#tonal problems

Season 3A had a lot of things it had to achieve, and it had a lot of character and story threads it needed to wrap up before the second half of the season came to shift the focus towards the endgame.

It had to bring about Darcy as the final Big Bad, it had to show the events leading up to Sasha’s face heel turn, it had to deal with Andrias preparations for his coming invasions, and it had to deal with Anne’s return home to her family and everything that came with it.

Now let's get Sasha and Marcy’s stories out of the way first, before I get into the mountain that is Anne’s Story this season.

Turning point is my favorite episode in season 3A, closely followed by Olivia and Yunan.

It had one simple job. It had to showcase how the events of True Colors affected Sasha, and how she dealt with losing absolutely everything, in large part due to her own flaws and choices. It also had to show how she made the decision to be better, and truly become a Hero.

And frankly, in my opinion it succeeded with flying colors.

Turning point is the moment Sasha’s entire storyline has been building up towards. Every moment of her love showing through, every moment of doubt, her betrayal of Anne, and Anne in turn smashing her own heart to pieces, and her choice to ultimately stand and die against Andrias simply to buy Anne and Marcy has all been building up to this one single episode. And it’s great. It is a worthy followup to True Colors.

On Marcy’s end Olvia and Yunan also had one job. To show the aftermath of Marcy getting killed, and the culmination of her entire storyline with Andrias ending with her becoming a literal puppet.

And just like Turning Point, it is absolutely great, showcasing Marcy’s regrets, her sadness, and above all her fears that she, just like Sasha, has broken her relationships to pieces. It’s not AS good as turning point(largely due to having to devote a lot of time to the titular duo, rather than being exclusively Marcy focused) but just like Turning Point, it serves as the natural ending of Marcy’s storyline in Newtopia, where the girl who was Andrias puppet, now becomes bound by the strings of the real puppeteer.

just like Turning Point, it is an excellent followup to True Colors.

Which finally brings us to Anne’s part of the storyline.

But before we fully delve into that, i want to make a quick comparison between season 3A of Amphibia, to season 3B of Avatar the last Airbender, because it will serve as a very nice point of comparison to how to write this kind of story to perfection, and also because it is astonishing just how similar these two stories are.

Both Amphibia and Avatar season 2 finales end at the scene of their heroes greatest failures, and the following stories is about the aftermath of the villains winning a decisive and total victory that allows them to consolidate their hold on power.

Both have the main cast split into separate storylines that are still connected.

Both of them involve their protagonists going home after 2 seasons of them trying to achieve that goal.

Both of them then have them finally interact with parents who have only appeared very briefly in flashbacks, but who’s shadows have loomed large since the series began.

Both have the villain send a deadly assassin to hunt down and kill the hero while being discreet about it.

Both half seasons try to balance silly, fun stories, while the threat of a darker story is always looming in the background, leading up to the end of the half season where the reality of it all comes back in force leading to a much darker second half.

And it’s astonishing how in terms of it’s story, Amphibia season 3A manages to stumble at nearly every single point where Avatar managed to stick to the landing.

However, saying that Amphibia season 3A is just a subpar Avatar season 3A isn’t fair. because there are points where Amphibia manages to do things better than Avatar, and there are plenty of missteps where Amphibia fell on it’s face even outside of this comparison.

Now, before we get into the plot, let’s begin with 3A’s biggest Strength. It's a comedy, and really good one at that. 3A is hilarious. absolute comedy gold. If you judge Amphibia mostly on it’s Humor you’ll probably love the season, for being the most consistently funny part of the show.

However, Amphibia is an overarching story driven by it’s characters, and so we have to ask, how does it fare in that department?

Well, there are 5 different subplots in Anne’s story.

1- Dealing with the aftermath of True Colors.

2- Her overall relationship with her families, and how she tries to balance them in the face of everything while going through the ups and downs of a familial relationship.

3- Andrias trying to Kill her, and subsequently, her newfound powers.

4- Trying to get back to Amphibia to beat Andrias once and for all.

5- Dealing with the FBI wanting to capture the Plantars.

Starting with Anne dealing with the aftermath of True Colors, we get right into the BIGGEST issue with season 3A. It is an issue that frankly poisons the entire thing, all the way up to the season finale, and it is by far the thing fans are most upset about.

Because while Anne HAS changed as a result of True Colors, the season essentially pretends that Anne’s relationships with Marcy and Sasha, and the complete destruction of those relationships DIDN’T happen.

This is a HUGE issue with this season, and frankly it’s one that many, many people just can’t look past. To use another comparison, it’s like how the first two Witcher games essentially pretends that Yennifer and Ciri don’t exist, and how practically no one of Geralt's many, many friends ever bother to mention to the amnesiac witcher that “Hey, you have a girlfriend and a daughter, maybe should go try and find them”. Just like that case, Anne has two people who are more important to her than anyone else except her family, and all through the season she doesn’t care to mention them, or show a single sign(outside of the new normal and one moment i’ll get into below) that she’s worried about them.

The narrative AND the characters essentially pretends that outside of a very select few moments, Sasha and Marcy don’t exist, because if they were brought up, then the mood would darken very quickly, and it would be very, very hard to balance the implications and the supposedly Devastating impact the season finale had on Anne, with the cheerful and funny atmosphere the show tries to have this season.

Not only is this terrible storytelling, but it also completely works against the main thesis of this story, that Amphibia is about the relationship between these girls. Because frankly, the way the story is written, Anne has moved on.

Marcy and Sasha’s storylines worked so amazingly well, because despite only being one episode each, they both understood, and worked with this fact in mind. That the relationship between the girls was the big, important thing that this entire series has all been carefully built around.

But meanwhile, Anne just doesn’t showcase that she cares about either of them, or their fates, right up until christmas episode decides, oh she cares after all.

I’ll be blunt, these three letters that Anne sends aren’t earned in the slightest. AT ALL. They are a climax to an arc that should have happened this season, but flat out DIDN'T. Anne in this season should have had to at least TRY to come to terms with the events of True Colors, and how she feels about Sasha and Marcy at this moment. But that didn’t happen, and so here at the penultimate episode of the season, Anne sends a letter because she learned something about family, which frankly just goes to show that she didn’t understand Sasha and Marcy at all. Both of those girls WANTED to stay in Amhibia, and away from their parents forever, and maybe, just maybe, there are deeper reasons for that we haven’t delved into yet.

If that is what they were going for, then that is one thing, and I will happily admit I was wrong when we finally get some insight into Their parents and their relationships, but the fact that this is the ONLY time in the entire season after the premiere where Anne shows that she cares, just makes the entire thing ring, so, so hollow. 

And what really sucks is that this IS a good, logical endpoint.

This season SHOULD have had moments that were all leading up to this moment, moments where Anne almost against her will reminisced on her old friends, moments where she’s worried, moments like how she broke down crying in Amphibia talking about her mom.

But there isn't any of that. AT ALL.

And I know what the creators were going for, I know they have said that Anne is Compartmentalizing HARD. But they needed to actually SHOW that, not TELL us about it.

We needed moments where the mask cracked, where Anne Showed that no, she was not fine, but she forced herself to act like she was.

As it stands, it is an entirely valid reading of Anne in season 3A, that she has flat out moved on from Sasha and Marcy, and that saving them is a very distant secondary concern compared to stopping Andrias. And the fact that you can read it that way, is a TERRIBLE mistake on the part on the writers, given that the ENTIRE rest of the series is supposed to be about showcasing that Anne DOES love and care about them still. It’s always going to stick in my mind that Anne spent months, not thinking about, nor showing any signs of worry about Sasha and Marcy.

I won’t say it completely knee caps the rest of the series, because i still do believe in their bond, thanks to the amazing job the rest of the series did in establishing it, but man, whatever Anne’s reaction to seeing Sasha again, be it shock, anger, worry or otherwise is going to be jarring as HELL compared to her attitude in season 3A.

and it didn't HAVE to be.

Now to point 2, and a much, much better part of the season. Anne’s family.

Now, in this post Mortem, i'm going to compare Amphibia 3a to Avatar’s 3a a lot, and it will mostly be in regards to how Amphibia stumbles, where Avatar runs. But the exception is here, because if there is one part that Amphibia does better than Avatar, it is how much better and fleshed out characters the Boonchuys are, compared to their counterpart from that series, Ozai.

Now admittingly, their overall role is a bit different in that Ozai is the big bad, but in terms of season 3A, both of them serve the role of the parental father figure the protagonists in question have been striving to be reunited with since episode one.

And if there is one, chink in the perfection of Avatar’s greatness, it’s Ozai. The Firelord is a good final villain for Aang to face, and the way he influenced his children has a lot of story weight, but as a character, there really isn’t much to Ozai. He’s an evil, warmongering tyrant, that is the ultimate embodiment of everything wrong with his imperialistic society.

He is a character that entertains the audience with just how over the top evil he is, the spectacular visuals of his firebending feats, and the fantastic performance of Mark Hamil. To compare him to Andrias, he is much, much less interesting, less developed, and frankly nowhere near as good a villain as the old salamander is.

By comparison, the Boonchuys are a blast. Character wise, they are far and away the best part of 3A.

Through this seasons we explore the two in full, we learn how they tick, we learn their desires, how they handle stress, how long it took for Anne’s mom to give her up for dead after holding out hope for months, we learn how they still take great pride in their culture and associates with their fellow Thai immigrants, we learn their strengths, their personal flaws, and how they react to suddenly having to guard a family of aliens, but do it anyway despite their hardships.

They are VERY well developed characters, and absolutely worth watching. But even here, with these two winners, Amphibia stumbles several times. But to explain why, we need to go over Cloakbot, the Amphibian equivalent of Avatar’s Combustion man.

Cloakbot’s narrative role is to be Andrias way of cleaning up the loose mess that is Anne Booncuy. Symbolically however, he and his existence symbolizes how Anne isn’t able to be honest with her parents, and so she lies to them, not trusting them with everything, and trying to handle everything herself, because her ability to fully put her trust in other people has been severely damaged in True Colors.

Narratively speaking, the entire first part of 3A is great. it’s easily the best part, and it follows the natural story structure of set up-build up-pay off… all the way up until right before the end.

The story introduces a conflict, a large part is fueled by Anne’s own shortcomings, and she has several encounters with her foe, leading up to a moment where she has to come clean and make up with her parents.

Cloakbot serves his purpose as a villain very well… but he still falls short of Combustion Man, not due to anything he does, but because while the Western Air Temple ended brilliantly, Anne-Sterminator… Well it makes a massive mistake.

Anne-Sterminator would have worked absolute wonders as the first big climax of Anne’s arc this season… but then, when Anne actually has to tell her parents exactly what she’s been keeping from them, we skip it.

The simple fact, is that for this story to work, we NEEDED an episode where Anne just explained everything to her parents. We needed to see her actually talk about Sasha and Marcy. And since their big, character climax is to ultimately let Anne go off on her own, back to Amphibia, we NEEDED to hear what the Boonchuy’s thoughts on all of this was. We needed to see them discuss what they just learned in private, to get their thoughts on it all, and where they stood on the matter at that moment.

Without that, their eventual choice to let Anne go in Escape to Amphibia, lacks a lot of the punch it should have had, though admittedly it’s at the very least somewhat built up through the season, so it’s nowhere near as bad as Anne’s out of nowhere letters.

Still, even with this easily avoidable shortcoming, Anne’s parents are still a great addition to the story.

I just wish their daughter was as well handled this season.

However, the show's refusal to showcase this talk between Anne and her parents is yet another example of how Amphibia refuses to talk about Sasha and Marcy, because it wants to have it’s lighthearted tone, and pretend the fully dark aspects don’t exist at the moment.

it was such a blatant, giftwrapped opportunity for the writers to show that Anne still deeply, deeply cared about Sasha and Marcy, and the fact it skipped it, more than anything goes to show how much Anne’s 3A story refuses to commit to actually following up on True Colors.

and on to point 3. Andrias attempts to kill Anne, and the show exploring her powers.

Andrias attempts at killing Anne this season is very much one of it’s better parts, as the old Salamander not only manages to be hilarious, but also goes to show that he is a great villain. There isn’t much to complain about here.

But you know something i CAN complain a LOT about?

Anne’s complete, and total aversion to exploring her powers.

This is one of the single, worst written parts of Amphibia, and I would go so far as to call it a blatant plot hole, that Anne doesn't even TRY to figure out her powers.

It is completely unbelievable that a teenager, in particular one who is constantly under threat from deadly foes, would NOT experiment with her powers, and try and figure out how they work. ESPECIALLY when by all accounts, she can turn these powers on as she pleases.

It is terrible writing, and it also creates a lot of forced situations, because there are SO many times in this season, where Anne could solve this problem by just turning her hair blue, and unleashing her awesome powers. and she doesn’t even try. 

When i predicted what would happen in Escape from Amphibia, I based a lot of my assumptions on the idea that this would finally be the episode where Anne was forced to just fully unleash her powers and that the episode would be about that, because being assaulted by a task force of the FBI really is a point where any sane individual would bust out their superform.

However, what actually happens, just highlights how stupid the show has gotten by making the choice for Anne to not use her powers at all, despite having every single reason to do so. There are two moments where Anne SHOULD have used her powers, and she doesn't. Seeing the Plantars being taken by the FBI loses ALL weight when you realize that Anne at Any point could turn her Calamity Powers on, and wipe the floor with them, and similarly the scene where she and the rest of the crew is jailed, also becomes incredibly stupid when again, Anne could break out at any point if she tried to.

It is flat out awful writing, and while it might not be as frustrating on a character level as her refusal to even acknowledge Marcy and Sasha’s existence this season, it is even more stupid from a logical level.

The simple fact is that the creators wanted to explore her Calamity powers in 3B, and wasn’t prepared, or interested in writing their stories this half season with the fact Anne now has high level superpowers she can turn on and off whenever she wants to. It is flat out dumb, “this show is for kids” level of writing.

and now to point 4, how the show botched the actual return part.

Now this point is pretty easy to summarize. The problem is that enough episodes and time were not devoted to it.

There was an ongoing story that was handled relatively well, but when the endgame came, it all came down to Terri the scientist. 

That’s not a problem in an out of itself. The fact that Terri was introduced in one episode, and the next time she showed up two episodes later, she already had the solution in hand, having come to it offscreen, is.

It is LUDICROUSLY rushed, and it’s pretty clear the writers went, “oh shit, we’re at the halfway point, we need to get back to Amphibia NOW!”.

We needed at least 1 more episode with the focus being to build the portal for it to not feel completely rushed and sloppy.

As it stands, while this storyline had some nice moments and characters, the simple fact is that Terri was introduced far too late into the season. And it’s not like the show didnt have episodes it could have dropped to focus on it.

and finally, there is point 5. The FBI plot.

Now I want to make it clear that I LIKE Mr X. he was thoroughly entertaining, and pretty funny. If I was rewriting season 3A, I would NOT cut him or his subplot.

The problem with the plot is the finale. 

Because frankly speaking, the ending of Escape to Amphibia should have been a terrifying ending, just from a logical perspective.

Anne, her family and her friends have commited quite serious crimes, big enough that I have no doubt the government would not bat an eye at all of them “disappearing” with no questions. But even ignoring that, they are all guilty of having broken into a military base, which in the USA carries a minimum sentence of 6 months, and given all the other shit they pulled, probably way more.

And that's without taking the alien harboring into account.

Frankly speaking, Mr X holds all the cards, and has an entire squad at his command, in the room. This really should have been a tense, dark moment, a mirror of how Anne left Amphibia behind.

Unfortunately it’s all ruined at the end, where instead of arresting them, he just sighs and preps to let Mrs Boonchuy yell at him, destroying ALL tension. Even if he carts all of them off to jail immediately afterwards, the danger the show built up by involving the legal government has been completely eroded as a threat from a narrative point of view.

I think it’s dumb as hell how they got there, but I could at the very least have appreaciated if all that build up actually led to an ending where there ended up being a price for defying the government. As it is, Mr X, for as entertaining he was, ended up being little more than yet another of the many one off villains Amphibia has, the only thing that made him different was that he stuck around a bit longer.

Frankly speaking, as i’ve said a lot before in this post, the show just wasn’t willing to explore the darker implications of the story ideas they brought up. There was a chance here to have 3A end of a dark, yet interesting high note, but the show just wasn’t interested in even trying to repeat True Colors on Earth, and that frankly is really, really disappointing.

One of the reasons True Colors is so good and memorable, was that it promised a decisive shift into a more mature story, where Amphibia would explore the darker aspects of it’s world and it’s characters.

Season 3A, completely drops the ball in that regard.

Season 3A ends on the promise that NOW things are getting back to basics, that THIS is where it will finally pay off everything it set up in True Colors. It essentially gives up, and says, ok you sat through 3A, now pretend that the tone from True colors is still here and strong. It is jarring as hell, and not in a good way.

Which brings me to my final comparison to Avatar Season 3A.

Do you know why Day of the Black Sun, and the way it heralded in the darker aspects wasn't jarring? 

Because while it had episodes like the Headband, Sokka’s Master, and Nightmares and DayDreams, it also had episodes Like Awakening, The Puppetmaster and the Beach. It struck a balance. And so, when the time came to get back on track with The Day of the Black Sun, Avatar still had the tone that Crossroads of Destiny had set, half a season before.

Commander Anne, will not have that. The tone that True Colors set is GONE.

Amphibia could have balanced 3A with dark and lighthearted episodes, but the fact is, it didn't. It rejected darker moments at almost every turn.

And it doesn’t even work from the perspective that this is a brutal shock either, because while Anne and The Plantars might be shocked by what happened to Amphibia while they were goofing off on Earth, the Audience is not. We saw this kind of destruction in Olivia and Yunan, and while it’s certainly been kicked up a notch, it’s not particularly shocking.

Amphibia desperately wants you to forget that a couple of episodes ago Hop Pop was goofing off in Hollywood, while Sprig was playing superhero. And I might be more inclined to forget that, if Anne’s storyline hadn’t completely butchered the tone True Colors set.

Now, I'm sure 3B will actually be pretty good given it’s a return to the plot we actually care about, but I also firmly believe that when people watch Amphibia in the future, people will say to newbies that they should just skip most of season 3A. Because frankly, the overall story will probably flow much, much better without it.