Star vs. the Forces of Evil Review: Cleaved (and Season 4)

"The thing about good ideas is they tend to kinda hang around like a bad fart."

I feel as if that quote from the final episode, delivered by Mina Loveberry on her untriumphant departure into the wilderness, summarizes Season 4 of Star vs. the Forces of Evil as a whole. There's sincerity, for the most part, in what Star vs. wants to do, but it can never manage to equal the sum of its parts because, even to the very end, there's a sense that it knows what it wants to be, but was never able to really accomplish that. 

(WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AND UNPOPULAR OPINIONS)

Case in point: "Cleaved," as a series finale, does exactly what it wants. It's clear that the past season worked unrelentingly to telegraph everything possible to make the finale work, and it does, filled with emotional crescendos and masterfully-crafted revelations. The first half gives rise to tension and, more than less, makes up the climax by tackling the broader issues in the series' final arc—most importantly, Star and the queens must destroy magic to stop Mina Loveberry in her pro-Mewman,  monster-killing conquest—while the second half is almost a sort of epilogue. 

The heavy-lifting has been accomplished by "Cleaved's" midway point, leaving the series to address the status of Star and Marco's relationship, with the two refusing to part ways at the Realm of Magic as the world around them is destroyed as opposed to going their separate ways. The result of that interaction, following a brief period of hesitant acceptance, is the opening of portals connecting Earth to Mewni, and the closing shot is the two of them, reunited oncemore, standing at the line where their two worlds meet.

It's a touching ending, but the journey to that point is exhausting, and Season 4, as a whole, feels like it almost doesn't earn it. Since Season 3, the series has tried to prove its worth among the heavy-lifters in the world of serialized cartoons—your Adventure Times and Steven Universes, for instance—but Star vs. was never really able to figure out how to step up its game to rise to those ranks. There's just nothing about the series (to me, at least) that really stands out. Season 2 had the show in a great place to really establish its individualistic presence, but the series too often just coasts along with a sense of familiarity by association in place of legitimate charisma—quite frankly, there's nothing that Star vs. does better than any other show you could be watching, with the exception of being, admittedly, an expert at teasing its audience (though the frequent patches of "Will they, won't they" content comes to the show's frequent detriment) and featuring a strong fistful of badass female characters.

Star vs. just never knows where it wants to be tonally. Does the series want to dive deep into a rich, lore-filled narrative? I don't think so, because it places so much priority on the interpersonal lives of its two lead characters, and there's too much superfluous glib for it to feel cohesive. But if it wants to be a lighter, more accessible show... where is that in the complicated mix of the past season's episodes? There's barely any room to breathe, with the exception of a few incredibly-valuable episodes that zooms the camera out of the broad, overwhelming context Season 4 is wading through. To be fair to the show, it doesn't leave anything significant unanswered, but the minutiae is a questionable yet answerless mess.

Those handful of episodes that do work, though, help paint a more clear image of what Season 4 was trying to be. A lot of the Tom-centered episodes, for instance, are incredibly successful because of how they examine his relationship with Star: "Lake House Fever" is a perfect, almost slice-of-life episode that dances with the best of the series, and "Sad Teen Hotline" manages to address the duo's inevitable falling-out with the season's most sharply-focused comedic skills carrying it through what would otherwise be a perfunctory outing. The season also shines when it takes a step back from the insanity of its overarching narrative to build more on the series' cast of characters, with "The Monster and his Queen" painting a cute and perfectly-articulated portrait out of Eclipsa and Globgor's romance, and the penultimate episode of the series, "The Tavern at the End of the Multiverse," taking an almost Regular Show-esque level of abstraction by creating a bar on the literal edge of reality (one wall of the bar literally fades into nonexistence) for the core cast to hash out their problems before the season finale.

Those episodes, too, demonstrate the series' greatest asset to be its characters. Sure, there's a few that fall strangely flat, such as Kelly phasing in and out of complete irrelevance in the grand scheme of the story, but the relocation of the cast to Mewni from last season was the perfect opportunity to pull out the series' best characters. Janna, for instance, provides a nice, grounded sort of weirdness whenever she appears, with her deadpan delivery of the sort of bizarro antics she gets in always landing perfectly. But this season was a major spotlight for two characters: Tom, who proved his weight far exceeding being Star's (ex-)boyfriend with flashes of comedy and inherent likability, and Eclipsa, who allows the show to really illuminate up the gray area over the conceptualization of good and bad.

There's a lot, in that sense, that theoretically should pull Star vs. forward, but there's just a lack of a strong perspective. None of what the series has going for it is able to mask how much it meanders, and however picturesque of an ending "Cleaved" is doesn't excuse the deadening tedium that Season 4 sets into to make that finale work. Star vs. is massively enjoyable at its best, and its sizable fanbase is as solid proof as ever of its capabilities, but as time goes on, I feel it'll slip through the cracks, a symptom of never really having a strong voice of its own: good ideas, rough fart.

"Cleaved" Final Grade: A-.

Star vs. Season 4 Final Grade: B-.

Cumulative Series Grade: B.

To read the Star vs. reviews I've written in the past, CLICK HERE.

If you want to angrily tweet at me for having bad opinions, find me on Twitter @Matt_a_la_mode.