All the mystery of the X-Files in a fun and funny show for kids.  It’s probably the best way I know how to describe Gravity Falls. The show is about the twins Dipper and Mabel Pines, 12-year old children who are spending the summer with their great uncle, Stan (who they call Grunkle Stan for short).  Stan lives in the fictional town of Gravity Falls and owns a business called The Mystery Shack where he hustles visitors into buying stuff to make money.  But over the course of these two seasons, we find out that Gravity Falls and The Mystery Shack itself are indeed home to some pretty juicy mysteries.

The show is great because it has characters who are lovable (especially Mabel and her ever-flowing optimism), plots that are sophisticated, mysteries that are intriguing, and still at a level that kids can just watch it and have fun.  No matter what your age, it’s easy to find things to like about this show.  My daughter and I love it so it’s with a sad heart that we are watching the final episode tonight.  After only 40 episodes, this Emmy-award winning series is coming to an end.  Not because of Disney, but because creator Alex Hirsch decided the time was right to bring the series to a close.  In a post on tumblr, Alex wrote to his fans:

“The first thing to know is that the show isn’t being cancelled- it’s being finished. This is 100% my choice, and its something I decided on a very long time ago. I always designed Gravity Falls to be a finite series about one epic summer- a series with a beginning, middle, and end. There are so many shows that go on endlessly until they lose their original spark, or mysteries that are cancelled before they ever get a chance to payoff.”

“But I wanted Gravity Falls to have a mystery that had a real answer, an adventure that had a real climax, and an ending that had a real conclusion for the characters I care so much about. This is very unusual in television and a pretty big experiment, and Disney for their part has been enormously supportive. I know that hits are rare in this business, and its hard to let one of them go, so I’m so grateful that this company has had the vision to let me start (and end) the show the way I always wanted to.”

But don’t worry.  If you are just hearing about Gravity Falls for the first time, Disney XD still plans on playing episodes of the show daily and a new book about the series is coming out in July so it’s not going away any time soon even if no new episodes will be forthcoming.  And Hirsch even said he wasn’t necessarily closing the book on Dipper and Mabel’s adventures, but just closing the chapter to this particular story.  But what is going to happen today?  Disney put out a press release teasing the ending of the show by saying that we will discover “the Pines family’s ultimate fate and greatest sacrifice.”  What does that mean?  Will a beloved character die?  Will there be some other kind of sacrifice?  Will Bill finally be destroyed?  Will Dipper end up with Wendy?  Just too many questions to answer!  Finally the one last question we can ask – will the episode be able to wrap up everything even in this special one hour episode?  I guess we’re going to have to tune in to find out.