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chuckroThe adventures of ex-princess Star Butterfly come to a close as she changes two worlds for the better. (Maybe?)
To quote myself: We wrap this season with Heinous being turned back into a half-monster baby, and the wand being given to Eclipsa, who goes to revive her monster husband. How much of a villain Eclipsa actually is has been teased since she appeared, and the finale answers nothing. We go into season four with Ludo still in Limbo working out his issues (but his brother Dennis likely to return), Queen Moon vanished to somewhere (but presumably with the purple cleared from her arms), the kingdom in shambles but everyone un-ballooned, Glossarick sorta-recovered (I think his mental state is tied to the wand and whoever “owns” it) and Star having a reasonable hold on using magic without her wand.
I apparently called a bunch of things. Interesting in that once they rescue Moon, we get slice-of-life, generally-unattached episodes for half a season. There’s no real villain or particularly pressing concern—they don’t even change the title sequence despite the lack of Ludo, Toffy, Star’s Wand, etc. Eclipsa seamlessly transitions into being “not a villain at all, really, no more than any of the other Butterfly queens”, especially since she can’t free Globgor. Epilogues for Ludo and Buff Frog feel more like filler than anything (and would make NO SENSE to people who haven’t seen the earlier seasons)…and then they just casually sneak in an episode of Glosserick being a manipulative asshole, giving magic to the first Mewmans, and time-traveling to wind up Toffy.
And that episode actually gives us more useful information than the entire half-season preceding it: The choice of which Mewmans could use magic was confirmed as utterly arbitrary (which, given than Moon and Star weren’t of the original line of queens AND Marco used the wand at least once, was already suspect), the odds that Mewmans and humans were related jumped, and that Glosserick was much more in control of everything that’s happened than he’s ever let on. Which meant that as it was revealed Mina, the Magic High Council, and Moon were arguably the antagonists for the latter half of the season, I wasn’t really impressed that the problem was any of them. And clearly neither was Star, because that lead directly into, “The problem isn’t the architects of the old order, the problem is that they have power, so we’ll just take that away.”
The Blood Moon curse episode gave me brief hope that they were dropping the Star/Marco ship, but that was clearly a delaying tactic—Marco’s “breakup buddies” thing with Kelli died as quickly as it appeared, and Tom and Star did their will they/won’t they until they didn’t. I appreciated Jackie’s brief return with her badass French girlfriend. Also, it’s really obvious that Star is bi, right? That’s not just me?
And boy, this show loves tying up random-ass loose ends: Like, how did Janna get to Mewnie? Any reasonable person would think, “Oh, Star or Marco invited her via their scissors.” But no, we’ll combine all that with a random shaggy dog story about a t-shirt to show how Earth and Mewnie are really connected. And Glosserick was eating pudding that entire time because pudding somehow protects you from the magic dimension’s memory effects. I’m going to guess that if there was a fifth season, we’d learn why Doop-Doop didn’t live in the spell dimension and why that has repercussions for the multiverse.
And we end with Star and Marco together for the long term…and everything else a goddamn mess because Mewnie and Earth have merged and there are magical monsters (clearly the magic dimension wasn’t the source of all “magic”, as Ponyhead can still fly), and it suddenly occurs to me that this could make this show a prequel to all manner of ridiculous settings. (What isn’t a question, though, is the long-term fate of Meteora: When she and Mariposa grew up together in the time-dilated hell dimension, she was fine, if magic-dependent. When she goes up with a loving family and no magic, there’s no chance she’ll become Heinous again.)
Overall: This was a fun show, but while I love some good worldbuilding, I think the best episodes are mostly the early ones, when they had more freedom to do wacky fish-out-of-water stuff and weren’t as chained to the continuity.
To quote myself: We wrap this season with Heinous being turned back into a half-monster baby, and the wand being given to Eclipsa, who goes to revive her monster husband. How much of a villain Eclipsa actually is has been teased since she appeared, and the finale answers nothing. We go into season four with Ludo still in Limbo working out his issues (but his brother Dennis likely to return), Queen Moon vanished to somewhere (but presumably with the purple cleared from her arms), the kingdom in shambles but everyone un-ballooned, Glossarick sorta-recovered (I think his mental state is tied to the wand and whoever “owns” it) and Star having a reasonable hold on using magic without her wand.
I apparently called a bunch of things. Interesting in that once they rescue Moon, we get slice-of-life, generally-unattached episodes for half a season. There’s no real villain or particularly pressing concern—they don’t even change the title sequence despite the lack of Ludo, Toffy, Star’s Wand, etc. Eclipsa seamlessly transitions into being “not a villain at all, really, no more than any of the other Butterfly queens”, especially since she can’t free Globgor. Epilogues for Ludo and Buff Frog feel more like filler than anything (and would make NO SENSE to people who haven’t seen the earlier seasons)…and then they just casually sneak in an episode of Glosserick being a manipulative asshole, giving magic to the first Mewmans, and time-traveling to wind up Toffy.
And that episode actually gives us more useful information than the entire half-season preceding it: The choice of which Mewmans could use magic was confirmed as utterly arbitrary (which, given than Moon and Star weren’t of the original line of queens AND Marco used the wand at least once, was already suspect), the odds that Mewmans and humans were related jumped, and that Glosserick was much more in control of everything that’s happened than he’s ever let on. Which meant that as it was revealed Mina, the Magic High Council, and Moon were arguably the antagonists for the latter half of the season, I wasn’t really impressed that the problem was any of them. And clearly neither was Star, because that lead directly into, “The problem isn’t the architects of the old order, the problem is that they have power, so we’ll just take that away.”
The Blood Moon curse episode gave me brief hope that they were dropping the Star/Marco ship, but that was clearly a delaying tactic—Marco’s “breakup buddies” thing with Kelli died as quickly as it appeared, and Tom and Star did their will they/won’t they until they didn’t. I appreciated Jackie’s brief return with her badass French girlfriend. Also, it’s really obvious that Star is bi, right? That’s not just me?
And boy, this show loves tying up random-ass loose ends: Like, how did Janna get to Mewnie? Any reasonable person would think, “Oh, Star or Marco invited her via their scissors.” But no, we’ll combine all that with a random shaggy dog story about a t-shirt to show how Earth and Mewnie are really connected. And Glosserick was eating pudding that entire time because pudding somehow protects you from the magic dimension’s memory effects. I’m going to guess that if there was a fifth season, we’d learn why Doop-Doop didn’t live in the spell dimension and why that has repercussions for the multiverse.
And we end with Star and Marco together for the long term…and everything else a goddamn mess because Mewnie and Earth have merged and there are magical monsters (clearly the magic dimension wasn’t the source of all “magic”, as Ponyhead can still fly), and it suddenly occurs to me that this could make this show a prequel to all manner of ridiculous settings. (What isn’t a question, though, is the long-term fate of Meteora: When she and Mariposa grew up together in the time-dilated hell dimension, she was fine, if magic-dependent. When she goes up with a loving family and no magic, there’s no chance she’ll become Heinous again.)
Overall: This was a fun show, but while I love some good worldbuilding, I think the best episodes are mostly the early ones, when they had more freedom to do wacky fish-out-of-water stuff and weren’t as chained to the continuity.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-25 06:03 am (UTC)Also, at the very end, I was holding my breath and waiting for the worlds to separate again and for Star and Marco to have a tragic ending. Again, unlikely because Disney.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-31 09:05 pm (UTC)I'm okay with the worlds not re-separating, because the separation only makes things bad for Star and Marco. The fusion makes things bad for everyone!