Review: Star vs. the Forces of Evil “Princess Turdina; Starfari”

Pretty, pretty, Princess.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

“Princess Turdina”

The episode begins when Marco is invited to a ceremonial event under his “Princess Turdina” facade but wants to come clean to the all the Princess’s he started a revolution with long ago that he isn’t really a princess or a girl, to begin with, much to Pony Head’s apprehension. As they enter what’s left of St. Olga’s Reform School for Wayward Princesses Star, Pony Head and a Cross-dressing Marco witness that the school has basically transformed into the female equivalent of an unkempt frat-house with Marco/Turdina treated as a hero & icon for inspiring the princesses to fight for their individuality. Much of the episodes running time mostly spent on Marco getting swept up in the fame with Star attempting to convince Marco to be honest with them before it’s too late, but Pony Head disagrees. Not wanting to crush his fans’ spirits, Marco sides with Pony Head for the time being.

But it isn’t until the 3rd act, is when Marco is told to give a speech is given an honorary St. Olga’s degree. As Marco gives a speech about being true to oneself, he looks at Star in the audience and realizes he can’t keep up the charade. However, just before he publically confesses, Miss Heinous,(voiced by Jessica Walter of Archer fame) and her two minions appear. Having closely watched the confession tape that Marco recorded in the Season 2 episode “Heinous”, Miss Heinous exposes him as a boy to his fans. Much to the shock of all the princesses with Marco taking off his disguise to further back-up her words. At first during Heinous’s speech, I thought this wouldn’t end well due to Marco lying to all of them for so long but instead of feeling betrayed, The princesses end up liking Marco even more for his honesty and although the “Turdina” person wasn’t real, Marco’s teachings about individualism still remain inspirational. Because of this, they refuse to listen to Miss Heinous, and she along with her minions end up being chased off once again. The episode cryptically ends when we discover Miss Heinous’s ulterior motives for starting the school while swearing revenge on Marco.

“Starfari”

The Episode kicks-off as Star is shopping with Tom at the local markets of Mewni and makes an observation I’ve actually voiced my concern about since my Stranger Danger review: The hypocrisy and discrimination of Monster kind within her own kingdom. Much like the Faunus from RWBY, The Monsters have often served as a topical analogy for racism within the show’s universe. But unlike RWBY, there’s shockingly a select few species of diverse creatures of either royalty or importance such as Lekmet, Pony Head and Tom, that the Butterfly Kingdom has no problem with, yet every other monster in Mewni gets the shit-end of the stick for existing as pointed out by Star who presses the matter to her mother Moon. Of course, Moon doing her best to dodge the question while preparing for Eclipsa’s Trial claims the royal monster expert named “Dr. Jelly Goodwell” is the only one with who holds the answers to Star’s questions on the matter. After a funny scene of Star searching door-to-door in her castle to seek out this expert, She finally confronts Goodwell regarding Mewni’s mistreatment of monsters and at first, it starts out fine when she even offers to take Star out into the field to see the results of her research.

As Star & Goodwell proceed to travel across parts of Mewni we’ve never seen before to reach her hidden lab which takes up most of the episode’s running time, Star begins to realize that Goodwell views the monsters only as wild animals & test subjects instead of people. Despite her belief that monsters shouldn’t be mistreated, Goodwell still doesn’t think a co-existence with them will work and reveals her plans to blow up the nearby dam and turn the monster village into an Island to isolate them from everyone else. Star being the sane one at this point, disagrees with Goodwell who ends up setting off her explosives anyway, causing dam water to rush toward the village. In a race against time, Star with the help of Buff Frog, and the village monsters work together to block the incoming water with a makeshift Dam and quickly save the village before the water reaches them. Amazed to see a co-existence of monsters and a Mewni native working together, Goodwell in a funny & random scene decides to leave her job and Star appoints Buff Frog as Mewni’s new monster expert.

Our Take

Given the past episodes tied with “Princess Turdina”, I wondered how Marco was going to come clean to the princesses but it feels like it sort-of resolved itself. While many of the jokes were on-point, I’m left wondering how Miss Heinous will get her revenge this time but as usual, Jessica Walter does an excellent job playing an uptight cunt who’s all about rules & conformity while being an intimidating presence. During Heinous’s speech about wanting the girls back, it got pretty cryptic but her words now make even more sense after seeing the twist ending.

As for the latter episode, “Starfari” It was long overdue but I wondered when the show would ever touch upon the issue of monster discrimination since the Season 1 episode Mewnipendence Day, but it’s great to see Star actually recognizing the hypocrisy of her home kingdom/dimension. Though Goodwell did say something cryptic on why Monsters & Mewni people can’t co-exist it’s a pretty vague explanation that I hope will unravel in later episodes. In the past two seasons, Buff Frog as a character has become surprisingly well developed and proven to be more than just a Russian-speaking brute which is why I’m glad Star appointed him as the monster expert as there’s no better creature that can work as a peaceful representative to them than one of their own.

While Marco wasn’t anywhere in “Starfari”, hopefully, we’ll find out next episode what he was up to while Star was pushing for this big change.