Pizza Party / Tavern at the End of the Multiverse - (Star vs the Forces of Evil Season 4 Episode 20

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Pizza Party

As this episode begins, it’s a little hard to tell where it’s going, with the first scene being a flashback of ages ago when Mina Loveberry was first appointed as a Solarian Warrior.  

There’s a look into where Mina came from as a humble rag peddler and only Mewman actually bothered by the monsters living in Mewni.  Queen Solaria herself is presented as a very fun energetic character, albeit misguided with her rampage against monsters.  The monsters even make it clear that they were just protecting their homes and that Solaria should have just asked for them to leave instead of attacking.  The flashback ends with Mina being given the opportunity to join Solaria.  While this flashback does answer a few questions, it’s shallow and unsubstantial compared to others in the show.  It doesn’t go into detail of where Solaria’s desire to attack monsters came from or go further into the hardships of Mina’s life other than she was a rag seller who later became a warrior. 

The main focus becomes a lot clearer in the present as the episode picks up immediately after Moon revealed that she was responsible for the Solarian warriors attacking Mewni now.  As Star goes out of control with rage at her mom over this, you can’t help but feel she’s in the right to do so.  After so many instances of supporting and bonding with her, and coming off as one of the more mature Mewmans, it still doesn’t sit right that Moon would do such a thing.  She claims she joined Mina to stop her from doing something worse, but Mina wouldn’t have been able to do anything without her help.  How could Moon not helping her possibly lead to something worse than what's happening now?  It would make more sense if she did it to destroy monsters since one killing her mother is hard to live with.  However, she clearly states that harming monsters was never her intent, and that's honorably reflective of her development. Then Moon says that her true intention is to take back the throne from Eclipsa.  She always had a distrust towards her, but this being the reason for creating a dangerous army is simply messed up.  This time, her mistrust is over Eclipsa being responsible for getting her stuck in the Realm of Magic.  While this is true, she never considers that it wouldn’t have happened if she didn’t interfere when Eclipsa was close to civilly reconciling with her daughter.  The fact that there have been moments where they’ve actually bonded only makes this distrust more out of line and the reveal that Moon caused all this trouble less acceptable.  There being no good reason for these actions makes it very hard to deal with Eclipsa simply giving in to surrendering.  She gives Moon her wand and somberly agrees that she and her family should just leave Mewni forever.  

At the episode’s climax there’s another factor to Moon’s decision not being a good direction for the story.  It’s clear that she was honest about not wanting her invasion to go too far as she tries to command Mina to stop.  However, her attempts are futile because she’s dealing with a Mewman so crazy and Warriors so dangerously powerful. The thing is, this is all stuff she knew back when she first found out what Mina was planning, and considering her character, it doesn’t make sense she’d go through with this anyway.  Also, the spell she used to bring the warriors to life made them loyal to Solaria, not her.  As a result, they’re able to betray Moon and not just continue with their rampage, but capture all the monsters, threatening to destroy them and all supporters.  Luckily for Star, Eclipsa, and all their allies, they’re rescued by Hekapoo and brought to another dimension for protection. Speaking of her, it’s refreshing to see her be the reasonable one among the dense group hating on monsters for no reason, the Magic High Commission.  There’s even decent build up to this move as she’s seen to leave the titular pizza party as Rhombulus and Omnitraxus stay to celebrate and devalue anything good to themselves.  At the very least, this showing of logic and reason is slightly refreshing from the disturbing implications of the current big reveal of Moon.  The same can be said for River doing what he can to help Globgor despite what his wife is doing.

Even with a few good things, it doesn’t help that the plot is fueled by a decision from a character who’s always seemed to grow past this mindset making it too difficult to accept everything.

C

Tavern at the End of the Multiverse

Amidst the turmoil brought by certain character decisions in the past few episodes, this one takes time to reflect on things before the resolution in the series finale.  Thanks to Hekapoo, Star along with Marco, Moon, Eclipsa, and Meteora, are hiding out in a favorite tavern of hers.  She claims that it’s the perfect place to be to forget about your troubles which of course is not a healthy option.  

As a matter of fact, no one really forgets about their troubles.  Star is the easiest to show this as she straight-up disowns Moon as a mother for decisions that put everyone in danger and their lives on the line.  Harsh as it is, I find it hard to argue the mindset since there really is no good reason for Moon to even consider teaming up with Mina in the first place.  Shots of Mewni even reflect the magnitude of how bad she messed up with innocent monsters about to be shoved to their doom and the effects of the Solarian Warrior’s wound.  One of its victims Quirky Guy, even completely explodes, being killed off for real, foreshadowing a similar dark fate for the other victims, much of Star’s friends.  The most sympathetic victim of the wound is Globgor who River continues to support by carrying him to the sanctuary, hoping he’ll make it.  

As for Moon, she does slowly regain respect as she laments over the problems she caused even if it doesn't make a lick of sense for her to have caused them to begin with.  Out of this is a tender moment between her and Eclipsa who thanks her for being the one to convince Rhombulus to free Globgor.  Just to point out, this further shows how messed up Moon’s plan to take back the throne from Eclipsa is, since doing so proved that Globgor is not dangerous like everyone thought.  Upon seeing that back in "Cornonation," nothing was stopping Moon from trying to call off her plan with the Solarian Warriors right then and there.  There were too many variables.  Anyway, Eclipsa does give sound advice on ways out of this, the most logical solution being for Moon to make amends with Star so the three of them can stop Mina together.  It’s a move even Moon sees value in, but Star has her own way of dealing with things.  

Through an aggressive rant that's hard to fully take seriously, she gets the notion that no one will ever really be safe because of magic.  While it may create a lot of problems and has beeen abused by anyone using it like Mina, and the whole the Butterfly family it's quickly negligent that it's had benefits for this world too.  Nevertheless, Star finds Glossaryck suddenly appear in the tavern, she’s quick to get to the point with his crazy ways by climbing into his home dimension through his eye.  

Once there, Star goes on another tirade where she bluntly decides to destroy the magic to solve everything.  Even though she says this out of rage, Glossaryck shows a vision that makes that plan a reality, or rather what will be a reality.  Spirits of all the Queens of Mewni gather around to see a newly made tapestry of Star destroying the magic and everyone happy for it.  There are dark ramifications from this plan that are hard to sit through.  Glossaryck claims that when magic is destroyed, so will he and other beings made of magic like the Magic High Commission, the sentient spells, and the Realm of Magic's unicorns.  However, Star’s more concerned that Marco, who she just confessed her love to, will be forced back to his home dimension, Earth like that’s more important than lives lost.  It sounds noble that she sadly confirms that she has to do this as the only way to stop Mina, but the dark undertones remain.  

Maybe if more time was devoted to showing how this world would be better without magic, it would be better to accept this direction and side with Star.  For how the execution ends up being though, this penultimate episode is not the easiest to deal with given certain implications.

C+

The Ranking

1.      Cornonation

2.      The Monster and the Queen

3.      Ready Aim Fire!

4.      Gone Baby Gone

5.      Escape from the Pie Folk

6.      Meteora’s Lesson

7.      Swim Suit

8.      Cornball!

9.      Yada Yada Berries

10.  The Right Way

11.  Moon Remembers

12.  Jannanigans

13.  Beach Day

14.  Britta’s Tacos

15.  Junkin’ Janna

16.  Queen-Napped

17.  Ghost of Butterfly Castle

18.  The Knight Shift

19.  Ransomgram

20.  Mama Star

21.  Butterfly Follies

22.  Kelly’s World

23.  A Boy and His DC-700XE

24.  Surviving the Spiderbites

25.  A Spell With No Name

26.  Princess Quasar Caterpillar and the Magic Bell

27.  Down By the River

28.  Out of Business

29.  Lake House Fever

30.  Tavern at the End of the Multiverse

31.  Doop-Doop

32.  The Ponyhead Show

33.  Pizza Party

34.  The Curse of the Blood Moon

35.  Here to Help

36.  Sad Teen Hotline

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the last episode where Star goes through with destroying magic, but can we really call it a satisfying series finale?

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.