What happened, happened. It’s no secret I’m not happy about it, since the show brought all the shipping related situations to a point of no return at the end of S3, just to then absolutely ignore them for seven episodes, and then go “no but see Marco and Star were constantly eaten inside by how much they love each other but did nothing about it and now they fear it might have been the Blood Moon influencing their feelings even if that had never been remotely hinted at in the show so far and then they realize they love each other but nope lol they forget about it and now Tomstar an Kellco are canon so they’re going to need the rest of the season to re-realize that they’re in love”.

Terrible.

But we can’t change the past and I’m not one to suddenly dislike a whole product that brought me years of happiness (and fear and anger and stress) and several satisfactions, and Starco is still a fantastic ship and a fantastic duo of characters to me, even if S4 handled them just plain horribly so far (see a post about it here). So, where could the season go now, and how could Star’s growth arc go back to bouncing between moments connected to the plot and moments connected to shipping that all contribute to her overall development and maturity?

We already suspected as much after the season premiere, and especially after Surviving the Spiderbites, but it looks like a major theme this season is going to be “choices”: Star trusted Eclipsa and gave her the wand and the throne, but now might not be completely sure about this decision anymore. At the same time, she does trust Eclipsa and she sees that she’s doing more for monsters than any other Queen before, but she’s bound to eventually see (maybe next Sunday, in Cornball, an episode that’s going to feature Buff Frog) that it’s not enough, or at least not the right way to go at it. It’s easy to see how this theme of “choice”, of learning how to rule while also ruling her heart and feelings, could relate to shipping and Starco. Furthermore, Curse of the Blood Moon introduce a tangential concept, the idea of free will, of making your own choices without letting external forces influence you. Brian H. Kim, the show’s composer, confirms it while talking about the Blood Moon waltz track:

But I also love this episode for how it moves along the greater story of Star and Marco, and what it says about destiny vs. free will. If they are to be together, would we be happier for them if that was a result of magic, or by their own choice? And if they aren’t to be together, that should be their own choice too. I immediately loved the question mark it left and how it sets up the rest of the season, and the greater idea that we should all be allowed to make choices about who and when we love someone.



Now, while I think that applying this theme to Starco at this point of the show is useless and a waste of time for a number of reasons I already explained here, I can also see why, on paper, an arc like this might have sounded interesting to the writers, and it could genuinely bring some moments of deep emotional intimacy between Star and Marco, and eventually a canonization on very, very sure terms - at that point the L word being said wouldn’t surprise me at all. And how this all ties with what happened in the episode, and with what might happen in the near future (as usual, I’m very often wrong about specifics in these kind of predictions, so take everything with a lot of grains of salt)?

According to Relicor, the Severing Stone was going to sever the bond between Star and Marco by erasing the memory of the moment they fell in love.

Going into the vision, all the kids thought “Well we fell in love when we got cursed by the Blood Moon, so it’s going to remove that”. But then Star and Marco find themselves experiencing new parts of the dance, moments that never happen in real life, and the Stone acts only when they actually do fall in love.

Once the vision is over, they still do remember the Blood Moon ball, and that they were dancing. They just forgot about all the “I like this” part, the part when they ACTUALLY did genuinely, strongly, purely, fell in love with each other.

They enter the Stone with feelings at level 99

They dance and level up to 100

The Stone severs that, and brings them back to 99

So leveling up those feeling to 100 again, this time being sure that the Moon didn’t influence anything, is likely going to be the new arc for Star and Marco, and it’s possibly going to go hand in hand with Star having to question her own choices and certainties: one could be that giving the throne to Eclipsa was the best move, another one that being with Tom and not with Marco is the best choice. Now, this is where the speculations become predictions and being wrong gets super easy, but since we know that the picture from the future is important in this season, Beach Day might become the next big moment for Star: playing in the water together and being as happy as they look in this picture might be a new occasion to fall in love, replacing this,

with this.

Because it’d be extremely fitting both the narrative of the show and this arc, and the generic norms of romance, to give the message that when the feelings are true and genuine, love can blossom in any moment, it doesn’t need a fancy ball or a magic light, even going splashy splashy bally bally in the warm waters of California can do the trick.

Obviously Tomstar still exist and Kellco is kinda a thing now (even though she still has to get over Tad before being fully ready to move on with Marco I guess), so I don’t expect Beach Day to canonize Starco, unless by some miracle both of the grow close together enough before episode 16A to realize that they have to break up with the other people in their lives, but that sounds unlikely and, in this season, stupidly optimistic. Still, realizing once again that they love each other - not just like, love, and this time with no Stones immediately erasing their memories, might be the last push needed to solve all the ongoing situations in their respective lives, and finally get together.

If this happens before the series finale, allowing the dorks to enter the climax of the story while already being romantically together and sure of their feelings, allowing for the closing scenes to truly be as close to “I want to spend my life with you and I’m sure about it” as they can get without being too cheesy or too unrealistic for two teens, I’ll probably forget a great deal of the dissatisfaction and anger this first part of the season made me experiences.

Please.