MEWBERTY

This episode, despite dealing with Star going through an eldritch version of puberty, actually focuses more on Marco, whom has to act for the first time without Star’s help and realizes how much she’s important to him. “Marco Grows a Beard” does the opposite, being about Marco somehow going through a magic enhanced puberty episode, while actually focusing on the other lead, giving Star the chance to understand that, after all, she doesn’t really need her wand to be herself. More about this in this post by @skleero

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-I don’t know if he actually lives in (on?) his car, but the only time he’s not seen sitting on the hood is in School Spirit





- Oskar plays using his tongue in this scene, while in his other appearances he sucks at playing. I’d say that he’s just randomly mashing keys while the keytar plays a base (he’s not even moving his fingers for a moment). Or the writers forgot.







- Hard to miss, but the princess is obviously still crushing hard on Oskar, even though it doesn’t get directly referenced anymore after Cheer Up Star.







- Star knows the telltale signs of Mewberty, and since she says that it’s a “Destroy the school” deal she probably knew about the bug thing metamorphosis. She never warned Marco about it ‘cause she was ashamed? She forget? It’s a cartoon and they needed a way to make this plot happen?



In Quest Buy there was a “Mewberty & You” book in Star’s trunk; does every mewman/mewman girl go through mewberty? The whole “transforming into a butterfly” thing happens to magical princesses only, due to the influence of the wand/magic?







- The moment when thousands of Starco hearts fluttered, just to be broken two seconds later.







- First time Star reminds Marco that she’s not a human. The whole episode plays on the parallelism between puberty and mewberty showing the viewers that Star is, in fact, an “alien”. I wonder if it’s ever going to become a hindrance to their relationship…





- Like I said, she’s obviously aware about how mewberty works, at least regarding the “boys triggered” part.







- During this whole scene Ferguson talks in spanish, and Marco understands him, while answering in english.

I could be wrong, since I wasn’t in the fandom yet, but I think that only the very first promotional material for the shows mentioned Marco being half-latino. Anyway, his father fits three or four different “mexican stereotypes”, while his mom looks less latin. And in the backyard’s shack in Cheer Up Star there is a mexican flag.





- She wants to do “Witchy things” and “some magic” with Star’s book, and she’s later seen bribing Glossaryck with pudding. Since Daron said, talking about season 2, “[…] Janna, for example, we just liked her so much we started writing her in more.“, it’s safe to bet that she’s cooking up something/she’s going to cause some magical mishaps.





- The girl on the left is called Leah. That’s also Daron’s middle name.





- Marco’s reaction when told by Ferguson that Janna had the book, the way he acts around her, being instantly annoyed… he has problably been a victim to her teasing and tricks for a long time (after all Freeze Day shows them being class or schoolmates in grade and middle school too).

Or he was just in a bad mood ‘cause his best friend was shooting purple webs.







- Janna does act flirty around Marco, both here and in Interdimensional Field Trip, so it’s not too farfetched to think about her having a crush on the Safe Kid (pleasenoIdon’twantalovetrianglethatcouldbecomeasquareinthefuture). Then again, she teases other people too (in less allusive ways, admittedly).





- Pages from Star’s book seen while Marco flips through it.

The Banagic Wand is actually the only weapon strong enough to stop the fearsome Banananas.



Some kind of bottle to collect snake’s venom?

I couldn’t understand some words in this one, but it talks about dimensional rifts for sure. Thanks to /sveg/ on 4chan and many other users here on Tumblr for their help with deciphering this horrible handwriting.





- I’m pretty sure that it’s just a coincidence/stylistic choice, since lots of gems and things in the show are rhombus shaped (and the gem on the forehead is a hexagon), but Glossaryck’s irises are shaped like Queen Moon’s cheekmarks, and have a similar color.







- Glossaryck mistakes Marco for a girl, in St. Olga’s Reform School for Wayward Princesses he easily passes for a princess… so in-universe he’s feminine looking, despite being the son of a bear-like man?

And everybody knows that by now, but Glossaryck has six fingers (but only four toes).







- Glossaryck looked a little concerned when hearing Star’s name, but then played hard to get, asking to be bribed, after Marco mentioned the problem being mewberty. Either he knows that it’s just nature, and nothing could have been done anyway, or he’s a prick.





- Maybe it’s a coincidence, but since the whole episode has a creepy atmosphere it could be a reference.





- Every time Star makes physical contact with a boy, a new phase of mewberty begins (webbing - making a cocoon - hatching).







- Glossaryck’s whole explanation on mewberty could work with the generic concept of puberty as well as Star’s purplish version of the thing, so it’s hard to tell if mewmans really can get stuck in “mewberty form” (and, if that happens, how do the monster-hating Mewni deals with its younglings becoming horrid bugs?), or if he meant it as “Puberty/mewberty changes people, maybe Star’s personality is never going to be back to what was before. It’s just nature”.

Also, 3:57pm is the same time as the rampage in Lobster Claws.







- Is Marco sometimes scared by Star’s power/strength (he make a similar expression in Storm the Castle), and reminded how she’s not a human?





- Hope’s parents are fighting and Oskar’s mom has a “new boyfriend”.

Such a lack of love, in an episode filled with hearts.







- WHAT WAS SHE GOING TO DO.

And they forgot to draw Oskar on the car.





- This episode is about Star’s puberty, but the one to have a moment of growth is Marco, who realizes how important Star is to him, crying at the thought of having lost his best friend.





- This is the first time Marco has the initiative to hug Star, whom is surprised, but obviously happy. This is even cuter when you thing that she may not remember what just happened, so she’s just being “Weird, Marco suddenly hugged me. Oh well, not like I mind!”.





- So Star immediatly showed Marco the new pair that she grew going through puberty ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Star’s dad doesn’t have wings in Diaz Family Vacation, so either not all mewmans have them, but only girls/females from the royal family/magical princesses, or they just forgot to draw them / didn’t know about them yet.



In Brittney’s Party, despite it airing before Mewberty, Starfan13 (the girl obsessed with Star) had fake wings.





PIXTOPIA

Alfonzo and Ferguson look weird in the poster.





-The focus of the show is the friendship with Star, but looks like Marco is a good and close friend to Alfonzo and Ferguson as well.







- As I said in this post, Star’s main insecurity is about her being… inclined to messing things up, and at the same time feeling the need to be trusted in handing things on her own (at least in Blood Moon Ball). When Marco screws up, for once without Star being directly or indirectly involved, she doesn’t recriminate him, she’s just happy to have a mess up twin.

Thanks god they avoided a “…I messed up ONCE, you always do it!” plot/dialogue…







- Marco is pretty adamant in stating being an only child. Ashamed by his messing up? Secret sibling? Dead secret sibling?

Probably just ashamed.





- Green Santa?

And “I love the PMO” = Project management office?





- A flimsy mine is enough to disable a wand that should be powerful enough to “destroy the universe”? As already said with the whole charger thing in Quest Buy either Star still can’t use the wand’s full power, or these things are just for the sake of the episode’s plot.

The pixie says “mines”, not “crystals”. It’s semantic, but maybe the whole area is needed to block magic, a simple shard is not enough.





- In St. Olga’s Reform School for Wayward Princesses Miss Heiinous mentions Pixtopia, and among the new princesses there is a Pixie. Are there more kingdom in the same dimension (would make sense, after all, even though we still don’t know what a dimension exactly is in this show, since sometimes it’s a planet, sometimes a small place…)? Is she… her daughter, thus making the empress older, and making what happened with Ferguson even creepier?





- Actual concept art for the show. Ferguson needs an adult.





- Marco is very protective about his friends. That may explain, in part, why he felt the need to check on Star in Blood Moon Ball. it wasn’t a lack of trust, just him being (over?)protective.







- I unearthed something never meant to be seen by mortal eyes.





- I am deeply concerned by this episode.





- Alfonzo marrying the Pixie Empress is probably just a one time joke, but this show has been pretty good so far with not resetting everything to its status quo at the end of the episode (like Skullnick still being a troll), and until Mewnipendence Day, when Alfonzo is seen again, Ferguson is seen without his friend in two episodes.

I expect Alfonzo recounting about his time as a giant king in a land of pixies in season 2.





- The whole “Marco screws up as well” deal being the focus of the episode feels a little weird, since this is hardly the first time he does it (Cheer Up Star, arguably Quest Buy and, in a lesser way, School Spirit). But hey, more characterization is always good.









ADDENDUM TO LAST EPISODE

Brittney’s Party

- Marco wanted to speak with Jackie, and made it look like it was something that made him nervous, but not that big of a deal, but in Freeze Day talking with Jackie IS a big deal, and something that he’s never really done (in a decade). That’s yet another strange detail that makes me think that this episode, despite being the tenth segment, was actually one of the first to be storyboarded.





- According to what an helpful Anonymous said, the old japanese guys says “わしは80だが、まだまだ現役じゃ", which translates to “I’m 80 years old, but I’m still active!”





Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Episode 5

