After a holiday hiatus, Star Vs. The Forces of Evil is back, and the new episodes did not hesitate to get into the good stuff, taking place almost immediately after the highly consequential “Monster Bash.”
First up we’ve got “The Bogbeast of Boggabah,” which begins with Star attempting to talk with her mother about Eclipsa and Meteora, only to be shooed away. When Star tries to confront her mother once more, she is swept up into a hunting adventure by her father, leading to a series of events that teaches Star a valuable lesson about diving headfirst into situations.
While hunting for the “Bogbeast of Boggabah,” Star is put through a series of long and arduous tasks, all of which take time and precision to accomplish. Every time she rushes through one of these tasks, King River proclaims they must start over. When Star finally has enough of the ridiculous rituals, she rushes towards the sounds of the Bogbeast, only to find herself sinking in quicksand. Star learns her lesson when her father reveals that she is the bogbeast, a title that is passed around each year to those act too headstrong.
“The Bogbeast of Boggabah” is one of those episodes of Star the successfully builds a strong moral and emotional story underneath a guise of a fun fantasy adventure. Though, perhaps “guise” isn’t the right word, since the hunt that star and River go on is genuinely tense, fun and adventurous. It was a thrilling ride that happened to also have a strong, meaningful center to it, one that encompassed the large, sweeping plot and theme of this season, learning to be a great leader in the face of the fear, the unknown, and great change.
By the end of the episode, Star has learned to keep a more level head about things, something she exhibits when she calmly approaches her mother’s study to talk with her about the pressing matters of the Butterfly kingdom.
The second episode of Star‘s return, “Total Eclipsa the Moon” flips the perspective of the previous episode, something that the series is quite fond of doing to interesting and affective results.
After kicking Star out of her study, Queen Moon can’t get her mind off of the idea of her family’s lineage, specifically Queen Eclipsa’s daughter. She reaches out to Eclipsa herself, who leads the two of them on a secret, somewhat illegal adventure through secret the catacombs of Butterfly Castle in order to access the magical Royal archives, which are revealed to have been tampered with. Throughout their adventure, Moon learns a bit more about Eclipsa, coming to understand what she went through and how the Butterfly kingdom has covered up some dark secrets of her life.
Perhaps the strongest part of the episode was the “temporary truce” that Eclipsa and Moon have created, as well as the relationship that has started to form from it. Here we have two mothers with very different philosophies, in both life and motherhood, working to uncover secrets that could either destroy or better the kingdom they both come from. The themes of trust and learning to accept the ideas of others are strong throughout this episode, and just as strong is the weight that the story carries.
We learn that the royal archives, which are magically recorded without bias, have been tampered with, and that Festivia, who was thought to be Eclipsa’s daughter, was placed on the through under false pretenses. This means that the Butterfly lineage after Eclipsa may very well be full of imposters, unbeknownst to them. This kind of earth, or rather Mewni-shattering news is a prime example of Star Vs. The Forces of Evil‘s dynamic world, the episodes have weight and everything has a consequences, despite what the comedic nature of the show.
Once again, Star Vs. the Forces of Evil comes back in full swing, hitting hard and having a lot of adventurous fun along the way, and we can’t wait to see what happens with the overarching story next week.
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