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Toffee
The arc of saving Mewni from Toffee ends here. It has a lot of great moments as a creative spectacle,
but it’s also pretty flawed.
The first
one goes off of Star facing Toffee without a plan, justifying her mom being
overprotective. She does impressively
take out Ludo’s army in a rat suit, but then she takes off the suit demanding where her dad is instead of
doing so after pinning Ludo down. That's a total idiotic move to be expected from someone going in without a plan. Star
is imprisoned, but is soon reunited with Marco.
During this reunion Star meets the resistance whose role is
disappointing. Despite their capability,
their only plan is of harmless pranks, and when Ludo captures them, Marco
backstabs them. Moon and Buff Frog come
to save him, and Marco opts to leave his new friends behind. This a disservice that makes the resistance useless. They might has well not have shown up at all.
The story picks up when Ludo, realizing
Toffee’s controlling him, has Star expunge him, and she does so with the
Whispering Spell. Back in Season 1, it
wasn’t clear how it worked, but we get a good idea here. That whisper depowers Ludo’s wand, but then there’s an explanation for what happens afterwards. In an explosion, Star is gone, but can talk
through Ludo, which shows that the Whispering Spell
doesn’t really destroy the wand. That explosion has
anyone close by enter a piece of it.
This is how Toffee got into Ludo’s wand where he's turned all its magic into sludge which Star gets stuck in.
There’s far more of Toffee, so he can only
speak through Ludo leading to an exceptional performance. Toffee has Moon give him his finger and
effortlessly holds Star back inside the wand.
With the finger, Toffee moves on from Ludo in his full form. He coldly crushes the wand piece into dust, and since
Star was in it, she’s gone. This brings
a spectacular play on emotions from everyone’s tearful reactions to Star’s
demise. Moon especially stands out
through a desperate attempt of the dark spell she got in her youth. The
heartbreak of losing her daughter after trying so hard to protect her sells the
power.
There is still hope for Star unbeknownst to everyone. With the magic Toffee turned to
sludge, there are fragments of it Star tries to grab. Trying to get one at the
bottom brings her to an afterlife realm where she meets Glossaryck.
As for what follows, it’s stunning and
confusing. Glossaryck tells Star to just
eat soup, but Star sees it as his usual ploys to get her to master
abilities. She finds a piece of magic in
the soup and dips down to get it. Now,
it doesn’t make sense that there’d be a piece of magic in an afterlife
realm seeing that it clearly exists in the space of the living. Also, it was never implied that
the magic would unlock what unfolds.
Sloppy build-up aside, Star’s butterfly form is great to see as is her
destroying Toffee with one wand blast in that form. In fact, it's one of the most magical and thrilling moments of the entire series
There are a few more significant weak points at
the end. River returns with eagles without explanation other than to easily resolve his disappearance. Ludo suddenly decides
to drop what he conquered to be in the void he was thrown into at the end of
Season 1. The biggest weak point is with
the destruction of Toffee. All he did
was return to his old form once he got his finger only to be destroyed shortly
after which ultimately
devalues everything great about him. Now
we’ll never know his background or true motivations.
There is good from his destruction though since Moon now has to have Eclipsa be
freed. The last shot of her crystal breaking
is all that’s needed to foreshadow her return.
This final confrontation with Toffee has glaring issues that prevent it
from being truly amazing. However, with
dazzling spectacles, creative world-building, and some of the show’s strongest
sense of emotion, it’s still pretty great.
A-
The Ranking
- Moon the Undaunted
- Return to Mewni
- Toffee
- Puddle Defender
- King Ludo
- Marco and the King
- Book Be Gone
The next Star vs the Forces of Evil review starts many of Star's adventures on Mewni as she says good-bye to Marco, and is frequently reminded of the 'deceased' Glossaryck.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is an episode about a storm from Hilda.
If you would like to check out other Star vs the Forces of Evil reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.
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