Star vs. the Forces of Evil
Star vs. the Forces of Evil
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Star vs. the Forces of Evil

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Star vs. the Forces of Evil

Star vs. the Forces of Evil is an American animated magical girl television series created by Daron Nefcy and developed by Jordana Arkin and Dave Wasson, which aired on Disney Channel and Disney XD. It is the first Disney XD series created by a woman, and the third overall for Disney Television Animation (following Pepper Ann from 1997 and Doc McStuffins from 2012).

The series follows the adventures of Star Butterfly (voiced by Eden Sher), the young turbulent heir to the royal throne in the dimension of Mewni, who is sent to Earth to mellow her reckless behavior. There, she befriends and becomes roommates with human Marco Diaz (Adam McArthur) and begins a semi-normal life in Echo Creek, attending school and meeting new friends. Throughout the first season, the two travel to exotic dimensions using dimensional scissors while preventing the Mewman monster Ludo (Alan Tudyk), and later, Toffee (Michael C. Hall), from stealing Star's magic wand. As the series progresses, Star and Marco fall in love with each other, meet new friends, take on new enemies, and travel to even more weird and wild dimensions.

Star vs. the Forces of Evil typically follows a format of two 11-minute-long independent "segments" per episode for the first three seasons. The fourth season has a few more half-hour episodes than the first three. Greenlit for Disney Channel in 2013, the first episode of the series aired there as a preview on January 18, 2015. The series then moved to Disney XD on March 30, 2015, where its premiere on Disney XD became the most-watched animated series debut in the network's history. The fourth and final season premiered on March 10, 2019, with the series returning to Disney Channel. The series ended on May 19, 2019, with the episode "Cleaved".

Star Butterfly is a magical princess from the dimension of Mewni and the heiress to the royal throne of the Butterfly Kingdom. From tradition, she is given the family heirloom wand on her 14th birthday and was known to be the most energetic and silly child through the royal family. After she accidentally sets fire to the family castle, her parents, King River and Queen Moon Butterfly, decide that a safer option is to send her to Earth as a foreign exchange student, so she can continue her magic training there. She befriends student Marco Diaz and lives with his family in suburban Los Angeles while attending Echo Creek Academy. Going on a series of misadventures using "dimensional scissors" that can open portals, Star and Marco must deal with everyday school life while protecting Star's wand from falling into the hands of Ludo, a half-bird half-man creature from Mewni who commands a group of monsters.

As the series progresses, new, more threatening antagonists appear in the show, including the mysterious monster Toffee and former Queen Eclipsa's half-Mewman, half-monster daughter Meteora Butterfly. The plot shifts from the defense of the wand from Ludo to a bigger and more complex narrative focusing on the various conflicts revolving around prejudice against monsters, the rulership of Mewni, Mewni's origins, and the very nature of magic itself. Several mysteries about the past of the Butterfly royal family are also unveiled, mostly revolving around Eclipsa Butterfly, the "Queen of Darkness" and the most infamous member in the Butterfly family history. Several secondary protagonists also appear more prominently or join the series in subsequent seasons, including Star's Mewman best friend Pony Head (who is a floating unicorn head), Star's half-demon ex-boyfriend Tom, the mischievous Janna, and Magic High Commission member Hekapoo; Queen Moon also takes on a bigger role.

Nefcy said she originally created Star as a girl who wanted to be a magical girl like Sailor Moon, and Marco as a boy who was obsessed with Dragon Ball Z and karate; they would be enemies instead of friends. In this earlier version, Star did not have any actual magical powers; she instead would approach and solve problems primarily through the force of her determination alone. Nefcy began pitching the show to Cartoon Network during the time when she was in her third year of college, when the network was actively soliciting the creation of pilots for The Cartoonstitute. However, the network did not green light her vision for the show and was not made. Nefcy originally placed Star in the fourth grade, reflecting on a time in her own childhood when she held a self-described obsession with the animated series Sailor Moon. However, Nefcy later adjusted the character's age to fourteen during the time she made her series proposition to Disney rather than Cartoon Network originally. An executive at that time made the suggestion for Star to have actual magical powers. Nefcy worked this concept into the show's current iteration, along with the idea of different dimensions as show locations, the framing device of Star being a foreign exchange student, and the plot aspects relating to Star being a princess and the subsequent consequences of her royal birthright. Nefcy said that the overall concept has evolved over about six years.

In addition to Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z, Nefcy has said that she had heavy influence in her youth from the animated Japanese shows Magic Knight Rayearth, Revolutionary Girl Utena and Unico, the last of which featured a blue unicorn. She also cited shows unrelated to Japanese animation such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and was influenced by independent comic series such as Scott Pilgrim and The Dungeon. With regards to the development of more strong female characters, Nefcy said that she "looked at TV over the years and I have had to go to Japan when I was younger to find the cartoons that had the characters that I wanted to see. It was always a question of 'Well, why isn't that on TV in the U.S.?'"

One of the concepts she likes about the show is that it does not make high school the most important experience for teenagers. She also likes that Star does her own thing instead of being concerned about fitting in. Nefcy did not want the gimmick about keeping the magic powers a secret from others as typical of magical girl shows, so she had the students already know about it and Marco's parents as well. She also portrays Star as not really a superhero as she does not specifically go after super-villains except when they attack her, and that she does not really save people. Nefcy said that the episodes balance comedy and drama: "we really want our characters to feel like teenagers and have them going through the normal emotions that teenagers go through, but in this magical setting."

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