Saturday, March 16, 2019

Night Life / Deep Dive (Star vs the Forces of Evil Season 3 Episode 12) - 'Toon Reviews 27


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Night Life

Even with the events of “Running With Scissors” in mind, it may seem hard to believe that Marco still has a teenage mentality despite aging 16 years in another dimension.  However, this episode brings this to light where he apparently continues to have awesome interdimensional adventures with Hekapoo. 
As the Magic High Commission member in charge of who gets interdimensional scissors, her job is to dispatch any anomalies appearing in different dimensions.  There appears to be a lot of them lately from random portals popping up, and Marco is around to help, fortunately for her.  Though most of the missions happen in dimensions where he doesn’t appear as his older self, it’s great that Marco still finds great value and excitement in these missions.  Even Hekapoo sees him as a valued partner showing some form of respect Marco’s gotten ever since moving to Mewni to stay, apart from Star making him her squire of course. 
In a thematic sense, it's appropriate that Marco is mostly seen in his youthful state in this episode.  He may be physically capable for these big missions, but his maturity shows he’s not as fully capable as he thinks he is.  He constantly has to cut his mission short for appointments noted by his watch.  Even then, he’s unable to fulfill them, and they’re important because they’re the help Star needs for her daily routines, from her squire mind you.  He gets around it by coming up with wild stories to excuse his actions which is a very cheap way to cover his assets.  I mean, Star’s sure to find out the truth eventually, and from observing certain strange signs on Marco, that’s just what she does.  It may seem like Star is just keeping Marco from doing what he enjoys, but from sights of wreckage from Marco not performing his assignments, I say her point is pretty clear. 
After she realizes the truth about Marco, he seems more out of line as he’s unable to resist temptation. He snags back his scissors, and continues to do missions with Hekapoo anyway.  Hekapoo even has another partner hired for the job and good reasons for this with Marco always being busy.  However, Marco is allowed to come help anyway, but it’s this mission that brings another issue to Marco’s role.  This particular mission is where Hekapoo plans to close the portals for good, and Marco resents that.  He actually wants them to keep doing the missions despite how safe it will be for all dimensions if they stop it.  Then it’s quickly revealed who keeps making the portals.  Out of one of them is Star in her newly discovered butterfly form, and since Marco is the only one aware of this, he pushes Hekapoo and her accomplice to not shoot her down.  He’s successful, but his lies destroy Hekapoo’s trust in him, although she does still value him as Star’s squire as he uses his charm to convince her to keep what he did secret.  Plus, his actions prove productive when he brings Star a map of where she’s been going in her strange new form. 
Overall, much of Marco’s action feel like unfortunate character regression, but there’s value in the general excitement of his adventures and what they set up for the future.
A

Deep Dive




Most of the time on this show, an episode on one topic is immediately followed by one on a completely different one.  Here, it’s a different case where after one episode where Star learns the path of how she travels in her strange butterfly form, we get one further exploring that.  This makes her strange magical occurrence as well as the mystery of her form much more impactful as it reaches a whole new level. 
Despite willingly going into this form to see what she’s capable of, Star is reasonably shocked that it’s causing her to unknowingly create anomalies.  For that, it’s noble that she knows this is the time to do something about her nightly actions.  At the same time, we get a welcome explanation for her flight patterns.  It turns out when she’s asleep, she hears a strange wailing sound, and is drawn to follow it, only she never reaches it because she wakes up.  So extreme action is taken so she can see what she’s trying to reach and hopefully stop her transformation from involuntarily occurring.  Doing so involves having Janna come over to work her supernatural talents on Star so she stays asleep, which she constantly humorously demonstrates on Marco. 
When the appropriate measures are taken, there’s interesting new details to what Star’s nightly flights are like.  Just as previous episodes recall and the map shows, they have Star go to random locations.  The thing is, now outsiders like Marco and Janna can see all this as sent through Star’s compact mirror phone.  This time, in a longer period of sleep, Star ends up going off the map into a strange multi-colored portal. 
 
Apparently, it leads to a place called the Realm of Magic, the same one Toffee inhabited and corrupted prior to his demise.  I guess that means it’s an area inside the power source of Star’s wand.  As far as aesthetics go, the Realm of Magic in its reformed uncorrupted state doesn’t have much to it.  It’s just miles of golden pools under a purple sky populated by unicorns, the biggest of which is the firstborn that Star created when she first unlocked her form.  Even if it doesn’t have much, it’s made plenty immersive by the soothing music fitting for the peaceful yet seductive tone of the location. 
Seductive turns out to be a very good word to describe the Realm of Magic as Star loses her memory and proceeds to settle there the longer she stays.  Lucky for her, Marco is freaking out because Star had lost her mirror phone prior to entering the Realm of Magic.  How worried he is for her is among the best showings of his friendship for her.  With no other option, Marco is driven to use Star’s wand to check on her leading for a strange occurrence.  The wand doesn’t just change appearance when a Mewman holds it.  It also gets a new form when a human does so too, and its magic causes Marco to get his own marks on his cheeks.  Marco is even led to really go off the rails with magic as he looks upon Star using one of the forbidden spells from Eclipsa’s chapter, which Star herself has used once before.  Him calling for Star through an all seeing eye is what gets Star to make a break for the Realm of Magic.  It’s kind of convenient that she’s suddenly able to unlock her form at will as she starts to leave.  Maybe it’s a result of her meeting what was calling her, but there could’ve been some explicit explanation.  At least this opens up many new adventure possibilities for Star. 
It all unfolds in a great episode empowered by creative lore building and big, interesting, and pleasing character moments.

A


The Ranking
  1. Moon the Undaunted
  2. Deep Dive
  3. Stranger Danger
  4. Sweet Dreams
  5. Return to Mewni
  6. Rest in Pudding
  7. Night Life
  8. Demoncism
  9. Toffee
  10. Club Snubbed
  11. Puddle Defender
  12. Sophomore Slump
  13. Starfari
  14. Lint Catcher
  15. Princess Turdina
  16. Scent of a Hoodie
  17. King Ludo
  18. Marco and the King
  19. Death Peck
  20. Book Be Gone
  21. Trial by Squire
  22. Lava Lake Beach
  23. Ponymonium
Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode in which a party to bring monsters and Mewmans together goes horribly wrong.
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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