Let's talk about Star vs the Forces of Evil Season 4

on April 14th 2019 the internet went up in flames all because of probably one of the worst finales in record history I mean this was unbelievable I could not believe how badly Game of Thrones ended but that wasn't the only bad finale on the 14th though [Music] [Music] hi my name's sarcastic chorus and I'm a 23 year old man who likes star versus the forces of evil yeah yeah yeah get it out of your system call me weird juvenile whatever doesn't matter because this is a good show I thoroughly enjoyed star it's fun imaginative with a surprisingly complex story at times dealing with issues that you wouldn't normally see in a kids show star versus the force of evil gave us a solid three seasons of quality entertainment then the fourth season happened and while it didn't crash and burn it definitely sat on the side of the road and just kind of slowly melted away well not everything about season four is bad it doesn't live up to the promise of what came before with a tedious shipping war that was prolonged just keep bred engaged Tom star for life and a surprisingly slow burn to the finale not to mention the weird 180 character changes in an ending that only gets more horrifying the more you think about it so I decided to look through season four as a whole not just the finale and try to figure out where this season went off the rails okay let's just go over the premise real quick so that everyone's on the same page star versus the force of evil is about a magical princess named star from another dimension called Muni where everything is basically bananas despite the world being magical only the Queens of the butterfly family can actually use it thanks to a magical wand that was bestowed upon each princess on their 14th birthday the big problem of the start is star has the attention span of a cracked-out squirrel and puts no thought into the consequences of her actions after setting her kingdom on fire with flaming magical rainbows yeah it's that kind of show stars parents ship routes the most boring non magical place in the multiverse the suburbs of a small town in California there she meets her new bestie Marco who when the pilot is super safe nerdy kid only for every episode after that as a pretty cool if dorky straight man to star I know why they reckon his personality in the second episode but you just roll with it these and these two are off having weird magical adventures while constantly being attacked by the various forces of evil and it's the name in the beginning this story is just your typical episodic adventure show each episode is self-contained with no overarching plot to speak of and it honestly works pretty well it's not challenging or thought-provoking but it's enjoyable enough then a certain lizard pops into the picture toffee the most overhyped character in the entire show come at me from then on the story takes a much more dramatic route while still holding on to it's fun wacky tone star versus starts dealing with issues of prejudice historical revisionism and abuse all this culminates in a fantastic series finale in season 3 unfortunately the series has one more season to go and it's the worst one yet I'm sorry yes I know there's some lovers of the season but it's just not that good and it suffers a lot of problems from the nightmare fueled finale to add rural central conflict diving right in let's go through what made this season's so lukewarm start off let's get this out of the way magic is an essential part of the show nothing in this series happens if they don't have magic and for some god-awful reason this side no magic is the bad guy now we need to get rid of it and nothing in the series had built up to this beforehand like absolutely nothing there is no foreshadowing or pasta like okay maybe this is the real villain of the story like no nothing like that there's magic in the show it's Treatise chaotic but it's also a Ben 9 the number of people who use it is highly limited so any damaged magic causes is the work of individuals like this was just such a massive leap in logic especially since they already had spells that could defeat Nina in all they needed to do to win was freeze time then stroll up to the fluorines and slit their throats even if that was too dark for Disney they could still just use the time stop to get all the monsters to say and then come up with a better plane later and that was just one way they could be they could have been meaner the biggest problem is just how quickly star reaches this decision like this isn't like something that's like brought up in an episode this is a decision that's made within a scene within one scene star decides that magic has to go magic I remind you is the basis for all the multiverse you get rid of that the whole multiverse society collapses someone was in the magic arcade to play games when she destroy magic they're trapped there forever any creature of made of magic dies yes the magic High Commission were bad people but did every magical creature deserve to die because the story is so vague with its world building we can never know how many creatures got wiped out because of this and this decision just fails so hard because it had none of the build-up necessary for such a dramatic choice if over the course of the series they push the idea that magic is bad and that the world be better off without it then sure make that call but it doesn't help magic in this show is shown to be really flippin cool the show tries to make it so toffee was secretly right all along well that makes no sense yes it was never stated that toffee wanted to destroy magic destroying magic to toffee was just a means to an end he wanted to depower the butterflies and force them to give him back his finger they try to reckon the story to support their decision because they knew the story as it was didn't lead to this conclusion and unfortunately this lack of cohesion the story is present throughout season four and the focus is just all over the place season four is easily the most unfocused of all the seasons there is no single goal to focus the plot on going to season four the biggest mystery was a disappearance of stars mom queen moon who vanished in the season 3 finale but this plot gets resolved in the first two episodes after that the audience has no idea where the story is going the only nominal goal we have is that star wants to end racism that's right the rest of the season is about Moomins learning to accept Mott so that they'll then accept eclipse' as their queen season fours main plot is just one massive PR campaign this is a terrible main story because it doesn't create any sense of urgency sure changing human monster relations is important but there's no ticking time bomb here if star fails then the Moomins and monsters just won't get along that's it making this whole thing feel even less urgent is the fact that in the show they show us that the kids of the monsters and humans seem to be on their way to not being idiot racists like their parents there's no real need to be pushing this issue in such a rush to mana with the right public relations in integration racism will be solved only in this fictional world real life is way harder this story could work if we had a greater emotional connection to the normal population unfortunately the Moomins are the worst characters and the story that's right they're worse than the talking horse will not be named this is the biggest failing of season 4 outside of a few characters we are given no human character to latch on to the humans behave like children expecting their queen to do everything for them and Amelie complain when things change there are also steadfast racists who hate monsters and anyone who is not like them even though their royal family are in fact human mutants that could be classified as monsters a bunch of racist hypocritical freeloaders and that is all the development they are given the entire plot of season 4 is dedicated to winning over these cornholes and I couldn't care less Ludo had the right idea Levitt Otto Inge all Moomins into the sky at the beginning of season 4 you're all invested in spelling errors making the focus of the story about winning the approval of racist straumann isn't going to interest the audience nothing in the show convinced me that Moomins deserve sympathy the one family of disenfranchised newman's we meet are portrayed as irritating idiots it'll sympathize with these people in fact by the end of that episode I was glad they lost our house because screw him thematically it made sense to expand the idea of torence to ending racism in the kingdom as a whole but the Moomins are so unlikable we don't care about them they're just racist ramens that are just trying to teach us a lesson and when they finally do overcome the racism there's they were so over the top before hands that it comes off as unbelievable the writers of the show are super talented and they do a lot of things right but unfortunately while they are fantastic at writing pairs they just never know what to do with their support in the past which is sad because I think that the greatest strength of star verses is its ability to generate character chemistry it doesn't matter who they are if you get a scene where it's one-on-one you will have a great time it's this stellar writing that led to literally every character being paired romantically by the fan of also why people are so willing to write or die for their ships Tom star for life even minor characters are given a chance of shine when it stays one-on-one now I don't know what happens to writing but you throw in a third or fourth character into the mix and things start to get dicey it just never feels as natural the extra person just weighs down the scene we just want them gohan most egregious example being jana and the horse will knock a man in this video because even a name drop is more attention than they deserve this inability to juggle the larger cast results in most of the supporting characters falling to the wayside after they fulfilled whatever plot essential function they were created for this results in a large cast of disposable characters that we don't care for and the Moomins are just a large disposable cast of extras for now front and center of the plot if you look past some humans though the other main focus of the story isn't even interested in the main story eclipse' isn't a good Queen she's Queen because star made her queen but eclipse' doesn't care about the job she spends a whole season trying to free glob gore and only does queen stuff when starr pushes her to the 16 year old is more responsible than the 320 year old woman eclipse' is a good but selfish person she only cares about her family and friends and the only reason she wants humans to accept monsters is that so she can free her husband glog or without causing a panic well it's touched on lightly the show never makes us forget where her real focus is and I can't blame her the mutants are awful and she would be way better off just exiling a lot of them cuz Eclipse isn't interested in Muni SAR has to force her to do things if one of the main characters doesn't care about the story just tells the audience to check out - this is a show about princesses and magic get the magical princess of the show is stuck liing a PR campaign rather than going off and having real magical adventures the magical setting now feels mundane so we just can't be invested in any more I think this is a was a problem that came from moving the setting from earth to Muni in season 3 it's a juxtaposition thing on earth all the crazy magical ventures seemed awesome when compared to the average human world but when they moved to Muni where magic is just a part of life just lost some of its magic Muni is itself just your stereotypical fantasy setting all the cool crazy match real stuff happens in other dimensions the abbé dimension should have its own spin-off here's a story now is more Muni focus you don't get the same freedom to just dimension and hop like they used to even worse the characters themselves just kind of stopped being hyped for anything Marco our former streaming has become an adventure obsessed blood Knight he's also mentally 27 now unless it's a 30-foot monster it really isn't worth him getting out of bed for our audience surrogates who is supposed to reflect how we the audience would react is now no longer our surrogate in fact the one character we identify with the most isn't Marco it's star who is frustrated by all the racist bureaucratic stuff who just wants to break loose and go have fun just like the audience you when the story gets breaks from the Muni storyline the whole show grinds to a halt so we can have shipping episodes oh my god the shipping filler okay okay let me let me get mentally ready for this one you all knew this was coming all you've built the animals you and your ships your memes your incessant bickering you all knew this was coming Stark oh all my cards on table here I was a Tom Starr fan myself it felt like a more genuine world teenage relationship of the bunch of all the messy misunderstandings and arguments that came with it but and this is a big but I always knew that Starr and Marco we're going to get together it's like the earth in the moon these two were just bound to end up together and we all knew it from episode 1 which is why it's so frustrating to watch them drag out the relationship for a season longer than it needed to be instead of star and Marco being together we got star being a bad girlfriend to Tom Marco got together with Kelly only to have them break up off-screen between episodes like she's and Rice this was so bad I couldn't enjoy when they finally got together so our goes from crying like this to this within a few hours a few hours people the resolution is so quick that I don't understand why star even bothered staying with Tom it should have broken up at the beginning of season 4 then we could have starred Marco have an actual relationship on screen a nope we have start ignoring Tom for a season before he gets fed up with it and breaks up with her this felt like an executive decision that stayed star would be unlikable if she broke up with Tom to get with Marco we had to build up Tom to be the one to do it Balthus doesn't compare to the wasted potential of the Blood Moon curse this could have been fascinating curse that for star and Marco to get together regardless of their personal feelings could have been a subversion of the main characters always ending up together and how the universe bends over backwards to get them there what we had instead it was Marco being lovesick and then we're told that it's the Blood Moon curses fault except it wasn't he was in love with her regardless making the Blood Moon curse pointless just a red herring to make us think starka wouldn't happen he's what the curse should have been rather than Creon a sense of longing between two people it should have been actively trying to force them together or more importantly actively trying to force them apart from anyone else this could have spin set up to where Marco and Kelly are trying to date with strange accents keep having that ruin their dates or force them apart with the same thing happening to Tom and star by making an actual threat to other people the Blood Moon curse becomes an actual threat and it adds to the drama it also changes the choice that Starr and Marco have to make drastically rather than making Marco feel better it becomes a sacrifice that you are making for their respective partners that's just me for how long the career is dangled the in front of us we should have gotten a better payoff than this though I should be happy they even bothered to set up anything at all in season four because there is a serious lack of payoff or even set up Meena love Barry is the chief antagonist of season four who was secretly backed by the magic High Commission who RC really backed by Queen moon yeah this was by far the worst execute twist in the series not because I'm against moon being a villain but it comes out of nowhere and it doesn't even last moon is a villain for precisely five minutes she betrays star and eclipse' gets the wand but then Meena has her own plans and moon is back to being on star and eclipses side this was a twist just for having a cliffhanger at the end of the episode it adds nothing and if you cut it out you wouldn't miss anything now I could almost stomach this twist if moon had a reason for her actions some concrete drive that pushed her to betray clips and star but the only reason we have is that moon doesn't trust eclipse up which she totally did back in season three moon says she blames eclipse' for getting blast by meteora but even that reason is downplayed by moon earlier and she doesn't seem that better about the whole thing but sure say that we believe moon is pissed that eclipse a blindside her protecting meteora eclipse up tried to kill her own daughter in order to save star from that alone moon shouldn't see that eclipse' isn't a bad person and he's willing to ride or die for her she's a bad ruler but untrustworthy now they could have made it more believable if they played up moon just doing it out of racism towards the monsters or a desire to protect humans that eclipse' has disenfranchised or a combination of all of it the writers failed to give moon a compelling reason to turn against her own family but even worse she couldn't even stick to the decision when the chips are down Moony melee teams up with eclipse again moon could have been a good villain if rin properly but instead we get make Muni great again Mina Mina with her solarian army is intimidating even if the ridiculous power of the army makes me question how they didn't wipe out all monsters off of the face of muni already the scene amina meaning Solaria for the first time was by far my favorite part of finale because you got everything you needed out of that two minutes Tamina Solaria was a paragon of strength and nobility all the other humans were busy being useless so Solaria raised up Mina to defend their people even 300 years later everything Mina does is to live up to that trust that Solaria put in her this is a good story and a good character it's the last reminisce past that refuses to go quietly problem is though Mina with the exception of finale doesn't really do anything all she does is rebuild her bow armor and send poisoned fruits eclipse' now show us why Mina is such a threat we don't get any chance to see how dangerous she is yeah Mina could wipe the floor with star but she also got one shot by meteora who got rekt by eclipse' the soaring algorithm of evil tells me she shouldn't be a problem then said they kept playing the funny crazy lady card and made every other character in the story just keep taught us how dangerous she is giving us no reason to see it while they don't give us any reason to think that she is a major threat Mina doesn't affect the story until the end so until the finale we don't have a real main villain in season for making this unfocused season feel even less focused as it lacked a main antagonist if Mina was a more visible presence in the story the first half wouldn't have felt so directionless instead they kept her in the background to make room for stuff like this baby Margot and I got wheels why even when she finally gets involved in the finale she's never taken seriously when star jumps to destroying magic Mina isn't even the main threat it's the dark Mill horse which also only shows up in at the last minute without any real foreshadowing Mina has relegated to the background as she fights the dark horse and because the story couldn't handle the idea of separating star Marco they decide to give us a horror movie ending and yes this is a horror story ending the worlds of Muni and Earth are fused together and while the denizens of Echo Creek have some familiarity with magic thanks to star West the world doesn't they're just going to wake up one day and find out that Earth has merged with the Muni and will have absolutely no idea what's going on forget human mas relations humors are gonna be shooting monsters dead on sight how are the government's going to react when huge parts of their lands are now filled with kingdoms that operate on their own sense of autonomy there's no way the worlds merging together will not create chaos how these people even integrate how do they start to register who's sentient monster and who's just a beast is there new diseases that will be introduced that will wipe out both populations absolutely anything is on the table and yes this is Disney so nothing horrifying will ever happen then everything about this decision spells doom for everyone involved yeah it was cute to see Marco and Starr get their happy ending they pretty much through both the worlds into the blender to get it one final thing I want to talk about is how star versus the force of the old Pinos race and deeper messages now for a lot of people the show's decision to tackle more difficult themes marked a rise and quality for the story well I agree with this for the most part it also feels important to not make it out to be deeper than it actually is well there are messages about torrents and the effect of racism has on society it'd be more accurate to say that these ideas are present but not fully explored I tell us the window-shopping of ideas because the show will present an idea clinging out and making a comment about it most likely about how bad it is but then the story just kind of moves on from there it won't expand any further humans are racists and that's it no mention of why they're like this or how it came to be now not every story has to be you deep dive into the human condition a grand epic where every action the hero takes has massive repercussions no star versus doesn't have to be any of these things I enjoy star versus I enjoyed every season even the fourth but still doesn't excuse the fact that season four is by far the weakest this is brought on by the show just not being able to choose what it wants to be it couldn't grow into the deep thing piece that its main plot wanted it to be its episodic nature failed because every episode was just set up for a payoff that just didn't feel wound I think the show used its best material and ideas in season three I truly believe that if it wasn't for the disappearance of moon I don't think there would have been any reason to continue the story from there I think the strongest episode of season four there were the ones that stood on their own Mariposa and meteora adventures in the abdomen were both touching and exciting showcasing all the parts that made star versus the forces of evil great from great character interactions too over-the-top locales everything just felt right if season four was just episodes like this was some big final battle to end it all I would have been happy as it is though the finale was average from starburst the forces of evil though I want something magical okay guys thank you all for watching it's been real pleasure making this video I know I'm pretty late on this one but this is just in saying that's kind of eating at me for the longest time and I was like okay I guess I'll make a video out of it you'd be so kind please like share and subscribe I keep hearing that you have to turn on the notification button for some reason so do that at your whim I hope you all have a wonderful time and stay magical friends [Music]

Channel: Sarcastic Chorus

Views: 101,978

Rating: 4.8883176 out of 5

Keywords: star vs the forces of evil, disney, star vs

Id: gs3Exgpxzzo

Length: 24min 2sec (1442 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 15 2019