So much has happened over the past 20 years. Smartphones were invented. Olivia Rodrigo was born. UGGs came into fashion and then out of fashion and then into fashion again. Blockbuster stopped existing, as did a bunch of types of rhinos. And through it all, for two decades, a so-ugly-he’s-cute saber-toothed squirrel has been trying to get his grubby mitts on an acorn. Through teaser trailers, sequels, and a video game, we grew up watching Scrat, the breakout mascot of the Ice Age franchise, get his furry ass handed to him in pursuit of his humble goal. His sorry existence was to suffer only so we could laugh.
And now it’s come to a merciful, bittersweet end. On April 13, a mysterious unlisted video, “The End,” was posted to YouTube by an account named Finale. In it, Scrat finally gets his acorn. He eats it and moves on. Catharsis! The video’s description reads, “In the final days of Blue Sky Studios, a small team of artists came together to do one final shot. This shot is a farewell, a send-off on our own terms.” Blue Sky Studios, the animation house behind Ice Age, got shut down by Disney in 2021 after the Fox acquisition. The animators released this video on the same day that a new Scrat Tales miniseries, comprised of shorts that were produced by the Blue Sky animators prior to the shutdown, premiered on Disney+.
Some people ask for the world. Some people are so greedy they want to own Mars or Twitter or both. Scrat just wanted a nut to chomp on. And he got it. It’s a very nice good-bye from a prolific animation studio. But we won’t have true closure until Blue Sky releases a video of the Ice Age baby falling down a well.
