Star vs. the Forces of Evil (seasons 3 & 4)

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Star vs. the Forces of Evil

It just got a little weird, like, really weird in these seasons.
Genre: Magical girl
Action-Adventure
High Fantasy
Running Time: 22 minutes
Country: United States
Release Date: July 15, 2017 - April 7, 2018 (Season 3)
March 10 - May 19, 2019 (Season 4)
Network(s): Disney XD (Season 3)
Disney Channel (Season 4)
Created by: Daron Nefcy
Distributed by: Disney-ABC Domestic Television
Starring: Eden Sher
Adam McArthur
Alan Tudyk
Grey Delisle Griffin
Jeff Bennett
Dee Bradley Baker
Seasons: 2
Episodes: 42

Star vs. the Forces of Evil is a animated television aired in January 18, 2015 and ended on May 19, 2019. It airs on Disney Channel and Disney XD. However, while the first two seasons were well received, the third season received a mixed reception and the fourth received a mixed to negative reception.

Plot

After the events of season 2 finale, Star had to go back to Mewni to defeat Toffee...

Why These Seasons Aren't a Shining Star and Are Truly the Forces of Evil

NOTE: Do not put anything in the redeeming qualities section about the Starco ship (relationship between Star and Marco) since the ship in general is toxic and clichéd, any related edits to the said ship will be reverted.

  1. To let the cat out of the bag, similar to Dragon Ball GT and seasons 6-8 of SpongeBob SquarePants, the main problem with these seasons is that Daron Nefcy had less involvement in the show, which led to them lacking any of the charm and heart that makes the first two seasons good.
  2. Because these seasons mostly take place in Mewni, some of the characters from earth were shoved aside and in some cases are completely missing such as: Mr Candle, Dojo-sensei, Oskar, Ferguson, Father Time, Principal, Teacher, etc.
    • Even existing characters that do appear like The Diaz Parents, Jackie and Janna get less screen-time and have like only 2 or 3 episodes that they appear.
  3. Similar to the third and final season of Danny Phantom but way WAY worse, the show started to focus too much on the romance drama/shipping (with Star and Marco shipping taking the majority throughout the show, while the other shipping made with one of the main two, in all the seasons on a back burner and thrown away in a negative payoff), while at the same time, fantastical racism against monsters in Mewni became the series’ new main plot all of the sudden, a bit right after Toffee’s death, without building up too much from the previous two seasons.
    • Speaking of fantastical racism, the issue of it was handled poorly in these seasons as it blames the racism of monsters on magic instead of heavy propaganda made by the post-Festivia era Mewni politics and implies that the only way for monsters and humans to co-exist peacefully is for the magic to be destroyed and therefore being about genocide on a non-human/mewman race that looks like monsters, which therefore implies that magical beings can never co-exist peacefully with monsters and humans. The blaming of racism on magic is very ludicrous as the show never stated that Mewmans were under a magic spell that made them hate monsters, despite hinting in the early seasons to be again, heavy propaganda in that dimension's politics. Except all of the first Mewmans' memories were magically erased when teleported from Earth to Mewni's, while in the realm of magic. It's even worse is that the bigotry the magical high commission has towards monsters feel forced as they look like monsters with Star herself even pointing that out in season 3. To sum this all up, the racism issue was completely mishandled with blatant hypocrisy written all over it.
  4. On top of that, the writing has been downgraded from being fun and comedic, yet sometimes serious at the same time to being nonsensical, catastrophic and lame.
    • On the topic of shipping, Star and Marco become an official couple by extreme ridiculous means, which that itself is just clichéd because main BFF couples became overused in cartoons such as the titular protagonist and Ron Stoppable from Kim Possible, the titular protagonist and Frida from El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, and the titular protagonist and Connie from Steven Universe. However, unlike these couples, which were way better BFF pairings, this couple here is just rushed and unnecessary. While it’s true that Star and Marco have been great friends and had good chemistry, it’s never once shown in the first two seasons to be romantic at all, and both of them treat each other originally as normal friends before season 1 episode "Blood Moon Ball", where it causes this snowball effect. Not to mention this ship was also demanded by very toxic Starco fans!
  5. The humor in these seasons is non-existent, and some that are here falls flat.
  6. Jumping the shark: The fourth season messes up its world-building, by revealing that the first Mewmans were humans from centuries ago. This destroys the fantastically alien aspects of the Mewmans (even though it technically explains the human-like names in some Mewni and non-Mewni places like St. Olga's Reform School for Wayward Princesses) and seems to draw unfortunate parallels from the Mewmans and monsters by indirectly comparing them to the relations between Pilgrims and Native Americans. It even doesn't help that these first Mewmans were all dressed like Pilgrims and half of their group are non-white for some reason, contrasting in real-life as the real Pilgrims were white English Puritans.
  7. Hypocrisy: The show promotes the end of bigotry and discrimination against monsters yet it indirectly claimed that magical beings were to blame for the monster bigotry and for that reason has to be destroyed. It was suggesting that the only way for peace and equality to happen between humans and monsters if genocide is committed on magical beings, which is immoral and illogical.
  8. For the reminder of the series, after The Battle for Mewni arc's final part "Toffee", where all the characters and new direction for the show, feels they're acting like being part of an official sequel series for the previous two seasons, instead of being already part of the original series. And it really shows.
  9. Some of the episodes are outright fillers.
  10. The seasons seem to promote infidelity as it positively portrays adultery and unfaithfulness. For example, Eclipsa was revealed to have cheated on her husband, King Shastacan with a monster named Globgor, resulting in Meteora’s birth yet the show portrays Eclipsa’s affair positively by portraying Shastacan as a despicable man by having Meteora sent away. Then we have the many moments where Star herself gets involved in unfaithfulness towards Marco and Tom through her love triangle with them.
  11. Marco's human family and friends, that isn't Janna or later his new sister, Mariposa, were put into the wayside and almost completely forgotten, except in two or three episodes of both seasons and the series finale.
  12. Some episodes have too many new writers working on them, resulting in some old and new ideas being cut or never being used again.
  13. There is a lot of rampant character derailment, and flanderization, present in these seasons.
    • Star herself went from a very friendly and energetic girl who loves having fun, optimistic who got character development in the first two seasons to her personalities being spread everywhere (a bratty girl in Junkin' Janna, overly responsible in Princess Turdina, uses the excuse of her being a teenager in Swim Suit) and mistreated her boyfriend Tom despite literally rebuilding himself for her.
    • Marco, while still likable, went from a kind, responsible, very organized, and supportive of others to a selfish, annoying, and obsessive with Star and Mewni (the two latter being in Sophomore Slump)
    • Moon went from a very strict and stubborn authoritarian figure, but at least well-meaning mother to Star, to a completely racist, self-centered, and unlikable character who is a terrible mother to Star and never listens to what she says, doesn't care how she thinks, and never supported her quirkiness. She also is bigoted towards monsters and has almost no redeeming qualities outside of her combat skills, badass look, backstory, and her mother's death.
      • She has also became very lazy in season 4 as well, as seen in "Ghost of Butterfly Castle", she didn't try to stop Mina or warn Star and Eclipsa.
    • The members of the Magical High Commission went from being protectors of magic and good friends of Star Butterfly, into selfish and stubborn bigots who can’t stop hating Eclipsa, and both her husband and long lost daughter. The character derailment of the magical high commission is most evident in Rhombulus who went from an impulsive and childish but well-meaning guy to a prejudiced idiot who would put lives at risk just to prove a point and celebrate a genocide with a pizza party.
  14. The "Disney Twist Villain" cliche is used in those seasons towards the Magical High Commission members for both seasons and Moon for the final episodes of season 4, but the problem is that this cliche has been used a lot in several of Disney's movies and TV shows in the 2010s to the point where it became overused. The twist of the Magical High Commissions (and later Moon's) villainy became more and more obvious and predictable to the point where it stops being shocking and unexpected by the time "Cornonation" aired.
    • Another problem that this show has with using the Disney Twist Villain cliche is that by using it, the show forcibly took away all of the redeeming qualities and character development of all the Magical High Commission members (except Heckapoo) just for the sake of a melodramatic shocking twist. This cliche eventually becomes controversial due to the damage it inflicts on the characters affected as it removes everything likable about them before the big reveal.
  15. Several of characters on the show had very inconsistent characterization in these seasons. Heckapoo’s characterization was very inconsistent in season 4 as she first crusades against Eclipsa taking over the throne then chews out Rhombulus for endangering Mewni, then helps out Mina within her monster Genocide before helping Star and her allies destroy magic.
  16. Similar to seasons 3 onwards of Miraculous, the last two seasons shifted in tone from a lighthearted comedy fantasy show to a serious, bleak and darker one and it doesn't fit well.
  17. A couple of beloved plot arcs from the first two seasons are rendered completely pointless in these seasons. For example, the revelation that Toffee is suddenly right in the final two episodes, about having magic destroyed makes the season 2 Finale and the Battle For Mewni arc meaningless.
  18. These seasons are very disrespectful to Lekmet and the heroic sacrifice he made in the season 2 finale as the seasons made his funeral feel rushed and dull and his legacy gets completely tarnished with the revelation that the magical high commission did bad things.
    • Several terrible plot twists occurred in these two seasons as the plot twist in "Ready, Aim, Fire" revealed that Queen Moon was a traitor to the pre-Festivia legitimate Butterfly dynasty, usurper-wannabe as she wants to restate her thorne of now consider post-Festivia illegitimate Butterfly dynasty, and a supporter of Mina Loveberry out of nowhere, despite still recovering from amnesia, from the Season 3's episode "Tough Love".
  19. These seasons have a lot of bad to mediocre episodes like:
  20. Season 4 was very rushed because it aired for only 2 months (although the UK & Ireland had a hiatus between October 2019 to February-March 2020). This resulted in the series skipping very plot-specific story arcs, like the Marco x Kelly arc just abruptly stopped, before even showing how they broke up, but didn't, between "Kelly's World" and "A Boy and His DC-700". This is because Dominic Bisignano confirmed that the show was written while it was in production. While this does work with shows like SpongeBob SquarePants and even The Simpsons (considering that those shows don't have any story and continuity and just rely on wacky and random adventures), it doesn't work with shows with continuity and story.
  21. Season 4 is shown to be somewhat sexist as the protagonists who oppose racism against monsters are mostly women with the exceptions of Marco and Tom while the people supporting the racism are mainly male with only Mina Loveberry as the sole female antagonist of Season 4. It also only gave a rushed redemption towards Heckapoo, the only female member of the commission while denying Rhombulus and Omnitraxus, who are both male any chance of redemption despite the fact that Rhombulus showed remorse for the actions of the Magical High Commission in season 3.
  22. It uses excessive pandering towards theory-centric fans via fanservice overload, most notably Disney channel fans who are obsessed with making theories about their shows and expecting all of them to be proven right. The pandering ranges from the aforementioned shipping drama to Toffee being right and making the Magical High Commission evil.
  23. The seasons have the show try way too hard to be like Gravity Falls by making itself more serious and introducing concepts where fans would make theories on.
  24. While the animation is still good here, there are a lot of animation errors considering that Rough Draft Studios and SugarCube don't do a good job here keeping the errors go away.
  25. The final episode "Cleaved" was an awful and rushed way to end the whole series.
    • In that episode, Star Butterfly destroys magic by literally committing genocide, and doesn't care about the lives that she ended, and instead only cared about seeing Marco. Not only does she get away with what she's done, but it unintentionally makes herself as the true main antagonist of the whole episode. The ending was also rushed as Star and Marco said "Hi" to each other while the humans were running away in terror from the monsters.
  26. Glossaryck in season 3 keeps repeating the word "Globgor" which can get on your nerves, luckily since season 3 finale he finally speaks actual words.
  27. Sequel Baiting: The show due to its rushed ending left many plot points hanging without resolution, resulting in it ending on a major cliffhanger, which will most likely never be resolved due to its poor reception.
  28. On that topic of "Cleaved", the pacing is all over the place. Some of them is very sluggish and tiresome (like "Sophomore Slump" and "Junkin Janna") while some episodes (like "Cleaved" and "Cornation") started pretty slowly at first, but then suddenly became way too fast to the point of being too rushed and causing the humor to fall flat.
  29. Season 4 is the worst out of two because of the flandarization of the characters being even more noticeable, more plot-holes and the huge amount of bad episodes, it's also very unnecessary since the season 3 finale "Conquer" would have been a great way to wrap up the series, which makes the ending for that episode worthless.
  30. These seasons overall killed the entire show and clearly shows that the writers and show creator Daron Nefcy can’t handle criticism well as season 4 has the show seemingly not only refuse to listen to the criticism from season 3 but continue the things the season was criticized for in a more aggressive fashion with the show continue to indulge in the things it was criticized for such as the excessive focus on romance and the massive character derailment of characters such as the magical high commission. It doesn't help that this series has no chance of ever coming back to fix the cliffhanger the series finale "Cleaved" has.

Shining Star Qualities

  1. The animation from Rough Draft Studios and Sugarcube (despite the errors and not being as fluid as the first season that was better animated by Mercury Filmworks and Toon City) and voice acting are still good.
  2. The character designs are still great.
  3. Tom, Janna, Marco (despite his flanderization), Glossaryck (season 3 finale and season 4), Pony Head and King River are still likable as usual (With Tom becoming better for Star). Even some of the new characters such as Globgor and Eclipsa are pretty likable.
    • Star Butterfly, Moon Butterfly, and the members of the Magic High Commission are also okay during the first half of season 3.
      • Janna, Marco, Pony Head and King River, wasn't flanderized. in the last two seasons.
      • Also, even after Star and Moon's flanderization, both still look pretty cute in these seasons, especially Moon.
  4. The new animated opening and closing sequence are great, along with the new outro theme.
  5. There's still a fair share of good episodes in these seasons, such as:
    • "Battle for Mewni (miniseries)" (which started these seasons on a high note)
    • "Scent of a Hoodie"
    • "Rest in Pudding"
    • "Club Snubbed"
    • "Stranger Danger"
    • "Demonicism"
    • "Sweet Dreams"
    • "Night Life"
    • "Deep Dive"
    • "The Bogbeast of Bogga...
    • "Total Eclipsa The Moon
    • "Monster Bash"
    • "Butterfly Trap"
    • "Ludo, Where Art Thou?"
    • "Skooled!"
    • "Booth Buddies"
    • "Bam Ui Pati!"
    • "Tough Love"
    • "Divide"
    • "Conquer" (which ended Season 3 on a high note, and would have been a good way to end the show if it didn’t continue past that)
    • "Butterfly Follies" (which started season 4 on a good note)
    • "Escape from the Pie Folk"
    • "Moon Remembers"
    • "Ransomgram"
    • "Princess Quasar Caterpillar and the Magic Bell" (Which many consider to be the best episode of the last season)
    • "Mama Star"
    • "The Right Way"
    • "Here to Help"
    • "Britta's Tacos"
    • "Beach Day"
    • "Gone Baby Gone"
    • "Sad Teen Hotline"
    • "Jannanigans"
    • "A Boy and His DC-700XE
    • "Doop-Doop"
    • "The Monster and the Queen"
  6. It still has its fair share of funny and heartwarming moments in there, despite the romantic scenes being rushed and essentially forced.
    • "Marco, no! I told you not to eat the pies!!!"
  7. Season 3 is at least the least bad of these seasons since it wasn't too bad for the very first half since it continues where season 2 left off, all the characters are at least passable since there are the same characters as they are, and the second half (starting with "Monster Bash") is where the season picked up. It wasn't until "Sophomore Slump" is where the seasonal rot is noticeable, causing the other half to feel unbearable.

Reception

While the Season 1 and 2 had positive reception, the reception of Season 3 and 4 is below than audience and critics expected. The 3rd season had mixed reception, this reception wasn't too bad, but it was the very beginning of the show's downfall, with some of the episodes being bad or weaker, but it did has some action scenes between episodes. The final season is even worse, with rushing story development, so much more bad episodes, and the final episode is really just rage bait for Starco shippers, meaning this show concluded with SERVERAL cliffhangers. Both seasons were so bad that several audiences have stopped watching.

Trivia

  • Nefcy has stated that in the future she would like to see a continuation of the series, such as a film adaptation and a spin-off. However, as of August 2024 there are no official plans for a continuation nor revival.

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