Star Vs. The Forces of Evil Review: Season 3 Finale

Wow, what a finale. Everything that had been building up from previous episodes finally exploded into a wonderful finale for Star Vs. The Forces of Evil‘s third season. This one was a two parter, a full 44 minutes of nonstop action and chaos, so let’s get right into the review, shall we?

The first episode of the two-part finale was “Divide,” which took place immediately after the devastation of “Tough Love.” From Eclipsa, Star learns her mother is stuck in the magic dimension and that Meteora is heading towards the Butterfly Kingdom. As acting queen, Star must do something about the impending threats to Mewni, finding herself in the same situation that her mother faced in “Moon the Undaunted,” and the episode makes sure the parallels are clear.

Overwhelmed by all the decisions she has to make, Marco offers to help by holding off Meteora while she goes after her mother. After testing Marco’s skills, she agrees and the two enact their plans. Marco, with the help of his “Marcnificent 7” (Heckapoo, Kelly, Talon, Princess Ponyhead, Jorby, Tom, and himself) makes a plan to trap Meteora, which starts off well, but then goes horribly wrong as Meteora takes the souls of his allies one by one.

Meanwhile, Star travels to the dimension of magic to find her mother, who’s memory has been sucked away by the dimension’s power. Star manages to fight off the dimension’s power with the help of her phone, which reminds her every minute who she is. Unfortunately, it isn’t enough, as the episode ends with her and her mother running around the magic dimension without a clue of who they are or what they’re doing.

As mentioned, the most striking element of this episode was all the parallels drawn between Star and her mother. Both Star and Moon “lose their mother” at a young age and must take on the role of queen, which includes consulting with a war room on how to handle a present and impending threat. For Moon, it was the invasion of the Lizard people, and for Star, it’s Meteora, a manifestation of the mistakes of her kingdom’s past. Taking the parallels even further, Star storms out of the war room after being overwhelmed and is approached by her father, River, who also approached Moon when she was overwhelmed with her duties as queen. Though her father does little to actually help, Star does eventually get help from a romantic interest (once again, just like her mother) in the form of Marco.

The parallels are subtle, but powerful, and the episode doesn’t spend too much time on the thematic element, which was good because it left room for showcasing some great action, which itself came with it’s own thematic weight. As Marco bands his friends and allies together to fight Meteora, it stands as an example of what Star has been fighting for, a Mewni where people of all origins are working together. Marco fights alongside a demonic monster, a bird-person, a talking unicorn head, a magical high commission member, etc., all of which is displayed in an awesome battle sequence with real stakes.

This was a fantastic first part to a finale, but the real fun started in the second episode, “Conquer.”

Picking up right where the previous episode left off, “Conquer,” was just as action packed and brought even more story arcs to a climax.

In the dimension of magic, Star and her mother are still lost to its mind-wiping powers. Without reason or direction, the two frolic about, discovering magical waterfalls that lead to various dimensions we’ve seen before in the series. The two mess around traveling to various dimensions with no clue that they could use them to get home. It’s a funny sequence, but there was a point where their mindless wandering became, well, annoying, though not exceedingly so.

This is to say that it felt like a means to keep Star and Moon away from the battle until the climax, and while it was a fun way to do it, and it did manage to create some mysterious lore that might come back at some point, it ultimately felt a bit, for lack of a better term, “filler-y.” But, I can say it didn’t go on so long that it became a problem, and, if anything, these sequences actually helped build tension by making us frustrated, frustrated that Star should be back helping fight Meteora.

Speaking of the fight against Meteora, after Marco’s failed plan and the loss of Ponyhead, a new plan is formed, one that actually works… sort of. The group manages to actually trap Meteora as a team, imprisoning her underground with the help of Tom’s demon magic, but it doesn’t hold her for long. Meteora comes back with a vengeance, sucking the souls of everyone but Marco and Tom, the former of whom sacrifices himself to give Tom time to find Star, sending him away by telling him about his kiss with her (scandal!). But, Tom comes back to save Marco, using all the spirits in his body to keep Meteora Busy.

Unfortunately, Marco still has his soul sucked out, something Star finds out after waking up in her bed. Turns out, she was sent home by a guardian unicorn of the Magical dimension (an easter egg for more future lore?), awaking too late to save her best friend. But, she is determined, and after deciding against running and hidi,g Star changes into her magical form and goes to face Meteora. Their battle is fierce and epic, Star hits Meteora with everything she’s got, which turns out to be a whole lot, since her magical form makes her spells far more powerful. In a desperate, final move, Star collects all her magical power into a single blast and takes down Butterfly castle on Meteora.

But, it’s still not enough, Meteora is still determined to take the throne and Star’s life energy. Fortunately, Eclipsa shows up just in time and takes the Butterfly family wand from Star to face the monster her daughter has become. Eclipsa attacks Meteora with dark, powerful magic, crying as she must destroy the daughter she never got to know. With a final attack, Eclipsa defeats Meteora, and the people of Mewni turn back to normal. With her work done, Eclipsa returns the wand to Star, who makes a powerful decision to give Eclipsa back what was taken from her, both the family wand and her place as Queen.

Then, it’s revealed that Meteora wasn’t killed, she was just turned back into an infant. With wand and child in hand, Eclipsa takes off to who knows where. Well, Glossaryck knows, and he’s been trying to tell them the whole season. She is going to her Monster love, Globgor (the word he’s been saying the whole season), and the series ends as she finds the crystalized monster.

If that six paragraph recap didn’t make it clear enough, there was a lot to unpack here, so I’ll try to keep things brief. Not very much in the way of a central theme to the finale, except for, perhaps, that things are not over, which in turn connects to the larger themes of the season, change. But, there didn’t really need to be a central theme, since the finale brought the themes of previous episodes to a climax. Star fought against a literal monster created by the mistakes of her Kingdom’s past, thus fighting against the thing that was a result of what she wanted to change about Mewni. Family was another big theme, and as one family was shattered, another is getting back together.

Once again, the major thing to praise for the season, and thus the finale, is that things are dynamic. Mewni is changed forever, and in season 4, I hope we see the effects of this epic battle. But, we’ll probably have a wait a while for that, so I’ll just end by saying that this finale was was epic, explosive, powerfully dramatic, and left me wanting more of the always wonderful Star Vs. The Forces of Evil. See you all next season!