“Star vs The Forces of Evil” is a deconstruction of its own title
The more I meditated on it, I realized that SVTFOE’s title is not only a funky and unique way for the show to present its flamboyance, but as the show goes, it becomes something it satirizes.
“Star vs the Forces of Evil” is a polarized statement, implying that there’s Star Butterfly, fighting of bad guys and the vile aspects of the universe with her companions. The show played this straight at the first episodess, with Ludo and the whole race of monsters being treated almost like expendable goons and bad people that you’re not supposed to sympathize even if they did nothing to the protagonists and the latter just decided to mess with them. Like the scene where Marco wants to cheer Star up by getting her to beat up monsters.
But it got morally gray as time goes on. The monster characters are treated with dimensions, and Star is now becoming the defender of this race she used to label as “evil.” Our big-bad plot villains - well people we expect to be the villains - Buff Frog, Ludo, Eclipsa, and Globgor, they are not as we thought they were. Heck Eclipsa and Globgor aren’t even malicious in a single way (minus Globgor’s past) even if they are promoted as evil to us the audience before properly meeting them. And Buff Frog became a straight out supporting protagonist slash moral compass.
But now onto the more malicious villains in the show. Toffee was the closest to someone that is actually evil. He wanted to distrupt the seeds of monster-mewman peace and destroy the forces of magic. This stemmed from inherent discrimination against monsters and how they are oppressed by mewmans. This doesn’t justify his actions, and he is an outright murdered and an extremist, but you can see where is motivations came from. As per Word of God, the idea he was pushing was correct, that mewmans were treating them unfairly and their restrictive and authoritarian rule of magic is also unfair, but he took the extreme and violent approach instead of diplomacy. It probably relfected the monsters own fear and suspicion that the treaty won’t be enough to relinguish the subjugation mewmans and the Magic High Council were putting them through. Therefore, Toffee’s motivation are not purely self-centered; he cares for his people but had the wrong choices.
Next, Meteora which is easily a victim of circumstance. Her evil doings as Heinous and during her planned usurpation of the throne cannot be fully pardoned, but she is who she is because of the monster racism in Mewni. She grew in a toxic and abusive environment and grew into such person. Star admitted that if she was Meteora she would be angry too, and that’s realistic. Meteora is a three-dimensional character, a person that deserves empathy but at the same time a terrible individual. Reverting her into a baby didn’t erase her damage but gave her a second chance to grow to someone she deserved to have become. Meteora’s complex characterization is another proof of this non-polarized perspective of villains that the show has started to adopt.
On the other hand, characters that are planted to us as ‘with the good guys’ are starting to become the morally ambiguous people, and even the actual villains.
The Magical High Comission went from being strict rule makers into outright racists that act without thinking. Rhombulus, a character that was a semi-close confidant to Star, becomes an antagonist when trying to 'oust’ Globgor. He became the bad guy and not Globgor as we would’ve expected before.
Mina Loveberry did show extreme tendencies, but she still was fond with Star and considered her a mud sister; plus she showed vulnerability, loneliness, an inkling of sympathy, and undying loyalty (to Moon when her mom died and when she met her again last time as well as Solaria). But now she’s the main villain of season 4 because of her racism against monsters.
These previously established allies became the forces that Star needs to combat or be in conflict with (another reconstruction, as even if Star doesn’t agree with the MHC she doesn’t outright battle them).
But smartly, they didn’t just use these protagonist-to-antagonist shifts as a u-turn or a plot twist. The previously established characterizations of these characters are used to add dimension to them. They have reasons for what they are doing. MHC is truly concerned with the world of magic, but their methods are authoritarian and unjust. Mina isn’t able to move on and has been brainwashed to think that way. Both of them are stuck in a black and white point of view of good and evil, just like how we thought the show was going to portray the conflicts. A simplistic battle between good vs evil. But Star and we the audience looking from her perspective, grow to recognize that its more complicated than that.
Calling the forces Star is combatting “evil” is a generalization. There is no pure “evil” there is just Star, fighting for justice against and for morally grey people and factions.
