Review: Star vs. the Forces of Evil “Club Snubbed; Stranger Danger”

Does this episode deserve a “snubbing”?

Overview (Spoilers Below)

“Club Snubbed”

At Butterfly Castle, members of various kingdoms within Mewni collectively unite for the “Silver Bell Ball” to celebrate the peace between them, As part of the tradition, one prince or princess from each family will dance with all the others. As Star & Pony Head greet their fellow royal peers, they notice Tom and his family haven’t arrived yet with Pony Head remembering Star and Tom’s first meeting at a past event like this and much to Pony Head’s desire to witness drama, Star is doing her best to act with proper decorum for her parents to make up for the trouble she indirectly caused during the events of the episode “Face the Music”. Just then, Tom’s family arrives revealing a funny yet interesting twist about his parents which further fleshes out what Tom exactly is in a nutshell.  As the ball begins, the royal peers respectively bow to each other along with Star bowing to Tom, but Tom turns away and bows to another royal leaving Star utterly shocked, with Pony Head thinking Star got “club snubbed” (In a nutshell, it’s the club scene method of playing hard to get by purposely ignoring people who are obviously attracted to you).

The rest of the episode is spent on Star & Tom “club snubbing” one another until they both have already danced with all their royal peers in the ballroom until they’re the only two remaining.  But it isn’t until the 3rd act is when Star takes the “snubbing” a step further by asking the royal family manservant to dance instead of Tom which only pisses their royal parents off and leads to Star privately confronting Tom in which Tom clarifies that he didn’t ignore her out of disrespect but blindly thinks Star & Marco are an item after the events of “Face the Music”.  Star explains that she and Marco were never a couple and that Tom’s current attitude only made Star misinterpret his cold actions as him being a jerk. However, the two end up going back inside to notice their respective fathers fighting over their kids not having one petty dance. As Star & Tom begrudgingly put their anger aside and finally dance, It’s a well-animated scene as the magical trail they leave behind creates colorful spirals of flames & butterflies with such fluidity that’s impressive to look at. The episode ends on a decent note when Queen Moon declares the Ball a success while Star & Tom decide to remain on friendly terms.

“Stranger Danger”

The story starts off with Star attempting to feed Glossaryck after his mysterious resurrection in Rest in Pudding. And as revealed in that episode, Glossaryck’s mind isn’t in the best shape as he remains both empty-headed & animalistic while spewing out gibberish. However, it isn’t until Star takes Glossaryck for a walk is where the plot actually begins to pick up when Star encounters her ancestor Eclipsa Butterfly (Voiced by Esmé Bianco), freed from the crystal imprisonment she was encased in after “Battle for Mewni”. At first, the two hit it off until Star’s mother and the Magic High Commission burst into the garden to arrest Eclipsa with Queen Moon explaining who she is while the High Commission hilariously runs a series of tests on Star to make sure she isn’t corrupted.

Despite Star claiming nothing happened, Moon and the High Commission insist Eclipsa is evil because her only crime to them was ditching her kingdom to elope with a monster and meddled with dark magic which eventually leads to her imprisonment before she could do any real harm. Understandably, Star views their actions towards Eclipsa as unjustly overkill which devotes most of the episode to an intense argument between Star and her mother about everything we already know about Moon’s past from “Battle for Mewni”, but the episode ends on an ambiguous note when Moon eventually says yes to giving Eclipsa a fair trial and confines her to the condemned tower outside the rose garden until her trial begins with Star doing periodic visits.

Our Take

I’m starting to see a pattern with the Star episodes at this point: One will serve as the filler with occasional character growth, while the other continues with a consistent plot-thread.

“Club Snubbed” served mostly as the filler while fleshing out more about Tom and his established history with Star but it’s mostly told through conversations between other characters along with the introduction of Tom’s parents which was quite a funny twist. Also, the concept of “club snubbing” sounds incredibly petty & childish but thankfully that wasn’t the case with Tom who thought he was doing it for the right reasons. At least it worked itself out in the end with him and Star still on friendly speaking terms.

The Latter episode “Stranger Danger” is where I felt the plot-threads were slowly coming together. Esmé Bianco gives a charming performance as Eclipsa while giving off sinister vibes about the way she talks which kinda reminded me of Timothy Dalton’s performance from Hot Fuzz where his character made a bunch of charmingly sinister puns with almost every line of dialogue. You can make the argument that Star grew sympathetic about the story of her ancestor romantically running away with a monster, but It only raises more questions than answers to why there’s such a taboo relationship between the Monsters the people of Mewni, to begin with.

And that fact Star’s parents even approved of her past relationship with Tom and yet condemned Eclipsa’s relationship with a Monster comes off as hypocritical on their part.