this video is brought to you by squarespace when it comes to websites online stores etc there's no place to build a beautiful online presence like squarespace so this is the third installment in an unexpected yet incredibly popular series of mine where i take spongebob episodes and try to find the meaning in these very formative experiences the show's characters undergo whereas we usually end up talking about the old squister today i want to talk about the sponge himself spongebob squarepants and arguably the most traumatizing episode he's in when you think of peak spongebob you usually think
of those first three seasons but today's episode actually comes from well into season five and it's called spongehenge spongehenge a witty reference to stonehenge is one of spongebob's least funny episodes but it's also one of its scariest as it tells the story of spongebob being followed by jellyfish to a point where he has to escape society altogether it's a very unsettling episode and that's an understatement it's also in a lot of people's top 10 worst spongebob episodes lists but it's a lot more than that and to understand why let's take it from the top the
episode starts with two restaurant goers leaving a diner with takeout when all of a sudden they notice a heavy gust of wind the one fish claims it's neptune the god of the sea in roman mythology and the other claims everyone knows poseidon is the ruler of the sea which according to most websites is the actual truth and is also the god of the sea for greek mythology at the end of the day the wind blows away the fish's takeout food and he screams why dear neptune the leftovers fly over the city until they hit spongebob
in the face he looks them up and recognizes that it is indeed goulash now goulash was an oddly specific choice for the writers to use and i looked up the symbolism behind the dish and i got nothing it's just goulash but in the process of tossing out the gula spongebob discovers a sound that the wind makes in his holes it doesn't take long for this music to reach a jellyfish who instantly grows pretty attached to sponge and by attached i mean attached he crawls into spongebob's head and swarms around his brain until the morning but
come the morning the jellyfish doesn't want to leave in fact he sends over a swarm of jellyfish that prevents spongebob from being able to go to work he's eventually dragged into work via a hook by his boss mr krabs only to show up to work pretty much dead but he isn't at work for long because the jellyfish swarm the krusty krab and take him away so now his work is gone so where to next uh patrick's house where the jellyfish actually sting patrick and leads to pat kicking out spongebob for being a negative influence what
a terrible friend to be honest so spongebob is forced to leave society and he crawls into the one place they can't find or hear him a cave where he sits out for years and constructs a stone replica of himself using a rock and eventually grows that facial hair he always wanted then he gets the idea to use that rock but bigger versions of it to lure the jellyfish away from him he essentially recreates stonehenge he goes back to bikini bottom and the world is uh gone a reference to the planet of the apes flash forward
another few thousand years and aliens have taken over and are still examining these strange rock figures and that's the end of the episode and that's a pretty dark ending no i think this episode is definitely one of the show's most unsettling like i said as far as how it leaves you for one canonically it assumes that those last moments were the last that bikini bottom saw of spongebob and the last that we saw of bikini bottom all together which is pretty depressing considering patrick's last words were that he was a negative influence and that mr
krabs spent his last moments reeling him in abusing the poor lad and spongebob just kind of disappeared and went crazy and were to assume he just went crazier and eventually died alone and as soon as i learned that this was episode 99b that's when it hit me that this is most likely just the last spongebob episode we're forgetting one small detail though and it's what happens at that beginning if this really was neptune or poseidon we're to assume that this wipeout was intentional which leaves us with two questions of why did this happen and what
is the point and my first thought was oh maybe poseidon is just really annoyed with being called neptune a lot of this is him getting his revenge on society but then i was like no it's got to be more than that in this episode are themes of both religious beliefs and climate change and i think this episode serves as a statement for how a civilization reacts when both their beliefs and physical surroundings are altered i do think the root of the entire episode is in that small conversation at the beginning especially after further research into
the religious lore of bikini bottom based on what i could find poseidon wasn't mentioned in the series at all up until this episode he does later show up in sponge on the run but honestly that movie is so detached from everything else in the show i just i don't even want to take it into consideration but for the most part it's been established many times that neptune is in fact the ruler of the sea most notably in the golden spatula episode as well as the movie but something i noticed especially after this fish's argument is
that i don't think neptune was ever a god sure he had godly powers but that didn't necessarily make him a god himself in fact in the first spongebob movie it's made very clear that he's actually a king and honestly he's barely that when he loses his crown and reveals his bald spot he feels pretty powerless sure he shares the same traits as the mythological god neptune and that he has a short temper but there's nothing in this movie or in any of the seasons that suggests king neptune is a god in fact a god is
technically ageless and if king neptune is going bald it just that it doesn't add up which is my way of saying that she's right this wind is definitely not king neptune but i also don't think it's poseidon see i think poseidon exists sure if i gotta include sponge on the run i will and it makes the case for him being an actual god in this universe but that said that doesn't necessarily mean that this destruction is necessarily caused by poseidon based on that movie poseidon just doesn't seem like the type to destroy bikini bottom for
any particular reason there's no lore suggesting he wants revenge or that he gets angry it just doesn't add up so now i'm like what is this win for the record the win continues for the next like 3 000 years it never stops and i'm just like where is it coming from why is it happening so i start thinking neptune neptune oh neptune the actual planet of neptune is rarely if ever referenced in the show now i'm not good with space science but not only is neptune made mostly of water but it's also famously extremely windy
you google the windiest planet and you literally get neptune which if you know where i'm going with this is to suggest that this episode is the story of a civilization crumbling physically and mentally as their entire beliefs and existence are questioned as they have been living on a different planet the entire time according to ismail hamdi the only way for a god to die is to destroy the significance their names hold in this conversation the debunking of neptune as the god of the sea essentially kills neptune as a god redefining the name as less of
a figure and more as the planet in which these fish live now a few things something that immediately debunks this is the numerous times spongebob and his gang make their way onto land all of which come across very earth-like when you look up planet earth on the spongebob wikipedia there's basically a episode for every continent out there they've been all over the place but most of this show through this lens can be assumed to be a hallucination or false reality there's tons of theories that spongebob is hallucinating for most of the show a concrete episode
we can cite as an explanation for where we are in the universe is sandy's rocket where they go into space in this episode it's never specifically shown that they leave earth they do circle the moon which is a stretch neptune is pretty far from that but that's not really the point they get there and they come back and that said maybe this isn't our moon sandy's size suggests that this is actually way too small my point is it's never shown that they're specifically leaving earth or coming back to it so this could very well be
neptune the whole time the thing about this theory is because it's rooted in a false reality most of the episodes that prove bikini bottom takes place on earth can be debunked because they've been living through a false lens and also a lot of those episodes don't add up with this original spongebob timeline i'm basing things off of but their literal home isn't the only thing that breaks in this episode in fact there's a few things we should be looking at one of which is obviously spongebob spongebob's entire life falls apart starting with what used to
be one of his favorite activities turning into a nightmare followed by him being late for the first time in his career as a fry cook which coincidentally also ends up being his last and then being beaten senseless by his boss and then being left abandoned by his own best friend the guy is tortured what breaks is spongebob's perception of his surroundings what's interesting about the religion in bikini bottom is that there aren't rules or whatever the way there are rules and guidelines for certain religions in our world from what i could find nobody really knows
the religions in bikini bottom it's only vaguely understood that they worship king neptune and this episode proved some people disagree with that which is horrifying that debunking king neptune this singular figure embracing the truth of their surroundings is enough to cause such a chaotic disruption whatever they held onto with king neptune was apparently tons of good morals and it poses the question of what is lost for spongebob as he transforms into a psychotic mess deprived of connection and forced to make do with a rock after assuming everyone hates him i see this episode as a
horror story that after years of spongebob using jellyfish as food or as prey that nature now fully recognized is coming back to haunt him treating him and the rest of bikini bottom as prey when that disassociation happens spongebob loses his mind his world now sanded over is gone his friends assumed to have died and like them spongebob is assumed to starve and die a slow painful death in a barren wasteland which comes down to his legacy his legacy is sponge henge a mysterious structure that as proven by the aliens of the future has this unknown
origin i mean perhaps it's a happy ending considering they serve as a place of celebration for jellyfish every year but it's undoubtedly unsettling saying as though spongebob's only legacy a legacy that's lasted thousands of years was his final suffering and i think that's it while i usually like to find the meaning in why this show does what it does spongehenge is left ambiguous in a really terrifying way that bikini bottom took place on neptune all along and that the citizens died a terrible mysterious death with the realization of that spongebob episodes usually leave you with
some sort of message and the message here is that the universe is something more powerful than any form of human connection and that nature can be violent enough to wipe out entire civilizations if it comes down to that and that's how spongebob ends so yeah i with all that being said thanks for watching check out spongehenge and form your own opinion and before you head out i want to thank today's sponsor squarespace now squarespace if you didn't already know is a place where you can go online to take that idea that you've had and progress
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