The Diary of a Wimpy Kid stories rely on Greg Heffley remaining fundamentally the same so that in each installment his misadventures stay tonally and structurally consistent. He does not learn lessons or change his behavior to account for new information. Even when, for example, he thinks about past times when he has been punished for lying, it doesn’t prevent him from continuing to lie. The humor of the Wimpy Kid books results from the familiarity of structural and tonal consistency, which would be disrupted if Greg learned his lesson. If Wile E. Coyote catches the Roadrunner or Elmer Fudd gets Bugs Bunny, the joke won’t work. Similarly, much of Greg’s appeal as a protagonist lies in his inability or unwillingness to learn from his mistakes. Greg represents a moment in many people’s pre-adolescence where social survival and self-interest are the most important motivators, rather than intrinsic strengths of character such as Perseverance and Commitment, or Friendship and Loyalty. The series’s engagement with these themes is predicated on a perspective that willfully disregards them.

Double Down finds its humor in exaggerating Greg’s flaws, while simultaneously highlighting its own values—such as the importance of imagination.