engenders, a trickster in the worst possible sense. He is not relatable, an inscrutable entity with no links to anything we find comprehensible—just like something out of Lovecraftian mythos.

And like Shub-Niggurath, Hastur, and all the other Great Old Ones, Bill Cipher feels representative of one of Lovecraft’s most salient themes: the fear of the unknown. Which is rather interesting, because if love was the answer in Steven Universe, fear is what propels Gravity Falls. Fear of loss. Fear of loneliness. Fear of the things we’ve seen and the things we’ve done, of the memories and the trauma that we accrue through the process of living. Fear of our own utter inconsequentiality, of the knowledge that we aren’t so much transitory beings as we are a meaningless nanosecond of self-awareness in a vast and indifferent universe. Fear of growing up.

But where Lovecraft responded to his terror with hatred and bigotry, Gravity Falls subverts his legacy by choosing love and acceptance every single time. It’s arguably not the most unique route. Virtually every children’s program in existence promotes positive behaviour, but it feels particularly fitting here, especially if you also consider the fact that Gravity Falls takes place in small-town America, a setting traditionally associated with undue bigotry.

Regardless, the message is powerful. The show takes care to layer its delivery, slowly building nuance, offering relatable scenarios and interludes of silliness to balance out its more philosophical elements. With every episode, it iterates on its central conceit, showing different ways that kindness triumphs, different ways that love can manifest. Over and over and over, until we reach the show’s climax and the Pines family find themselves confronting pure, existential dread made flesh.

Of course, they choose love. And sacrifice and hope and human resilience—all the things that makes life worthwhile, even when it is empirically pointless.

You need to watch Gravity Falls. Not because it is charming (although it is). Not because it’s further proof that children’s television can be shockingly sophisticated (although it is also that). Not even because the narrative arc that it follows is positively balletic in its elegance.

Actually, because all that.

Gravity Falls. Multiple thumbs up.

You can watch Gravity Falls in the UK on the Disney XD channel, which is available on Sky, Virgin, and BT TV. In fact, a whole bunch of episodes are being aired today, it looks like. Unfortunately, only season 1 is currently available on Disney's streaming service.