Review: Star vs. the Forces of Evil “Sweet Dreams; Lava Lake Beach”

Sweet Dreams are made of these.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

“Sweet Dreams”

The episode begins with Star having a trippy dream filled with crazy imagery that could easily pass as nightmare fuel, but wakes up to Marco offering her breakfast only to discover her bed being littered with goblin dog wrappers which are understandably odd because she traveled without dimensional scissors and it’s previously established that she’d have to be in a specific dimension to get goblin dogs. In response to this, Star has Marco keep watch while she sleeps until Marco notices Star transforming into her mewberty butterfly form while dimension hopping in her sleep and Marco briefly mentions the last time she transformed into that creature was during the events of “Battle for Mewni”. And her parents aren’t exactly the best people to seek help for this solution which motivates Star to keep it a secret while asking Marco chain her to the bed in case it happens again. And after the first failed attempt, Marco chains his leg to her to wake him up.

The rest of the episode is spent on Star flying around in a dimensional space called “the void” with Marco now still chained to her leg. It’s a trippy & colorful scene that even has a fun little Cameo of Ludo in the mix. Eventually, Star’s mewberty form dissolves when she wakes up in the middle of the void and they both end up being rescued by Eclipsa which leads to the funniest scene which is Marco meeting her for the first time. After Star kicks Marco out of the room, Star comes to Eclipsa for advice about what to do with these random occurrences with Eclipsa encouraging her to embrace them to see where they take her since her philosophy is “All knowledge is good knowledge” before returning to her tower prison via a hidden passage in Stars bedroom. The episode cryptically ends with more questions than answers as Star goes to sleep and starts to dimension-hop in her transformation, while Marco sits in a chair with Glossaryck on his lap and awaiting her return.

“Lava Lake Beach”

The episode begins when Star, Tom, Marco, and Kelly are camping out at a place called “Lava Lake Beach” within Tom’s “Underworld” realm to wait for a phenomenon called the “Soul Rise”. There, Marco begins to experience a series of dick moves that are happening to him such as Tom wearing one of his spare red hoodie’s that Star gave to Tom without Marco’s permission. There’s at least a fun scene where they play a game of volleyball against two demons, but that ends up being cut short when Kelly abruptly leaves with Marco heading to check on her. When Marco finally finds Kelly, she explains that she’s currently recovering from a breakup with Tad who has trouble moving on and if you’ve seen the episode Goblin Dogs, It’s established that Tad lives in her hair but hasn’t really left after the breakup. Eventually, Marco decides to find out what’s going on and directly confronts Tad (Voiced by Greg Cipes) and finds him simply lounging around.

As Marco tries to maturely give Tad advice about moving on since Kelly wants the breakup to be permanent, Tad unintentionally makes Marco realize his romantic feelings for Star. But the way Tad points this out to Marco, it isn’t out of spite as Tad admits he should take Marco’s advice regarding his own relationship with Kelly. The rest of the episode is primarily spent on Marco feeling the same way Star pretty much did in the infamous Season 2 episode “Just Friends” as this scene follows most of the same beats of how Star felt. But this time, it’s Marco experiencing unrequited love while witnessing every other couple around him kiss. Kelly eventually shows up thanking Marco for giving Tad the talk which worked as he’s no longer in her head, and as her way of cheering Marco up, she secretly gives Marco the best view to check out the Soul Rise and the episode ends with one hell of a bittersweet stinger when Marco reveals to Kelly that since it’s past midnight, Marco’s Birthday just happened.

Our Take

Sleepwalking is an unusual occurrence that you rarely hear about, but the concept of “sleep dimension-hopping” in “Sweet Dreams” sounds like a potential recipe for disaster in later episodes. While we’re still not sure of Eclipsa’s true intentions, her advice to Star that “All knowledge is good knowledge” can easily be read as something bad, but she does have a point. If you try to push the problem away without figuring it out, it could get worse later on. Despite Marco’s apprehensive attitude after his first encounter with Eclipsa, I could easily understand why Star would come to her for advice compared to her parents. They’re so damn stuck up while well-intentioned. It’s not like she didn’t want to come to them for help, but hearing her father’s words on them possibly dissecting Star like an animal could make any teenager scared shitless.

As for the latter episode, part of me hated how Marco was treated in “Lava Lake Beach” but in retrospect, he kinda deserved this. Star had legit feelings for Marco at one point when she was on Earth during the events of Season 2, but he was so damn oblivious to them because he & Jackie were still an item at the time. Now Marco has a crush on Star, but she got over him by dating Tom again yet does something as spiteful as giving Marco’s spare hoodie to Tom without permission? In Scent of a Hoodie Star was missing Marco to the point that she got obsessed with just the hoodie alone, and now Star just dresses Tom up with it? But what I felt poured, even more, salt in Marco’s emotional wounds was the fact that Star completely forgot Marco’s birthday. If I was in Marco’s scenario, I would’ve gone back to Earth after Star revealed that she started dating Tom again during the Lint Catcher episode.

While the sleep dimension hopping is an intriguing arc on its own, I really wish the show’s creator, Daron Nefcy would stop trolling the fans with love triangles. Any writer should know by now that to some fans, it’s a “kiss of death” for any series when it pisses off your viewers. (I’m looking at you Arrow fanbase!)