Review: Amphibia “True Colors”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Anne, the Plantars, Marcy, Sasha, and Grime return to Newtopia with the fully (as far as they know) Calamity Box to report to King Andrais. Sasha and Grime take this opportunity to enact their toad invasion, forcing everyone else to team up against the Toad Army and retake the kingdom. However, Sasha warns Anne that the king has hidden plans, which Anne won’t hear because Sasha has betrayed her for the last time. However, their warnings turn out to be true as Andrais reveals that his real goal is to use the music box to conquer other worlds. On top of that, he also lets slip that Marcy was the one who got the three girls trapped in Amphibia in the first place, having planned this since being told that her family would be moving out of state.

Anne is obviously hurt by yet another friend betrayal, but unites with her and Sasha to fight the king. Being a huge blue salamander who apparently owns a lightsaber, Andrais easily overpowers everyone, killing Frobo and almost killing Polly if not for her finally growing her legs. He manages to throw Sprig out the castle window, causing Anne to channel the power from her gem that is still in the box into her and almost take Andrais down, but the power fades. Marcy tries getting them home with the box, but is stabbed by Andrais, forcing the Plantars to end up in Los Angeles.

OUR TAKE

We finally have an OFFICIAL release of the second season finale. As many probably know by now, the episode was mysteriously pulled from the schedule right before it was supposed to air, but wasn’t kept from being released online briefly, so everyone ended up being able to see it without an official release. Even other Disney Channel cartoon creators like Dana Terrace were calling out that Disney did the Amphibia crew dirty on giving their show the proper premiere. But it’s finally here through legal means, so hopefully enough people did like me and chose to stay away from spoilers until today. So what are MY thoughts on this much hyped season finale?

IT’S…good. Not great, probably not even as good as the last finale, which I really loved. It checks off all the boxes for a good season finale, such as bringing just about everything from the entire season to the forefront to show how much the characters have grown, paying off seemingly minor hints that upend the whole situation, slam us massive revelations about characters and things, and set us up for a huge turning point that will be further explored in the next (and final) season. Season 2 was definitely a great expansion of the world that the first season introduced us to, with the introduction of the Newts, Marcy, and the Temples, along with all of the other new and interesting characters and objects that have become memorable parts of this series. It paid off Polly getting her legs, incorporated Hop Pop’s new acting chops, gave Sprig an awesome fight against Grime, gave Anne and EVEN BETTER and incredibly animated fight against Andrais when she went Super Saiyan Blue, and left us with her finally home, but at the cost of her friends.

So, what’s my problem? Why isn’t this finale amazing in my eyes? Well, in short, I think this needed to be two parts. One about fighting off the toad invasion, and then a second to be about Andrais revealing his plans and outing Marcy. There was just simply too much story to fit into just twenty two minutes and it ended up suffering for it. It was definitely too much GOOD story, which is a good problem to have, but it’s also not to its benefit when the reveals such as the toad takeover or Andrais being evil were things that many people saw coming long before. So while this felt earned, it also felt like the audience is far ahead of the characters, which makes it hard to relate to the moment. Thankfully we DID have moments that felt fresh, like Marcy turning out to have her twisted sense of adventuring being an escape from moving away from her parents, paying off that brief image in the opening of her looking mysterious and schemey. Likewise, we have Anne finally fully utilizing the blue gem’s powers, something that it looks like we’ll be seeing more of next season and hopefully something we’ll see from Sasha and Marcy too. And so it all evens out to being good, just not great like it could of have been.

But what REALLY dragged this down is the decision to include the next season’s opening at the end. I don’t know if this was meant to offset Marcy being stabbed, but it COMPLETELY THREW OFF THE TONE. Not only is it a pretty clear DOWNGRADE for a theme, the upbeat nature of the visuals (for the most part) totally clashes with the grim nature of the ending of the episode. Not to mention, even if it seemed unlikely that Marcy was going to die from the lightsaber stab, YOU DIDN’T NEED TO SHOW THAT SHE WAS RECOVERING SECONDS AFTER THE STAB. I’m plenty interested in seeing how the Plantars adapt to human world life, and how Anne reconnects with her family after her time away, plus all the matters with Sasha still being in Amphibia and Andrais trying to invade, but literally ALL OF THIS could have waited until the third season actually started. So consider all of that a majorly dropped ball, which sadly leaves a really sour taste in my mouth on a pretty good finale. Hopefully we’ll cover the final season when it airs, so that I’m not left with this as the final word on a great show. Because it really is worth your time and I will be tuning in for that final season regardless.