In an effort to crank out this before the S3 movie premiere, I’ve cut out a whole spiel on how Star totally screwed herself over in the Marco department, and what lessons are in that and why it all makes Star a great character. I’m gonna shove that into another post at some date in the vaguely-near future because that’s a damn important lesson the show imparts. Instead, you all get some hopefully-slightly-better-than-mediocre analysis of the last 3 episodes of Season 2!

Here’s a link to Part 1!



Part 2 linked here!



TL;DR: Just Friends has Star continue to do what she thinks is “right” by further pushing Marco and Jackie together. Star has accepted that Jackie has “won” Marco, so there’s no reason for her to pursue or have feelings for Marco, so that totally means the feelings will just go away (SPOILER THIS IS REALLY BAD REASONING).



Face the Music shows that Marco is still completely clueless about Star’s feelings for him because Star has been pushing him and Jackie together and has still only showed interest in Oskar. It also causes further conflict within Star by showing her how telling the truth isn’t always the best or right thing to do.



Starcrushed reveals that Star is able to realize that she did have a crush on Marco in retrospect; however, Star demonstrates that she still believes the right thing to do is deny her feelings for Marco until outside circumstances force her hand.

JUST FRIENDS

The big question that invariably comes up during this episode is “why did Star set up Marco with Jackie even more given that she obviously knew her feelings for Marco at this point?” Luckily, I have an explanation consisting of “teenagers are not good with emotions,” “character flaws can make feelings hard,” and “am I projecting my own experiences haha oh dear god why was I so stupid when I was younger.”

One of Star’s big character flaws is her tendency to avoid confronting problems until they are unavoidable. Even Marco notes this and points it out to Star, who to her credit is aware of this major shortcoming. However, Star is also a kind bug and she’s trying to become a more responsible person and princess. That’s still a work-in-progress sorta thing, and unfortunately for Star, the events of Bon Bon the Birthday Clown handily screw things over. On one hand, Star is still denying her feelings because they obviously complicate matters (she’s his best friend and roommate, Marco only has eyes for Jackie, etc.) and thus the classic Star thing to do is to pretend the problem-her feelings for Marco in this case-does not exist.

But at the same time, Star is also trying to be a responsible person and a good friend to Marco. I touched upon this at the end of my last analysis, but I firmly believe that Star accepted or tried to accept that Jackie had “won” Marco by the end of Bon Bon the Birthday Clown. This is reinforced in the beginning of Just Friends, when Star buys the tickets for Marco and Jackie and tells Marco that him and Jackie are “a thing now.” And friends help each other out, so Star should push Jackie and Marco together more because hey Marco’s finally got his dream girl and is so happy, and Jackie’s really cool and nice too! That’s great for them and Star totally wants to see her friends happy, so she should help them!

In case it wasn’t clear, this is not a good course of action for several reasons, but that’s the topic of yet another “in the ‘near’ future” post.

Other outside forces also make it really convenient for Star to not address her feelings. Star’s legitimately distraught over losing the Book of Spells, which is reflected by the fact that very shortly afterwards she attempts to retrieve the book. Pursuing the book is the responsible thing to do, and Star in Season 2 has tried to become more responsible and worthy of being the future Queen of Mewni. Obviously, she’s still not very good at that, but taking the steps to retrieve the book, and later trying to make a replacement when that fails, shows that she’s genuinely making a serious effort to mature. Unfortunately the timing of events means that it’s also a good way to not have to think about her feelings, because “responsibility” dictates that she needs to focus on magic/the Book.

Anyways, back to Just Friends. Star sets up Marco with Jackie because again, the “right” thing to do is to help Marco get closer to Jackie, especially because Star has accepted that Marco and Jackie are an item now. Star really, REALLY puts her all into suppressing her personal feelings and genuinely trying to help Marco and Jackie. She gets the tickets (something Marco would never have done on his own), she makes concert tees, she reassures Marco that he’s good enough for Jackie….and yea, it’s hurting her a bit on the inside, but hey Marco’s happy so it’s totally worth it.

And then we get to the climax of the episode, the Love Sentence concert. The analysis is unfortunately pretty simple here.

Star’s enjoying this. She’s spending time with her best friend Marco, singing a song they both love, and yes the song lyrics are relevant (better analyses of it have been written) as Star is trying really hard to feel only platonic things for Marco.

And then this happens. Remember, Star’s never actually seen Jackie and Marco kiss.



And no matter how hard Star tries to deny it, it’s killing her inside. Star now knows how close Jackie and Marco are, and in what way-specifically, the way Star isn’t close to Marco. But Star will do her damndest to make sure Marco doesn’t know how she feels.



And Marco believes her. Because he trusts Star.

Star tries to stay, but after seeing one last kiss between Marco and Jackie, she leaves. She’s accomplished her goal-get Marco with Jackie, but in doing so has broken her heart.

FACE THE MUSIC

The big takeaway from this episode in terms of feelings progression is that Marco is still, until the very last few minutes of this episode, 100% clueless about Star’s feelings towards him. Which is still understandable, given that Star has only shown overt romantic interest in Oskar still AND that Star has been actively pushing Marco and Jackie together for quite some time at this point. Remember, Marco is not in the position of the viewer-he trusts Star to say how she really feels, and when Star is pushing him with Jackie and says “I have a crush on Oskar,” Marco believes her because again, that’s what best friends do. This theme/issue of trust and the truth is played up big in this episode, and it culminates with Star revealing the truth about the book during her Song Day. Star does this for multiple reasons: she wants to be honest and wants people to know who she really is and accept her, she’s got low self-esteem with regards to her abilities as a princess, and she’s still kinda selfish at times).

But the response of the crowd-overwhelmingly negative-and Moon’s response and rebuttal to Star’s actions, which is basically “yea lmao the truth is not always the thing to say” is very, very important. Star staked a lot on that Princess Song-she put herself out there and soundly failed. Because of the debacle that’s Song Day, Star feels that her decision to not tell Marco how she feels has been, in her mind, somewhat validated. Because sometimes the truth isn’t good enough. Or maybe it is, as we’ll see in Starcrushed.

STARCRUSHED

Things start off awkwardly, as expected. Good job not being awkward Star. You tried, I guess.

Let’s think things through from Marco’s perspective, because even now, Marco isn’t actually sure that Star has a crush on him. Now you might be going “HOW ARE YOU SO DENSE MARCO” but it’s actually fairly logical. Remember that Star and Marco, despite the awkwardness of Song Day, are still very close to each other. They know each other damn well and have risked life and limb for each other several times.



Marco TRUSTS Star, or at the very least trusts her judgement when it comes to their friendship. So when he directly asks Star if she has a crush on him and she denies the crush, Marco accepts what she says because he trusts what she’s saying. Either Star says “yea i don’t have a crush on you” there are 2 options: either Marco trusts Star’s words at face value, or he trusts her judgement in denying it (meaning that she wants him to act like there’s no crush). Again, Star has done EVERYTHING to hide her feelings from Marco, up to setting him up with Jackie several times and flat-out telling to his face “I don’t have a crush on you.” And again, Marco’s only seen Star be attracted to Oskar. Now, Marco’s also feeling awkward, because Star having feelings for him would be super awkward given everything that’s happened up to that point contradicting the idea that she has a crush on him (plus the whole, y’know, Jackie is dating him thing).

So when Star denies it all with a very valid excuse-that she didn’t tell Ruberiot to put that stuff in the song, it was all him and she never knew and he was just doing it because he wanted the Princess Song to be different-Marco is glad to accept because it’s also the least painful path forwards for both of them.

And Star’s fine with this course of events. Except not really. The denial still hurts her like hell, and she tries to smother the pain by recreating her crush on Oskar.

But she doesn’t get the same twinkle in her eye when she sees Oskar, and the resulting scene just shows how incompatible they actually are for each other, and how Star’s romantic tastes have changed much in line with her personality maturing.

Star knows, even when she’s talking to Moon, that her “crush” on Oskar is a load of crap. She’s come a long way, but it’s only when Moon says “lol we leaving Earth forever let’s go” does Star finally, FINALLY decide to do what she should have done a long time ago, and tell Marco her feelings.

Unfortunately, the circumstances surrounding this confession suck, and we got this heartbreaking scene. On the plus side, as of the end of Starcrushed, Marco is now forced to consider-at least briefly-Star as a romantic option once more, for the first time since Blood Moon Ball.

Anyways, that’s the end of this analysis. It’s not great, I know (I might edit it better when I have the time), and the timing….could be better. To say the least. But I’ll make it up with some S3 analysis and a CHARACTER STUDY of sorts of Star in S2!

See you all after the Season 3 premiere, LET’S GOOOOO