Saturday, February 2, 2019

Return to Mewni / Moon the Undaunted (Star vs the Forces of Evil Season 3 Episode 1) - 'Toon Reviews 27


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Today, we’re starting another look at a season featuring everyone’s favorite interdimensional princess heading in a fresh and exciting new direction.

Star vs the Forces of Evil (Season 3)
Basic Premise

Star vs the Forces of Evil is one of those shows that goes both ways.  Sometimes its focus is on the reckless mischief of the title character and her friends.  When that’s the case, episodes are either really enjoyable or directionless and not necessarily worth one’s time.  However, there are also times that suggest that the show has something far bigger and grander in mind.  From there, the lore, characters, and scope of the series become far more interesting and especially creative.  So while light-hearted fluff doesn’t seem really do the show justice, it becomes quite the experience with anything world-building related.  With Season 3, the latter subject is at the forefront and boy does it make the series more exciting than ever.
The reason I’m so enthusiastic about Season 3 has to do with how varying in quality Season 2 is.  Most of the observations of the show’s fluctuating tone attribute to that season.  Light-hearted episodes are very mixed with some solid fun ones and a couple of incredibly weak ones.  However, anything lore-related is consistently strong and interesting, and seamlessly puts the show into a more serious direction while still keeping true to its free spirit.  Those particular lore-related episodes bring a lot of interesting background.  There’s backstory on the Queens of Mewni, after effects of Star’s wand getting cleaved, and insight on how hard monsters have it on Mewni.  Now with Star Butterfly suddenly forced to leave her new Earth life behind for her home kingdom, this new season is all about world-building lore-filled adventures.

As you can see from my excitement, I find that they turn out very well, but how well?  That’s what the oncoming reviews will determine.  One thing’s for sure though; it’s going to get weirder and wilder than ever before.


Now on with the reviews:
Return to Mewni
At the end of Season 2, the news that Star needed to leave Earth was shocking, at least from her perspective.  While we saw plenty of reasons for this, all the devotion to how adjusted Star was to her new life made her needing to leave it behind feel surprising to the audience.  This is the tone that defines the entire episode shown at the start with Marco feeling depressed over Star’s sudden departure among old end of the school year party decorations.  On a side note, it’s interesting that he shows no hint of awkwardness that the last thing she told him was that she has a crush on him even though he’s already in a relationship.  While this sets the episode’s mood, its real focus is on something more interesting. 
Shortly after spending much of that night on relationship drama, Star is thrown into legit drama.  She already knows that Toffee has returned, but at the moment, she and her mother, Queen Moon, have a majorly pressing issue.  They’re traveling to a magic sanctuary to cure the three members of the Magic High Commission who have had their energy drained and have become inflatable.  The frequent magical fritz that’s been around since the previous season makes the travel difficult.  That said, it does bring some creative effects like turning the carriage Star and Moon are using into much weaker forms of transport before vanishing it completely. 
As Star and Moon press on towards the sanctuary, there’s a dynamic clash on how they both approach the matter at hand.  Star mainly acts out of adjustment to her old rebel lifestyle through jumping in to use her wand and fight off enemy rats without hesitation.  While foolish given the seriousness of the events, this being in line with Star’s character is enough to believe that she has some idea of what she’s doing.  As for Moon, she has way more intel on what’s going on and pushes towards safer options.  This includes having legit reasons for Star to not use the wand since it’s linked to Toffee’s magic, and that fighting the rats attracts too much attention.  This is all a part of Moon’s most endearing trait of doing what she does for Star’s well-being and not because she doesn’t accept her for who she is.  It truly proves that she’s one of the best-defined characters on the show.  At the same time, Moon’s good traits are balanced out by her over-protectiveness coming from not knowing her own daughter well. 
With all this said, it’s a pleasing direction that both Star and Moon are just as capable as they are flawed, making for a balanced perspective.  For the moment at least, despite their conflicting approaches, they come to a point of endearment when they reach the sanctuary.  After placing the Magic High Commission in pods for the time being, Star is put off by Moon wanting them both to stay in the sanctuary instead of go out to fight Toffee.  Since she fought him before, Star is understandably tense by this decision and believes that Moon had her drop everything for nothing.  Thankfully, she becomes much more considerate of her mother’s feelings when Moon reveals when she was Star’s age, Toffee and his army killed her mother. The last moment of the episode features both of them becoming closer as Moon proceeds to tell Star the whole truth about her background, paving the way for the next episode. 
This return to Mewni kicks the season off to a great start.  The tone is exciting, there’s a believable shock to the change in the norm, and endearment from a mother and daughter who think differently, yet love each other very much.
A


Moon the Undaunted
When a show has a creative premise and world, it’s best to go all out with everything, including its history.  This is what makes this episode on a character’s history noteworthy. 
Queen Moon is quite multi-layered through her personality functioning out of love as opposed to standards.  She’s even gone beyond being regal by facing Toffee long ago.  This episode expands upon that going off of the very end of the previous one where Moon agreed to tell Star about her past. 
The entire episode is a flashback of that very event.  With her mother killed by Toffee, she had to take on the responsibility of ruling as a Queen of Mewni at such a young age.  The feel is especially apparent with young Moon designed very similarly to Star.  Despite how torn up she was by her loss, Moon had no time to deal with her feelings.  Being queen brought all sorts of issues.  Some were as major as the armies and Magic High Commission disagreeing on how to handle Toffee and his armies.  At the same time, smaller issues like deciding which boy she liked best were also taxing.  Out of her relationship matters was at least a nice moment where she was touched by a young River’s suggestion to decide what to do on her own.  It goes to show how he has her best interests in the present. 
As for the royal staff’s conflict of whether to handle Toffee with a peace treaty or a war, Moon’s understandable unease brought out another side of her.  She went against customs to solve problems by looking into the royal spell book’s dark chapter of Eclipsa.  It was mentioned in previous episodes that Eclipsa is notorious for abandoning the throne to marry a monster which everyone sees as treason.  She was so bad, she was imprisoned in crystals by Magic High Commission member, Rhombulus.  Her dark chapter and Moon’s uncertainties of how to deal with Toffee led Moon to face Eclipsa. 
Behind everyone’s backs, she had Rhombulus temporarily let Eclipsa’s crystals down.  Adding credibility is this being the first onscreen appearance of Eclipsa as opposed to exposition and portraits.  She’s charming and likable for such a criminal.  Rather than malice, her only desires were little things like a chocolate bar.  Her sympathy for Moon losing her mother and the pressures of ruling Mewni also feel very genuine.  It’s honestly hard to believe she’s as bad as past events claim.  Since the claims are in full force, her morality behind granting Moon the spell to destroy Toffee in exchange for freedom feels appropriately ambiguous. 
As for facing Toffee, the moment is creatively staged.  Moon goes alone, and nonchalantly sets up a picnic in the middle his camp.  When Moon performs Eclipsa’s spell, she doesn’t even sound pumped for battle.  She calmly states it, yet it produces a beam that blows off parts of the lizards that usually grow back.  Even though Moon only blew off Toffee’s finger, it not growing back due to the spell was enough to make the army retreat.  So Eclipsa’s spell was the very thing to beat Toffee and started the custom of all holders of the wand using it to face all monsters without any armies. 
That said, the disapproving looks of the Magic High Commission, and Moon getting dark veins like Eclipsa continues to make the audience wonder if all is well.  The answer comes in time, but as for this episode, it’s one of the absolute best world-building episodes.  It makes Moon an even more endearing character than she already is, stands as its own emotional story, and leaves many more interesting elements to look into.  As for the latter point, those elements go on to practically become series highlights…
A+


The Ranking
  1. Moon the Undaunted
  2. Return to Mewni
Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode where Ludo has a hard time writing in the spell book, and River needs help from Marco to run Mewni while Moon is gone.
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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