Sunday, April 14, 2019

Conquer (Star vs the Forces of Evil Season 3 Episode 21) - 'Toon Reviews 27

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Conquer


Now we’re on the grand finish for Season 3, placing the entire series at its most epic and exciting to date. 
It starts with tension in an unlikely place with Star and Moon playing in the Realm of Magic involuntarily without a care in the world.  Though there are much more pressing matters, it’s nice to watch them spend time together.  That said, it’s kind of sad that they needd to have amnesia to truly be on the same page.  Then the firstborn creation comes and sends them away from the Realm of Magic because they don’t belong.  Star is sent back to Mewni, but Moon is not.  A lot of questions are begged as to where Moon is.  The answers are revealed in time, but with so many possibilities for now, you're left with a few potential scary thoughts for after the episode ends. 
Adding to the drama is Marco and his team’s attempts to beat Meteora.  Their extreme measures aren’t enough, and she sucks out a majority of their souls, leaving only Marco and Tom standing.  Speaking of Tom, he really stands out in this episode from being the only one to vouch for Marco to declaring Marco as his best friend.  Marco is then led to confess that he kissed Star after hearing Tom make such an honor.  Tom has all the motivation to get mad at Marco for this, but impressively, he takes it very maturely. He still protects Marco and shows concern when Meteora does take his soul. 
The following scene of Star coming home to the sight of Tom holding an inflatable soulless Marco is highly emotional.  With all her pressures as queen, failing to bring Moon home, and her best friend out of commission, Star’s at her most sympathetic.  She's all alone with all the responsibility at a dire situation.  It's some of the most identifiable anxieties that can be put to media.  Nevertheless, she puts in the utmost effort to be a great queen.  She heads to Butterfly Castle to settle Meteora and save her kingdom. 
This leads to the biggest highlight of the episode, an epic battle between Star in her butterfly form and Meteora.  Through sweeping angles and Star’s imaginative spells on their biggest display, the show has never been this visually and dramatically stunning.  There’s also a note of consideration when Star understands Meteora’s anger and lets her consume the power to the butterfly form. 
Following this is a shocking twist to the battle.  Eclipsa suddenly appears and takes Star’s wand.  Despite trying to be a loving mother in their last encounter, not only does she discipline Meteora for her destruction, Eclipsa unleashes a Black Velvet Inferno spell.  This spell appears to disintegrate Meteora, releasing the souls.  Eclipsa’s tearful reaction to what she had to do is an aggressively heartbreaking display of emotion sealing the deal of her devotion to the kingdom.  Rather than killing Meteora though, the spell gives her a literal second birth which sets off a huge chain of events to look forward to in the next season.  Star takes action to fix the damage her family caused to the royal lineage by letting Eclipsa keep the wand which she uses to fly herself and Meteora away.  Glossaryck, who was faking being brain-damaged the whole time, explains they’re going to Eclipsa’s monster husband, Globgor.  The last scene of them arriving at his own crystal prison is a special kind of endearing end to this episode and the season. 
I always believe a grand finish determines the strength of a show’s season, and this episode is just that.  With great action, drama, and emotion, as well as wholesome and frightening build-up to what’s to come, needless to say, new heights have been reached for this show.

A++

The Ranking
1.      Conquer
2.      Butterfly Trap
3.      Total Eclipsa the Moon
4.      Moon the Undaunted
5.      Tough Love
6.      Divide
7.      Deep Dive
8.      Stranger Danger
9.      Sweet Dreams
10.  Skooled!
11.  Return to Mewni
12.  Rest in Pudding
13.  Night Life
14.  Demoncism
15.  Toffee
16.  Monster Bash
17.  Is Another Mystery
18.  Marco Jr.
19.  Club Snubbed
20.  Puddle Defender
21.  Sophomore Slump
22.  Starfari
23.  Lint Catcher
24.  Princess Turdina
25.  Ludo, Where Art Thou?
26.  Scent of a Hoodie
27.  King Ludo
28.  Marco and the King
29.  Death Peck
30.  Book Be Gone
31.  Booth Buddies
32.  The Bogbeast of Boggabah
33.  Stump Day
34.  Trial by Squire
35.  Lava Lake Beach
36.  Holiday Spellcial
37.  Bam Ui Pati!
38.  Ponymonium
 

 
Final Thoughts
Some people say that through taking on a more serious plot-driven approach, Star vs the Forces of Evil loses its sense of self with its third season.  While that is a good point, I think this change of pace has suited the series well considering how stale it was starting to get through focusing on random fun magical adventures.  This may have been how the show started, but in my mind, there were just too many weak episodes with that setup.  Through building up stakes and adding interesting history of the setting, this season is the show at its most interesting.  In fact, the change and pace to the tone make Season 3 the biggest and grandest thing the show has turned out yet.
Though past seasons of the show have mostly thrived on creative interdimensional frivolity, there have been frequent hints of something bigger going on in the midst of everything.  They’ve grown with every new season and are fully realized with Season 3.  Exploring major plot threads like the background of the Queens of Mewni, the mystery of Eclipsa, magic on the fritz and more are the season’s top priorities.  This is key to making the underlying story it tells so engaging and it’s very rarely bogged down by superfluous fun time, at least compared to Season 2. 
Admittedly, the story does start off kind of rocky mostly through some episodes focusing too much on overrunning a gag and overbearing character flaws, especially from Star.  The biggest offense is what’s done with the previous recurring villain, Toffee.  He started off with strong first impressions as a cold calculating villain leaving himself open for the audience to find out more about him.  However, despite revealing to be the cause for Ludo’s possession and bringing one of the show’s most emotional moments, all his potential is soon lost.  It just takes one magic blast to destroy him for good as marked by his demise freeing Eclipsa from her prison as was planned long ago.  We never learn of his true motivations or how he became so calculated.  These things could come in later seasons, but chances are it will be from exposition which isn’t nearly as compelling character development. 
Fortunately, what the start of Season 3 leads to greatly makes up for these flaws.  Many episodes set the groundwork for bigger things to come.  Some episodes focus on the return of Eclipsa and how she’s viewed by the new era of Mewmans.  Others further explore a new butterfly form Star unlocked to defeat Toffee.  Even a one-off villain, Ms. Heinous, has a good number of episodes devoted to her which plays to a major event later on.  Speaking of that, it’s truly impressive that the season finale, the result of all the focus of these major plot threads, turns out to be as exciting and epic as it is.  Now don’t get me wrong.  The show has always been quite impressive, but never has it been so sweeping, emotional, and large in scope.  We have Star start to directly face the inevitability of becoming queen, Moon is sent away from Mewni without even the clothes on her back, and there's one awesome battle after another. It’s capped off with a heartwarming yet questionable ending where Eclipsa and Meteora proceed towards the prison of Globgor leaving people to guess what this all means.  The direction may be more serious than most are accustomed to with this show, but I call it a welcome change for bringing what may be its greatest moments.
Among this big grand story and the plot aspects going into it are the great performances of the formally introduced Queen Eclipsa.  Out of everyone in the cast, she’s the best-rounded and the most strongly fleshed out.  She was somewhat of an enigma when she was first mentioned in Season 2.  All that was revealed was that she’s notorious for writing dark spells and running off with a monster.  These acts go against the law, sure, but Eclipsa shows that even if this is the case, she’s still very likable, fun to be around, and at times helpful with personal problems.  Even after effects of her dark magic don’t even seem too harmful apart from making her veins dark.  It’s this reason why I feel that her spell doing this to Moon isn’t that strong a reason for her to believe Eclipsa’s evil.  In fact, hardly anything we see of Eclipsa has a strong suggestion that she’s outright evil making it far too easy to support one side of the issue and think nothing of the other.  Even if she’s under threat of serious punishment over what appear to be small deviant acts, a great thing about Eclipsa is how she retains a positive attitude all throughout.  It’s an approach to serious situations that you hardly see cartoon characters take these days. This is a shame because it’s quite inspirational to learn how to face bad issues without giving into pressure. 
However, what makes Eclipsa well-rounded is that she does have a vulnerability to her character.  The thing that gets to her is any problem facing the life she chose to live.  In the second half of the season, she learns that something happened to her daughter, Meteora, while she was crystalized.  During this time, Eclipsa is able to break from her positive demeanor and show genuine sorrow and concern for what where Meteora is like any good loving mother.  This soon leads to an exciting trial with great staging of drama and characterizations that reveal Meteora’s fate and the shadiness of the Magic High Commission.  Eclipsa’s strong maternal instinct continues for the rest of the season, and you can easily revel in its genuineness.  When she showers Meteora with love and affection while trying to gently deny her the throne of Mewni, you feel how she just wants them to be a family again.  When she has to unleash her most dangerous spell when Meteora chooses to consume everyone’s souls, you’re just as heartbroken as she is.  Finally, when Meteora’s turned back into a baby, you share Eclipsa’s pleasant surprise at the spells effects as it leads to an interesting showing of family love.  As you can tell, I find Eclipsa to be a strong addition to the series.  Her approach to life and care for everyone she meets despite her mistreatment is an interesting concept brought to great effect.  She’s easily key to this season’s success and I look forward to seeing what she brings to the next one.
As for the main characters, the one with the strongest portrayal this season is actually Star.  It may seem hard to believe at first with most of her actions in the premiere episodes being far too reckless and foolish than average, as well as hypocritical.  However, when the season goes into full swing, a more mature and logical side of Star finally starts making itself noticeable.  I guess one could chalk it up to her understanding the severity of what’s going on in her kingdom and explore it to compensate for suddenly needing to leave Earth.  The moment she gets used to being away from Earth, symbolized by Marco leaving albeit for a short time, is when she truly starts shining as a character.  Showing promise as a potential new queen, Star notices problems with how Mewni is run, and is very vocal about them even around her mother.  It’s Star who points out it was Moon’s actions that allowed Eclipsa to be set free and that a trial is the only fair way to see if she deserves to be recrystallized.  She also brings the hypocritical prejudices Mewmans have against monsters to mind and sets out to fix them.  In fact, if it wasn’t for a total freak event, I’d say she most definitely would have succeeded, or at least bring a step in the right direction.  Biggest of all, Star is the one who pushes the Magic High Commission to admit their tampering with Mewni’s royal lineage.  Not to mention before this even happens, she’s the one to get her mom to question the confusing parts of the Butterfly family after hearing a claim about Eclipsa’s daughter.  All this insightfulness from Star is very welcome after so many moments of her rushing in without thought and causing problems for much of the series. 
Even then, she’s still open to learn through needing to learn to be calm about certain things so to be taken seriously, which is very much in line with what we know of her.  It’s because of her apparent growth that Star becomes so sympathetic by the end of Season 3.  With a huge crisis and no sign of her mom and her best friend soulless, you can’t help but feel for Star having no choice but to take on a position she’s been fearing for so long.  Plus, even though fighting monsters is her thing, the fact that she basically has to do it alone adds a bigger emotional layer to the already tense ordeal.  It’s great that she holds her own in battle while remaining mature.  She allows Meteora to consume her power while understanding why she’s so mad and starts fixing what her family broke by letting Eclipsa keep her wand and take the throne. So Star technically does not keep her queen status she’s been hinted to need to take on at some point, but giving it to who she feels deserves it is pretty noble.  The next season will be the judge of that though.  Character development is to be expected as more seasons come, but with that of the title character, it’s great to see her taking some mature steps that benefit the season.
While Season 3 comes with a lot of ambition in what it covers, the execution is not without problems.  Some of them lie within the structure. While big things like the battle with Toffee, the scandal of the royal family history, and the monsters leaving happen, there’s not much time to deal with their emotional effects.  After episodes on those topics, they’re immediately followed by one on a completely different topic, usually on more light-hearted subjects.  Sometimes, they’re followed by subjects that appear once and never again like what became of Ludo, and Marco’s parents having a baby.  Now, there’s no doubt that the following season will expand upon these, but since they’re covered in one episode and never again, they don’t really belong in Season 3. 
Another execution issue covers how the conflicts are handled.  To me, the best way to do a conflict is to have both sides have sound logical points so everyone is understandable and able to handle the issue maturely.  This isn’t really the case with the conflicts at hand in Season 3.  Previously discussed were the claims of Eclipsa being evil when none of what she does have strong objectively bad crystallization-worthy offenses.  However, that’s nothing compared to how the Mewmans’ treatment of monsters is handled.  It’s said that monsters are treated badly because they’re dangerous, yet none of them actually do anything dangerous.  Yes, there are some dangerous monsters like Toffee, but that’s one bad monster in a huge class, which can be the same for Mewmans too.  It can be argued that all prejudices are irrational, but when other monsters get a free pass for affluence and status, the hypocrisy costs this prejudice lots of weight. 
The big kicker is in “Monster Bash” when Star seems to get it under control with a party, only for other people to make her efforts a disaster.  No one seems to point out that she would have succeeded with integrating monsters and Mewmans if Mina Loveberry didn’t crash the affair.  Not to mention, the attitudes of the Mewmans are just as much to blame.  They bond with the monsters, but when things go wrong, they immediately blame them, and it just doesn’t make sense.  The monsters were the ones who were captured and tortured, so how could this be their fault?  Also, a princess who was with one of the monsters witnessed what happened but doesn't explain it to anyone and has no real reason to not do so.  For these reasons, it’s just not fair for Star to get the blame for the failed party and making monsters’ treatment worse as a result.  It failed because of something out of her control and the Mewmans deciding to be jerks by not comforting the monsters in their time of need.  It kind of paints Mewni as a toxic environment where people refuse to see any obvious societal problems if they’re not a main character.  It’s also disturbing for coming from the title characters’ home.  I give credit for at least addressing the topic, but it really could have been better and not make the main setting look so bad.
These issues can be lived with, but there are two major issues with Season 3 that continue to hold the show back from the big leagues despite how close it’s gotten.  One is the over-reliance on romance-themed episodes.  I remember when there were only a few couples to anticipate.  However, it slowly became more overbearing once Star found she had a crush on Marco as he started dating Jackie Lynn Thomas.  With Season 3, romance is now at its most overbearing which is problematic when you have more pressing matters going on.  It also hurts the possibility of Star and Marco getting together which previously could be accepted either way.  They’re close and show a lot of care for each other, but it’s always been highly likely that they could just stay friends.  However, things get complicated when Star and Tom start rekindling their romance.  The thing is, Tom does show great improvement as a character and he and Star appear as a supportable couple.  Then Marco is revealed to not be over Mewni which gets Jackie to break up with him.  This is far more unfortunate due to how well Marco and Jackie have been seen to work as a couple.  What’s more, when Marco finds that Star is with Tom, he starts a new apparent romance with Kelly which isn’t nearly as engaging.  We hardly even see them together aside from one episode, at least not until Season 4.  It’s not a huge loss to not see much of the Echo Creek characters anymore, but the same can’t be said for Jackie.  Her being cast aside for a weaker couple makes it seem like all she’s good for is a potential love interest which isn’t true.  She’s shown plenty of interesting quirks in Season 2, but now with the show’s new direction, we may never see any of them expanded upon.  So, both Star and Marco have new love lives, but near the end of the season, it hardly feels like they mean anything to them.  When convinced he has to share his true feelings, Marco kisses Star and she appears to be taken in by it despite later admitting they shouldn’t have done that.  This means if Star and Marco were to get together, it would be built on betrayal to other people which does not do justice for either of them.  At the very least, Marco admits the kiss to Tom which is followed up by great development from the latter as he still aids him in battle.  So to conclude about the romance, it just seems to be a matter that gets worse with every season.  You have to admire the efforts to try and make it work though.
Speaking of getting worse, another major issue with Season 3 is the over-reliance on Pony Head who honestly should have been cast aside with the other minor Echo Creek characters.  Being back on Mewni may mean more time with interdimensional beings, but Pony Head is not among the best of that class.  Her valley girl accent, selfish personality, and doing more harm than good cost her a ton of appeal, so getting a lot of her is not a good route to take.  I could forgive this if she got some development and offered meaningful substance to goals, but none of those things happen.  Any time she’s featured, she mostly doesn’t show any urgency to help her best friend, gives bad advice at bad times, and needs to be the center of attention.  Also, when we meet her family, you’d think it would be a fun entertaining experience but no.  Her horrid attitude brings a tyrannical rule over her family that’s very uncomfortable to watch.  Her family is no better for willing to go to murderous lengths to beat her and get rid of anyone who dares disagree with them.  Not only does Pony Head not do any justice for the show, but she’s made worse by coming from a beyond messed up family.  She does have a good chance for development when an encounter with Meteora makes her lose her horn.  She could learn to move on without acting cool and flying around with a stylish horn.  Despite all that goes on that could help her accept the occurrence, she’s soon provided with a new horn and she’s right back to her old ways.  This is further proven when during the season finale battle she expresses her annoying attitude and is among the first souls for Meteora to take.  I just don’t get that the show can work in good character development, but won’t allow Pony Head to mature and become likable.  Maybe it just wants to keep her a joke character, but if that’s the case, she really shouldn’t be appearing as much as she does.  Fortunately, Pony Head’s just one outright bad main character in a cast of more appealing ones who get better as the season progresses.  For that, despite how nerve-wracking she is, her moments can be accepted to get to the true highlights.
It may still falter in a couple of areas, but those faults are worth sitting through to understand the true greatness of Season 3 of Star vs the Forces of Evil.  With great ambition and scope in the most interesting story points and characters, it showcases the series’ capabilities.  While I still don’t rank it as a top contender among all animated series, when it does something good, I’m pleased to say it gets near the status of the all-time classic Disney works.  That’s a trait I reserve for Disney shows that truly impress.  Given how strong the best parts of the season are, I anticipate more of that status in the following, as well as final, season.   Until then, we have this high point of the series about Star Butterfly whom evil won’t deter because magic flows through her.  She is a shining Star!
 


Highly Recommended

Stay tuned the following week for the conclusions of Hey Arnold Season 4 and the DuckTales Vol 3 DVD. Until then:
Stay Animated Folks!
 

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