What Happened to Marcy is the Stuff of Nightmares!

Amphibia S3 Episode 7A/7B Review

In a recent video posted by The Roundtable on YouTube, AwestruckVox talked about how some fans of Amphibia aren’t as hyped about the change of setting to Earth as they once were. Among the issues Vox mentioned, there was the lack of urgency to get back to Amphibia and stop Andrias, or addressing the trauma of “True Colors.” In addition, Amphibia itself has hardly appeared, save for a single episode showing what happened to Sasha and Grime. Fans have had no word about the fate of Marcy, which can be frustrating. Fortunately, that all changes this week as we learn why Andrias saved Marcy. And it’s the stuff of nightmares.

No, seriously. This is something that Disney should’ve put a warning up for.

Spider-Sprig

With the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home a month away from the time of this post, the hype for Spider-Man’s reaching a fever pitch. Thus, it cannot be a coincidence that Matt and his team decided to make this episode. Inspired by a Kamen Rider-esque movie, Sprig decides to become a real-life superhero called Frog-Man. Unfortunately, his motive’s are…less than pure. Right away, Polly calls this for what it is: Sprig wants to get attention for himself because he’s growing frustrated at having to disguise himself on Earth. And if shows like The Boys have proven anything, it’s that untrained superheroes do it for the attention, that’s a recipe for disaster. Not to mention that the Plantar’s need to keep a low profile now that they have the FBI onto them.

Polly’s opinion gets validated when a neighborhood safety officer named Robert goes crazy with jealousy and tries to take Frog-Man down. Thanks to finding the remaining arm from Cloak-Bot, he does a good job at it, too. The two’s battle, while epic, ends up causing a lot of property damage and nearly kills Robert’s granddaughter, making them both realize they’re being attention hogs and cease their activities. Robert still goes to jail, but he does acknowledge that this is a fair outcome.

This segment was a fun little homage to superheroes, especially Spider-Man. However, it also points out that, while cool, having untrained, superpowered vigilantes run around could do more harm than good. In other words, leave the crimefighting to the professionals. Or at least teach people how to be superheroes like in My Hero Academia.

Olivia & Yunan

The second half of the episode is where things really get heated. Following a flashback to when Marcy first came to Amphibia, we now see the state the land’s in. Andrias’ army is destroying Amphibia, strip-mining it for resources and enslaving the populace to build his army. And when Andrias makes it clear that he’s ready to suck everything dry, Olivia and Yunan hit their breaking point. Deciding to take Andrias down, the two Newts decide to rescue Marcy from deep within the bowels of the castle. However, Andrias doesn’t leave her healing tank unguarded.

Immediately after freeing Marcy (who’s now fully healed), the trio’s attacked by an AI that creates a holographic illusion of their worst fears. For Olivia, it’s her late mother admonishing her for letting Andrias destroy Amphibia. For Yunan, it’s a grubhog that almost ate her hand as a kid. But for Marcy? She gets a monstrous fusion of Anne and Sasha berating her for her selfish actions.

Remember, Marcy convinced Anne and Sasha to take the Calamity Box and never told them about what it could do. Because of that, their friendship’s strained to the point where it may never recover. While she didn’t have to deal with it during “True Colors”, there’s nothing to stop her from finally acknowledging her dumb mistake. The three are able to overcome the VR, but are too late to escape Andrias, and even worse, the Night.

What is The Core?

Since it’s initial reveal, fans have been calling the eldritch monster that Andrias answers to “The Night,” a reference to the prophecy surrounding the Calamity Box and the Human Trio. However, it’s this episode where we finally learns its in-series name and purpose: the Core. According to Andrias, it’s a supercomputer created centuries ago and made up of the collective minds of the smartest beings in Amphibia. Using the beings they captured from other worlds, they did this to cheat death for some unknown purpose. Now, they want a new body to serve as their host, and they’ve chosen the smartest being in Amphibia, Marcy.

The final moments of the episode are the stuff of nightmares as we watch helplessly as the Core uploads itself into Marcy, fully possessing her body in the process, and likely imprisoning her inside her own mind. Then, just to hammer things home, the credits roll with no music, no background, nothing.

Poor Marcy.

Regardless of how selfish and misguided Marcy’s actions were, I don’t think I could bring myself to truly hate her for what she did. All she wanted was to keep the only friends she knew, and now, she’s suffering a fate worse than death. Worse, if Andrias and The Core have their way, the beautiful Amphibia will become a wasteland. In other words, things are dark as ever.

There are less than two episodes to go before the season goes into hiatus, so the frustration fans must feel is understandable. We want to know how the Box got to Earth. We want to know Sasha and the residents of Amphibia are okay. Most of all, we want Marcy to be all right. Yet it’s likely that we will have to wait for the final act of the show to see all of that come to pass. With this context, it makes sense why Matt and the show’s team want to get all the one-off episodes out of the way. Because something tells me that when the final act begins, we’re not going to have a chance to rest.

As far as one-off stories go, I think Spider-Sprig was a nice tribute to Spider-Man and superheroes in general. As for the second half, easily the best episode since “True Colors.” I got nothing but praise for it.

I Give “Spider-Sprig” a 3.5/5 and “Olivia & Yunan” a 4.5/5

Stray Observations

• Loved the Luigi Reference with that pizza guy! and the Gamecube. Or rather, Gamepyramid?

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• Olivia’s Mother has seashells in her hair that make her resemble Princess Leia’s famous hairstyle.

• Those Grubhogs spit acid, remember?

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