It’s time again for another Star vs. the Forces of Evil theory.



First, the usual disclaimer: the contents of this post are sold as-is. Not guaranteed to actually predict the future, end shipping wars, or bring total enlightenment. Read at your own risk. May cause drowsiness or confusion. Void where prohibited. All sales are final. NO REFUNDS.

Originally, Crazy Theory #2 was going to be my theory that Mina Loveberry was actually going to be a major villain in the show – I had floated the idea prior to the airing of “Monster Bash”. Unfortunately, I was too slow in writing a post about the theory, and I had to give up on it – because it was proven correct. Alas!

This theory about Moon, however, I’ve been thinking about for some time – since I came up with the Holy Grail theory, actually.

This will be a long post. Read on for more.

Grail Legends and Medieval Romance

It should be clear by now to anyone who’s been following Star vs. the Forces of Evil with an eye for narrative influences that the show is roughly borrowing elements from Grail legends and medieval romances: Star, the knight-errant; Marco, the damsel in distress (and trusted lieutenant); Glossaryck, the wise, old mentor; Meteora, the bastard usurper of the throne; Eclipsa, the fairy queen or sorceress (I’ve already noted that there is a great deal of Morgan le Fay in her character design), and so on. Probably the most explicit comparisons to medieval romance are made in “Raid the Cave”, with Star juxtaposed against Buff Frog’s storybook character:

But that’s not the only comparison – a later scene in “Raid the Cave” references a famous gag from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a film which spoofs Grail legends and medieval romance:



These and other conscious comparisons – in episodes like “The Banagic Incident”, “Red Belt”, “Running with Scissors”, “Scent of a Hoodie”, “Death Peck”, and others – as well as the various mythological allusions – Star as Venus, Marco as Mars, Hekapoo as Hekate/Hephaestus, and on and on – all serve not only to reinforce the fairy-tale nature of the show but also to signal its awareness of the works that have preceded it.

One particular Grail legend that I think will come to prominence in Star vs. the Forces of Evil is that of the Fisher King.

Moon as the Psychologically-Wounded Queen

There are many versions of the Fisher King – or Wounded King – story; you can read some introductions to those tales at the link provided. The key detail is that the Fisher King has received a supernatural wound – and guards the Holy Grail, unable to use it himself, waiting for someone to arrive who has the capacity to use the Grail to heal him. Of course, this wound is a physical one – not a psychological one. Yet I think Moon will suffer a heavy psychological wound which causes her to lose her mind. What, though, do I justify this belief on? There are actually a few things that make me think that Moon will be playing the role of the Fisher King – a Fisher Queen.



Throughout the series, key lines of dialogue are uttered either by Moon or about Moon that hint at her possible malady – that she will lose her mind. These lines are significant because they have ironic potential. Here are a few of them:

From “Storm the Castle”: Moon tells Star that she’s “always mad.” Mad is a synonym for insane.

From “Return to Mewni”: Star remarks that Moon has “lost her marbles.” To lose one’s marbles is an idiomatic expression for going insane.



From “Puddle Defender”: Star tells Buff Frog, “My mom’s got monster issues.” Without the word “monster” in this phrase, its meaning would change dramatically – and reflect, perhaps, a state of mental instability.



From “Toffee”: Buff Frog tells Marco that Queen Moon “needs help.” This scene takes place when Moon is at her lowest and most broken point: Toffee has robbed her of her magic and taken Star away forever. The phrase needing help is very much one that comes to mind when speaking of someone who suffers a psychotic break – who needs psychological treatment.

From “Total Eclipsa the Moon”: Moon herself says, “I must be crazy!” Although Moon is speaking about her current predicament with Eclipsa in that episode, the line – like all the other dialogue I’ve shown you – has an ironic potential to it. That is, if Moon does lose her mind, each of these lines will be newly cast in an ironic light: though by themselves they don’t seem to have any further significance, they could be seen as prefiguring Moon’s eventual insanity – if Moon does indeed go insane. Thus, it’s the ironic potential of these lines which first caused me to become suspicious that they were adding up to something. I’m sure these lines of dialogue are not the only ones – I’ve no doubt missed a few!

There’s also some potential double meaning in Moon’s name. Earth’s moon was historically – and still is – associated with madness – hence the word lunatic. Moon’s name being purposefully chosen because of its double meaning would not surprise me in the least.



A third, possibly more obscure reason to suspect a psychological injury inflicted on Moon is the 1991 film The Fisher King, directed by Python member Terry Gilliam and starring Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges:



I mentioned this film in my Holy Grail post, where I speak at length about the connection between the Grail and garbage, but I believe that The Fisher King has had some sort of creative influence on Star vs. the Forces of Evil. There isn’t any concrete evidence for this, but there seems to me to be some strange kind of kinship between the two works – a fixation on garbage, on Arthurian legends, on VHS tapes (”Red Belt”, “All Belts Are Off”), on trashy romance novels (”Monster Bash”) – but, in any case, if there is a connection, it’s probably only a minor one.



The main reason I bring up the film, however, is because it depicts a character – Parry, the titular Fisher King – as having a psychological wound instead of a physical one. He is quite insane, and his madness materializes itself as a sinister figure on horseback wreathed in flames who constantly pursues him:



(As an aside, I would suggest that this concept and imagery – a sinister figure on horseback as a stand-in for psychological distress – was very much borrowed by Samurai Jack for its final season!)

The Fisher King brings the Grail legend into the modern era, and I think that is very much in the same spirit of what Star vs. the Forces of Evil is trying to do as well – despite its medieval-inspired fantastical setting, its themes and the ways it tackles them are very much in the modern mode. Thus, physical wounds become psychological ones, reflective of modern humans’ ever-present cognizance of their inner anguish – which brings me to the last reason I suspect that Moon will lose her mind.

There is an episode early on in which Moon is quite strongly associated with psychological concepts: “Sleep Spells”. In this episode, Marco tries to determine why Star is casting spells in her sleep with psychology:



In the course of his inquiry, he discovers that Star has some mother issues. Amusingly, he misses the potent symbolism in the painting Star draws:

Star draws her mother as a snake wrapped around her, constricting her – something that Marco overlooks (but not the audience!); fortunately, though, Star eventually outright reveals her problems with Moon:



Which leads to one of the single funniest moments in all of season one. That aside, though, as it turns out, Star’s sleep problems have actually been caused by Princess Smoochy, who is on the run from St. Olga’s Reform School for Wayward Princesses. The real purpose of “Sleep Spells” is to subtly connect, through the idea of psychology, Queen Moon to St. Olga’s – a connection that will, at long last, come to fruition in the season three finale in Moon’s psychological wounding.



The Cause of the Injury



I’ve written before about the horrible implications of Mind Eraser’s existence in the series; once you start tampering with people’s memories, you make it impossible for them to learn or grow – you could even erase their entire identity. This concept of identity erasure is very much associated with St. Olga’s Reform School for Wayward Princesses: Meteora herself has her real identity erased, becoming Heinous and tragically forcing her own brainwashing onto other princesses as well.

It seems entirely possible to me that Meteora – or Eclipsa herself – will be responsible for using Mind Eraser or a similar type of spell on Moon in order to render her insane, leaving Star to deal with the awful consequences.



Interestingly, there is a mother-daughter parallel to be found in another animated series which explores similar themes: in the most recent season of BoJack Horseman, we discover that BoJack’s mother, Beatrice, is terrified of becoming like her own mother, who has been subjected to a lobotomy (note the scar on the head of her mother’s shadow):

As I talk about in “The death of the self”, Star vs. the Forces of Evil very much intends this sort of horrific undercurrent and has done so from the very beginning; just take a look at this scene taken from “Matchmaker”, which is only episode 2a:

In Star vs. the Forces of Evil, however, Moon’s coming “lobotomy” – her insanity – not only carries palpable psychological terror (especially for Star, who has feared it since the very beginning of the series) but evokes a grand, almost archetypal, scope in the way that it hearkens back to medieval romance through the idea of the Fisher King’s wound. It is truly a great and terrible marriage of old Arthurian legends and modern existential dread.



All is not lost, however. As in the legend of the Fisher King, the wound can be healed through the use of the Grail. Though Star, with her heart cheek marks, is associated with the Grail, I think there is one additional person who will have to help her: Ludo.



What Role Does Ludo Play?

I mentioned the film The Fisher King earlier. An hour into the film, there is a fantastic monologue delivered by Robin Williams’s character, Parry, to Jeff Bridge’s character, Jack, while the two of them are lying in the grass and gazing at the moon. In this monologue, Parry tells his version of the Fisher King legend:



One day a fool wandered into the castle and found the king alone. And being a fool, he was simple-minded; he didn’t see a king, he only saw a man alone and in pain. And he asked the king, “What ails you, friend?” The king replied, “I’m thirsty. I need some water to cool my throat.” So the fool took a cup from beside his bed, filled it with water, and handed it to the king. As the king began to drink, he realized his wound was healed. He looked in his hands, and there was the Holy Grail, that which he sought all of his life. And he turned to the fool and said with amazement, “How can you find that which my brightest and bravest could not?” And the fool replied, “I don’t know. I only knew that you were thirsty.”

Again, I will fully admit that I have not established a firm connection between The Fisher King and Star vs. the Forces of Evil. However, Ludo has strongly been associated with clowns and jesters – and even his name means “I play” (among other things)! It’s such a tantalizing connection that I simply can’t resist bringing it up.



But quite apart from that, the show itself drops hints throughout that Ludo might be indeed destined for something great. Ludo is closely associated with garbage – you need look no further than “Ludo, Where Art Thou?” for evidence of that – and Moon has been the closest thing to a mother for him:

The connection to garbage is especially intriguing. Apart from the Holy Grail itself – found among the garbage, as the trope says – I have begun to suspect many references to garbage throughout the series actually refer to Ludo (and, more specifically, his connection to the Holy Grail):

The only other time in the series we have seen a lone cockroach, interestingly, is in “Ludo in the Wild” – it makes off with one of the chips while Ludo fights Spider:



Even more interestingly, other commentators have compared Ludo to a cockroach due to his resilience (a now-mythical trait of cockroaches based in part on the urban legend that cockroaches will be the only things that survive a nuclear war). I think the show itself makes this comparison – Ludo, is, after all, literally living in a house made of garbage – so it’s definitely worth considering:



Not only does “Ludo, Where Art Thou” firmly establish Ludo as associated with garbage, it also shows him as being badly in need of love and guidance from parental figures. In “The Hard Way”, Ludo tries to use Glossaryck as a surrogate father but fails – Glossaryck is very much uninterested in (and unsuited for) the role. Poor Ludo! Yet his lack of received affection is why Ludo is perfectly suited to play the fool in healing Moon: he is the one for whom compassion presents the greatest challenge. He is the one who has come the farthest.



Summing It Up



Here’s what I foresee, then:

Moon loses her mind and wanders away from the Butterfly Kingdom, not knowing who she is.

Ludo eventually finds Moon and brings her back to Star, who will despair for lack of a way to fix her mother.

Ludo will offer Moon a drink of water from Lekmet’s horn.

Ludo’s act of compassion, along with the inherent magic of Lekmet’s horn – which everyone else thinks is just garbage – will be what heals Moon of her insanity.

Star will then realize the true power of Lekmet’s horn, which has now been revealed as the Holy Grail, and use it to accomplish further and greater magic.

(Star may have lost her wand by this point.)



That’s what I think poor little Ludo’s purpose in Star vs. the Forces of Evil is: to grow as a character to the point that he shows compassion to others – thus demonstrating the healing power of empathy. Perhaps Ludo will even be able to find a surrogate family in the Butterflies. I feel pretty confident in saying that, by the end of the show, if anyone will have earned their happy ending, it will be Ludo.



As in my previous Crazy Theory, I freely admit that all of this very much implausible. I may very well be wrong. However, I feel certain that Lekmet’s horn will be revealed as the Holy Grail – even if there’s some uncertainty as to how that will happen or what will happen afterwards. And I’m sure something important is waiting for Ludo – even if what I’ve said here doesn’t come to pass.



I hope you enjoyed reading this! Feel free to send me your questions, and please check out my other analyses and theories here. Until next time!

