Nightmare Fuel / Amphibia Season 3

Now that the true villain's been revealed and the stakes are higher than ever before, this season promises to be darker and more serious than ever before...

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General

• Going with the dark ending to "True Colors", the new season opening shows that the threats Anne and the Plantars have to face have risen to a whole new level.
  • Anne and the Plantars are shown running away from what appears to be an advanced robotic assassin sent by Andrias after them. Far from sitting on his laurels, the would-be conqueror is clearly attempting to eliminate Anne by any means, even attacking her in her home dimension before he’s finished his preparations for the main event.
  • Anne is shown fleeing with the Plantars from what appears to be government agents with police and helicopters in pursuit, making it clear that, whilst Andrias is the bigger threat overall, she's still got her hands full trying to keep her Found Family out of the hands of the authorities as well, lest the Plantars be subjected to government experimentation.
  • Snippets of Andrias' planned invasion are shown, including what looks like a Humongous Mecha that deploys battalions of Mecha-Mooks. When the invasion kicks off in full, it's going to be big, and involve everybody on both sides of the dimensional divide between Earth and Amphibia, with innocent civilians on both sides at risk due to Andrias' megalomaniacal ambitions.
  • A Season 3 sneak peek apparently reveals the reason for Andrias sparing Marcy after running her through in the season 2 finale. It's so his master can perform Demonic Possession on her, with Marcy's head being covered by a face-obscuring helm with horns (or something resembling an axolotl's gills), her body unnaturally contouring and swaying as the master props her upright like a twisted human puppet (complete with sickening cracking noises) before its eyes open on the helm, showing that whatever it is, it's neither wholly organic nor mechanical like most of the foes the girls have faced in Amphibia so far. Worse still, one of its eyes is present on Marcy's chest, right where Andrias stabbed her, implying that this possession of her body is the only thing sustaining Marcy aside from the medical equipment Andrias strapped her into. And then there's its "voice". Oh, and just when you think it won't get scarier, it ends with a Jump Scare that shows Marcy's new Slasher Smile.
    The master: Don't you think it's time to say goodbye to those childhood friends of yours?

The New Normal

• When making their way back to Anne's house, Anne and the Plantars discuss their plans going forward, bringing up the pressing issue of Anne intending to return to Amphibia to both send the Plantars back home and save Sasha and Marcy from Andrias. Anne's parents just got their baby girl back from a Death World they didn't know she was trapped in for months, and at some point, they're going to be forced to face the fact that Anne has to return to that world of danger, with a psychotic madman determined to end her to further his Evil Plan lurking in wait, in order to save both worlds. Throughout the episode, Anne and the Plantars end up having to hide the high stakes set in True Colours and pretend to her family that everything's fine, when the weight of her new responsibilities is clearly weighing on Anne in private, something which the Plantars worriedly note about her. That's a nightmarish scenario for any parent to face, and even more so for the Boonchuys, because Anne's powers mean that she can't shirk the responsibility of stopping Andrias in favor of anybody else.
  • Speaking of said powers, it's only lightly touched upon, but Anne is clearly unsettled by her strange new abilities, especially now that she's in an environment where they're not as useful for survival and instead mark her out as being as strange and otherworldly as the Plantars are. Even back in front of her own house, Anne is downcast and overwhelmed by what her new abilities are and what they mean for her going forward, because nobody can explain the purpose she got these powers for, or if they're a permanent part of her going forward. The only person who seems to have any clue what they are is Andrias, and not only is he evil, the whole reason she flew into the fit of Unstoppable Rage that caused her to unlock them was because he tried to murder Sprig.
    • In the episode's climax, Anne's Calamity Box powers make a triumphant return, and when she uses them, even in a partially-charged state weaker than the full transformation she showed in "True Colors", Anne is still fast enough to Flash Step straight to the Cloak-Bot before it can react and strong enough that a single blow from her shreds its outer coating, leaving it a mess of exposed wiring. This is a terrifying level of strength in the hands of a young 13-year old girl, and Anne herself is noticeably intimidating when she's using them, gaining a Voice of the Legion and a Death Glare against the target of her wrath. Afterward, though it's still a weaker activation of her powers, Anne collapses unconscious again, and afterwards notes that using her powers feels 'bad' somehow, implying that as useful as the abilities are, there's some unknown cost that comes with gaining such extraordinary power. Anne can't even move her arms to open the car door afterwards, implying that using the full force of her powers, using them for too long, or even using them when she's already tired might have severe repercussions for her. This seems to be foreshadowing a Heroic RRoD, which only makes the aforementioned awful scenario Mr and Mrs Boonchuy will inevitably face even worse, especially since there's nothing stopping their little girl suffering that right in front of them.
    • Even if it ends up preventing her from adapting to her new powers quickly enough, no one can blame her for setting a Godzilla Threshold; she doesn't understand them, there are no potential mentors on Earth as far as she or the audience can tell, and they knock her out every time she uses them.
• Andrias is worried enough about Anne's powers that he sends a Cloak-Bot capable of turning invisible to kill her. Whilst the audience sometimes gets the benefit of seeing its translucent outline while it's in 'stealth mode', that doesn't always happen, and it's impossible to tell where the Cloak-Bot is unless it interacts with the environment around it somehow. This is the same effect the Plantars and Anne experience when fighting it, only being able to tell where it is by using the food products around them to See the Invisible.
  • The Cloak-Bot itself is also a fairly terrifying opponent for the heroes to face off with, featuring a more threatening, sharp, and angular design than the initial robot creations Andrias made, and featuring a high degree of intelligence. It can track Anne through the Calamity Box energy she's emitting almost the instant it arrives on Earth, and when it draws near her, it gives no sign of its presence until it's ready to restrain and impale her on its Absurdly Sharp Claws. The only reason Anne's spared the instant it gets its hands on her is that some nearby refrigerator magnets disrupt its cloaking technology as it approaches them, giving Sprig enough forewarning to react to the assassin's attack and distract it from landing the killing blow. If not for that lucky accident that none of the Plantars even realize had happened, the Cloak-Bot would have killed Anne before any of them could stop it. Even worse, this robot is programmed to adapt to all previous obstacles that give it trouble, and as long as it's tracking Anne through her energy signature, there's a chance it can assassinate her while she's sleeping.
• Upon revealing Marcy's survival, hooked up to the healing tank in the throne room of his Ominous Floating Castle, Andrias tells his unconscious captive that her part in the events to come is just beginning. Anybody who's seen the season 3 sneak peek knows what he's referring to, but the way he says this raises the question if he only planned to do this to Marcy due to needing to work around having to stab her in "True Colors", or if he always intended this outcome for her from the beginning.
  • Relatedly, though it's Played for Laughs, it's shown that Andrias' goofy personality wasn't entirely a facade, and he also specifically requests his assassin to get him a copy of Marcy's favorite book series that she introduced him to and some potato chips while it has the opportunity. Though funny, this is contrasted against his sincere threats against Anne and the others, outright telling the robot to 'kill the girl', showing that Andrias is deliberately choosing to act in such a vile manner towards the heroes despite also having some appreciation for Earth's culture, showing how he won't let things like sentiment or any commonalities stand in the ways of his goals.
• Anne's parents have realistic fears about what happened to their daughter. She was missing for five months and shows up with her clothes in tatters, her hair a mess, and some new friends that she claimed housed her during that time. While her parents have more questions about the fantastical elements of her adventures — like how the larb tasted with maggots and why the Calamity Box only sent Anne and the Plantars back while leaving Sasha and Marcy stranded — they also have an understandable response: not wanting to let Anne out of their sight again. As her mother and father put it, to them she disappeared into thin air for a seemingly random reason, and it could happen again. There's also an Elephant in the Room, in that Anne's former best friends are still stranded in Amphibia, and the Boonchuys are unsure how to break the news to their families.

Thai Feud

• Ned's food truck has no working brakes, so when Anne tries to stop, she and Sprig can't, and go careening downhill. It's amazing that they weren't hurt.

Temple Frogs

• Once the Plantars' disguises are knocked off while fighting the drones, exposing them to the whole Thai community, there's a brief shot of them with a more realistic art style to show how freaky they look from an In-Universe perspective without the show's appealing art style. Suffice to say, it's no wonder Anne is worried about others seeing them as possible monsters if this◊ is what they actually look like.

Fixing Frobo

• Anne's creepy teddy bear toy from when she was little saying that it eats eyes. Even if it was trying to say "ice cream", the gang is clearly disturbed In-Universe, not helped by the dissonant circus music that plays whenever it speaks.
  Teddy Lumpkins: I want to nibble your fingers, eh-heh!
  (Anne, Hop Pop, and Sprig shudder)

Anne-sterminator

• Andrias activates a bomb in the Cloak-Bot, giving it an hour to kill Anne before it explodes. The Cloak-Bot decides to just drop stealth and attack Anne in her home, using things like a nail gun and sawblade to chase the Boonchuys and Plantars across the city.
  • Just how easily Andrias activates the bomb — the very second the Cloak-Bot reluctantly admits Anne isn't dead, he instantly arms the device, without giving it a chance to explain the situation nor how hard it's been working to achieve its goal, arbitrarily putting it on an hour's deadline to succeed or die, with arguably what seemed to be the same snap decision he made to kill Sprig just to hurt Anne, showing how little lives matter to him. However, he was wearing the activation button on his wrist the whole time, meaning he was prepared to blow the Cloak-Bot and Los Angeles up right from the start. It gives a chilling undercurrent to his Faux Affably Evil demeanour through the conversation, in that he'd already planned ahead to kill the Cloak-Bot if it hadn't met his expectations, and despite his jovial and conversational tone, he had already considered the possibility that the Cloak-Bot wouldn't be successful and had prepared ahead of time to efficiently dispose of it in a manner that also had a good possibility of killing Anne as well.
    • Speaking of said bomb, the Cloak-Bot's demeanor throughout the episode indicates it had no idea there was an armed explosive in its chest the whole time, and it's implied to be a new feature Andrias has begun adding to his newer robot model specifically to avoid a repeat of Frobo's defiance, showing that Andrias is both ruthless and cunning, learning from each experience and preparing accordingly to better succeed with his next attempts. Cloak-Bot and Frobo each show the capacity for sentience and self-thought, but that runs counter to Andrias' Control Freak tendencies, so now he's arming each robot creation he makes with explosives to ensure that they don't even think of defying him and have no choice but to follow his orders.
    • Let's not forget that it is the express opinion of at least two characters, two characters the audience is supposed to trust, that anything that can have memories has a soul, the implication clearly being that even the 'evil' fodder robots are living things. While they might casually forget with some other robots in the show, the intention without a doubt is to say Cloak-Bot is a person and not Just a Machine, with every indication as well that it feels fear.
  • Added to that, the Cloak-Bot's Self-Destruct Mechanism is practically the equivalent of a nuclear bomb — enough to level a significant portion of Los Angeles. It just goes to show how unhinged King Andrias has become in his focus on killing Anne to remove the threat of the Calamity Box powers, enough that he's willing to kill a few million people along the way. On the other hand, given he likely expected that Cloak-Bot's 'motivation' would result in it getting seen taking out Anne this time in its single-minded determination to finish her before time ran out, him arming the self-destruct could be seen as a chillingly pragmatic way of taking out anybody who saw it no matter what happened. It falls in line with both his focus on efficiency and excessive force to further his plans.
• Mrs. Boonchuy is revealed to have a Room Full of Crazy where she worked out the stress of Anne's disappearance by doing things like making multiple dummies of her and a number counter for the days she was gone. It is heartbreaking, funny, and disturbing all at once. As a bonus, the counter stops at 89 days, which is three months. Anne was gone for five months. At the three month mark, Mrs. Boonchuy gave up hope.

Mr. X

• In a case of Beware the Silly Ones, the titular villain proves himself to be quite competent in trying to catch the Plantars, and nearly would have too, if it weren't for Anne's parents tricking him with ordinary frogs and a tadpole they bought at a pet store.
  • He also states that there'll be trouble for anyone harboring the "frog aliens".

Sprig's Birthday

• The Monster Clown hot air balloon that was used to promote a parody of It is enough to make Sprig scream "WHAT THE FROG?!" Not to mention, him and Anne nearly die when they take it on a joy ride and crash it into a crane.

Spider-Sprig

• Sprig and Robert learn the hard way that superhero battles in real life cause collateral damage that can result in people getting hurt or even killed.

Olivia & Yunan

• Marcy, Olivia, and Yunan are attacked by virtual representations of their greatest fears: Olivia is attacked by a monstrous version of her mother who blames her for Amphibia's current state, while Yunan gets attacked by grubhogs due to a bad experience she had with one as a child. But Marcy gets probably the worst of them: an amalgamation of Anne and Sasha blaming her for everything that's happened to them, and when they say they don't want to be friends anymore, Marcy has a breakdown.
• We finally reveal the true nature of Andrias' master, the Core. It is a collective Mind Hive composed of all of Amphibia's past rulers with their consciousness still intact, and the reason Andrias needed Marcy alive was to use her as a host.
  • The process of taking over Marcy's body is absolutely horrifying. What's the first thing The Core does when it reclaims Marcy to be their living host? It uses one of their Combat Tentacles to grab Marcy by her face and then places her in a chair and shackles her in so they can start the process. Then, a bunch of tubes connect to her limbs, and when the helmet attaches to her head, she lets out a bloodcurdling scream while the Core transfers its consciousness onto her. Yunan and Olivia can only watch in horror, and even Andrias himself is so disturbed that he has to look away. What makes this scene worse is that Marcy is conscious and aware of her fate, and she can't do anything to stop it. The poor girl even glances at Olivia and Yunan for help, but it's no use.
    • What immediately follows is just as bad. Marcy's body slumps over like she's dead, and then it jerks itself upright with sickening crunches. And then she starts speaking...
      Darcy: Why, hello there.
• Some attentive viewers have noticed that the ending credits for this episode, when sped up, sound like screaming. Matt Braly later confirmed on Twitter that it wasn't intentional, but it still doesn't take away the absolute horror of that one bit.

Hollywood Hop Pop

• Starting with this much-needed Breather Episode, the opening once again changes to reflect the current status quo. In this case, Marcy being imprisoned in the healing chamber is replaced with Darcy standing above King Andrias with a Badass Cape and a Slasher Smile, not unlike Horde Prime in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power's season 5 opening. Said Slasher Smile carries over into the final group shot, with Darcy appearing larger than Andrias.

If You Give A Frog A Cookie

• How does Dr. Frakes react when she sees the Plantars' real appearances? She tries to dissect them alive!

Froggy Little Christmas

• Andrias's advisors gift him with a drone for Christmas, saying they want to make him happy. He returns the favor by testing the drone's attack controls on them. There's being a Bad Boss, and then there's being plain petty.
• Andrias hijacking a Santa float to pursue Anne, the Plantars, and her family. Needless to say, it looks very creepy when Andrias talks through it. And not to mention its face when the camera closes in on it...
• The fact that if Anne used the tree to destroy the Santa-bot but failed to destroy the drone, then the chances are it would've probably taken over another float, or just attacked her dead-on. And since the heroes never even realized the drone was there, it's unknown what would become of it...
• Andrias' army is complete and ready for invasion. War is coming, very soon if the next episode being called "Escape to Amphibia" is any indication, and Anne and her friends and families need to be ready. Even if they are ready for the scores of Mecha-Mooks, nothing can prepare Anne for Darcy or either of her families for her reaction to discovering Andrias turned one of her childhood friends into a Wetware Body.
• Andrias' last line, showing he's a complete No-Nonsense Nemesis and vowing that absolutely no one will get in his way.
  Darcy: That was pathetic. And you call yourself a king?
  Andrias: It doesn't matter. Against the full force of our army, none shall stand. Not Anne, not Earth, not anyone.

Escape to Amphibia

• Mr. X is clearly planning on having the Plantars experimented on, believing them to be malicious invaders.
• Polly reveals she keeps a Long List of her enemies, of everyone that has crossed her during the series. Remember, she's only a baby. When Mr. X threatens to torture her, despite the fact that she's cooperating with him, Polly dryly says that he's now on her list.
• When the Boonchuys are playing with the toys, Mrs. Boonchuy pretends to stab Anne in the back with a blade that looks a lot like the one Andrias used to stab Marcy. It's not particularly scary, but it will cause viewers to get flashbacks to that moment in "True Colors".
• Anne's Darth Vader fight against the FBI agents is a Mook Horror Show. She wields the toy lightsaber that her father packed, poses, and shows that all the fencing lessons in Amphibia paid off. The emergency lights reflect the silhouetted blade. Anne makes a bunch of trained federal agents go down like children. One bangs at the door, begging for help, before she knocks him out. It's awesome, but also scary, and a reminder of why you don't threaten the Plantars in her presence.
• You think everything will be okay now that Anne and the Plantars have gotten the portal working, except that a giant red praying mantis breaks in, and to make matters worse, Mr. X has finally caught up to them.
• Anne is excited to see she and the Plantars are back in Amphibia... but then excitement turns to horror when they see that their home has been reduced to a barren wasteland. The cheerful ending theme that plays afterward doesn't help.

Commander Anne

• Andrias is using the mind-control mushrooms from "Children of the Spore" on the native Amphibian wildlife, and considering how much of a Death World Amphibia is...

Sasha's Angels

• At the end, it's implied that, with the rest of their food gone, the other Marauders eat the re-cursed Barry.

Olm Town Road

• Andrias tries to use a giant drill to excavate an iron deposit, despite the fact that the olm city Proteus is built right on top of it. And given that the computer knows Proteus is there, he willingly tries to genocide the olms, who are highly vulnerable to sunlight, just to get what he wants.
  • There's a lot more chilling pragmatism than there seems to his decision to wipe them out. Andrias and the Core are aware of a prophecy that apparently states that Anne, Sasha, and Marcy are destined to stand against and defeat them, and Andrias has gone out of his way to avoid revealing this to any of the girls or their allies, even when gleefully revealing Marcy's Dark Secret and invoking Brutal Honesty against them to demoralise them. Andrias has no idea about the secret message left behind on Earth, so to his mind, wiping out the olms entirely along with the 'mother of prophecies' will prevent Anne and the rest from finding out about their destiny and thus keep them from forming a concrete plan against him, underlining how far he's willing to go to keep the advantage over his foes, keeping them as ignorant as possible about the truth of what's happening so they can't fight back, even at the expense of an entire race. Given how he proclaimed "olms have mercy" before, it seems that olms, and specifically Mother Olm, are highly venerated in Amphibia, but Andrias has no problem attempting to kill her in order to prevent any upset to his plans. The iron ore deposit was just a bonus/a useful pretext for him destroying the city.

Mother of Olms

• Mother Olm turns out to have an infestation of bat-mosquito hybrids in her head. And the reason the doctor she called seventy years ago didn't cure her? They drained him dry.
• The people that have wrongfully claimed the Calamity Gems' powers as their own over the centuries have created a being that does not sleep and will not die. Unbeknownst to Anne and Sasha, said being is currently possessing Marcy's body.

Grime's Pupil

• The episode opens with Sasha and Anne viewing a map of Amphibia showing the locations controlled by Andrias' forces versus their own attempts to take back control over the land. Despite all their successes over the last few episodes, the map shows that Andrias controls 90% of Amphibia, with only the area around Wartwood being contested, and even that comes with the caveat that the resistance has to hide underground and conduct guerrilla warfare against his army. Andrias is so powerful now that outright conflict will be a hopeless endeavour, and the Wartwood resistance has to partner up with other groups in order to stand a chance.
• Sprig nearly gets eaten by bee-hyena hybrids.

The Root of Evil

• The moment Anne, the Plantars, and Loggle wake up in Gardenton, you can tell something is... off about the place. The group is wearing cult-like robes, and the villagers approach them as if compelled. Just before the tour, two boys hold Anne's hands while giggling, which creeps her out. Then during the tour, Loggle accidentally steps on a flower, and every single villager loses their shit, wailing and screaming over one flower (even though it's Played for Laughs) before reviving it via a ritual.
  Anne: (unnerved) Uh... is it insensitive if I say this feels like an overreaction?
• Gary returns, and while his relationship with the villagers is genuinely symbiotic this time around, he still wastes no time attacking the Plantars in revenge.

The Core & The King

• Not only is Marcy trapped inside her own head, the Core spends some time deleting some of her memories to clear up space. How much of her will be left by the time she's rescued?
  • Thankfully, the evidence for the latter turned out to be an editing mistake, but that still doesn't mitigate the hell poor Marcy is going through. Hell, it makes it worse, because at least if Anne and Sasha had had to rebuild Marcy's personality from scratch, they could have spared her any memories specifically related to Darcy.
• The Core and King Aldrich telling Andrias to exterminate humanity simply so they can strip-mine the Earth for resources, with the heavy implication that they've done this before. Even the young Andrias is shocked when he's told.
• Leif betrays Andrias because she has a vision that if they continue to misuse the music box, Amphibia will be destroyed.
  Andrias: Leif! Are you okay?!
  Barrel: What happened?!
  Leif: (terrified) I... I-I saw something... Andrias, if you go through with this mission— if we continue to use the box— I think Amphibia is doomed.
  • The imagery is mostly of things that have already happened by the present day, like the castle rising from Newtopia and Amphibia being strip-mined and turned into a Polluted Wasteland, and the latter only makes sense as a result of Leif acting on the vision... which makes what hasn't happened yet even more ominous than it already was. Namely, the box opening itself for no apparent reason; a Freeze-Frame Bonus of the throne room in shambles and littered with Frobot wreckage, as if the castle was hit by something from outside or Anne^note who will have discovered what Andrias did to Marcy (and/or a reempowered Sasha^note who spent much of her time in Amphibia with a Proud Warrior Race and, like Anne, will have discovered what Andrias did to Marcy or Marcy^note who will likely be a traumatized, self-loathing wreck when she gets her body back from the Core, meaning the poor girl may be too emotionally unstable to handle a Super Mode) went berserk, leading to a Mook Horror Show; and, most terrifyingly, what appears to be Amphibia's moon crashing into the planet, up to and including the stage where it makes landfall. Given that this was blasted directly into the poor girl's brain, it's no wonder she was willing to go to the extremes she did.
  • Leif's betrayal of Andrias cut him so deep, he explicitly started oppressing the frog species of Amphibia as a whole in the aftermath. Frogs are demonstrated to be the bottom rung of society everywhere Anne and the Plantars visit throughout season 2, and now it's revealed that this was all due to one frog breaking Andrias' heart and him looking for some means of venting his Wrath towards her for destroying all his ancestors had built. Therefore, the question remains... what's Andrias going to do when he realizes that the Plantar family are her distant descendants? It's heavily implied that his snap decision to drop Sprig to a Disney Death in "True Colors" was motivated not only by Anne hitting his Berserk Button about friendship, but Sprig's Strong Family Resemblance to Leif, even though Andrias seems to have not fully realized their connection yet. When he does, however, he's made it very clear that whatever he does to Anne's Found Family — which could easily be harming Anne herself^note who is a) already a target because she threatens his plans, b) narratively due for a brush with death after Sasha's fall and Marcy's impalement, and c) especially likely to personally and recklessly target him upon discovering what's become of Marcy in front of them — he's going to make it hurt them just as much as he was by Leif breaking his trust. Worst case scenario, this could tie into fan speculation that Hop Pop won't survive the finale; Disney wouldn't allow a child to be Killed Off for Real^note Marcy's survival had to be spoiled immediately for her Disney Death to be acceptable on screen, which makes him the only Plantar who Andrias could end up killing because he's the only adult, and doesn't preclude any mortal threat to Sprig, Polly, or Anne that would motivate him to go out protecting his family. If he does die, and Andrias is the one to kill him^note which he likely would be, since his Laser Sword would prevent any injury or death it causes from being too gruesome, Sprig and Polly will have lost the only biological family they had left because of something their ancestor did a thousand years ago.
• The very end:
  Darcy: But now that that's taken care of, who's ready to finally start invading Earth?!
  King Andrias: Ready? After a thousand years, I've thought of nothing else.
  (Beat as Darcy looks up at the king; the mother of all Unsmiles creeps onto her face)
  Darcy/King Aldrich: (voices overlapping) Why, son... I think I'm almost proud of you.

Fight or Flight

• Although it's Played for Laughs, the other moths keep trying to eat Sprig.
  Sprig: (while getting tossed about) There is definitely not enough of me to go around!

The Beginning of the End

• Lady Olivia and General Yunan finally return... but they're Brainwashed and Crazy now, because they're wearing mind control collars like the monsters Andrias has forced to serve him using them.
• Anne may have been spared (for now), but Darcy plans to vivisect her.
• Darcy and Andrias lead their army through a portal to Earth. The invasion finally begins.

All In

• It is made very clear that Andrias' invasion creates many casualties among the soldiers and the civilians.
• Andrias' herons turn out to be the same ones that killed Sprig and Polly's parents, hitting the Plantars' collective Trauma Button. It takes the prospect of Anne being orphaned the exact same way Sprig and Polly were for them to snap out of the Heroic BSoD caused by a close encounter with the beasts.
• Shortly after Andrias first met Marcy, the Core appeared to him as a cluster of its 13 eyes. The audience only hears indistinct whispers coming from it, but Andrias reveals that it ordered him to kill her, due to the prophecy making it risky to keep her alive. When Andrias suggested that instead he befriend Marcy, bring her friends to Newtopia, and remove their powers, the Core tells him it agreed with the plan, using the form of King Aldrich. Except this form has all of the Core's eyes in the place where Aldrich's normal eyes would usually be. The avatar of Andrias' father was then dragged into the darkness by the Core's tentacles, accompanied by sinister laughter.
  Aldrich: Well done, Andrias...
• When Marcy finally decides to stop living in a fantasy and fights back, Andrias' father tells her that the Core will simply erase her personality if she won't comply.
  Aldrich: So be it. Then suffer, child, in eternal darkness. And in time, anything left of your personality will fade.
  • The Core's versions of Anne and Sasha. Even though it's not really them, there's something...off about them. Apart from having Empty Eyes and sounding slightly robotic, when Marcy asks the false duo what to do next, they reply by saying that they're down to do whatever Marcy wants, which is something that's Out of Character, which even Marcy herself acknowledges. And then we're treated to some flashbacks of "True Colours", specifically when Anne and Sasha find out about Marcy's true motives.
• Right before summoning a huge scythe, Darcy moves her head onto one side with her hands, and there's a clicking noise as if she's snapping her own neck.
• When Sasha cuts Darcy's chin, she bleeds green. This brings forth several questions:
  1. What did that People Jar pump into Marcy?
  2. Will this wear off in time, or does Marcy permanently have Alien Blood?
  3. What else did Andrias do to her to keep her alive?
  4. How will she explain any of this to the first Earth doctor who examines her? To her parents?
• Darcy cuts off Grime's left arm and severely wounds Sasha's back, which is all played 100% seriously and hard to watch.
  • Right before slashing her back, Darcy conjures up illusions of Anne and Marcy that are used to taunt Sasha to distract her long enough to deliver the blow. Needless to say, the illusions are pretty unsettling to look at, and the Core used that same tactic on Yunan, Olivia, and Marcy (prior to her possession). Sasha's greatest fear is literally hurting Anne and Marcy again, and the Core knows this, which is also why it spent their whole fight lampshading their similarities.
  Anne and Marcy illusions: (echoing) Hey Sasha.
  Sasha: You think these cheap tricks will work on me?!
  Darcy: YEP! (slashes Sasha's back) Too easy!
• When Anne defeats Andrias, it's revealed he kept himself alive for a thousand years by turning himself into a cyborg. "More machine than man" indeed.
• After Marcy is freed and the Core seemingly defeated, Darcy's helmet sprouts legs and crawls away unnoticed...
• Once the group returns to Amphibia, the moon is suddenly shown to be falling down... and then the episode ends.
  • And if that wasn't enough, the ending credits shows the moon slowly descending while a music box version of the ending theme song plays in the background.

The Hardest Thing

• A promo reveals the cause of the falling moon — it's actually a hellishly large machine covered in the Core's eyes, each one larger than the royal palace, being controlled by the Core itself, still inhabiting Darcy's helmet on the "moon's" surface. After the invasion was thwarted, its grand ambitions now forever beyond its reach, the Core has apparently snapped big-time, being willing to induce a Colony Drop on Amphibia in a spiteful last effort to deny the heroes their total victory over it, selling just how unhinged the Mind Hive has become, that it'd go to such lengths just to gain some measure of success against its enemies. The fact this is happening, given the reason it's happening, also means Leif's vision was a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, which makes the fact the 'moon' apparently reached the ground in that vision beyond ominous...
  • Worse, the fact that the vision was a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy makes the reasoning behind Leif receiving it ominous. Lief unintentionally kick-started a chain of events that has caused the Core to attempt to destroy all of Amphibia in the very efforts she took to prevent that outcome. Was the warning given to Leif to allow her to avert it?...or to cause it as punishment for their society's abuse of the gems?
• Anne being outright killed after using the power of all three stones to destroy the Core. The Guardian revives her, but their ambiguous words makes it unclear: was Anne truly resurrected through a Body Backup Drive or just replaced with a near identical-copy, while the original Anne was Killed Off for Real? Anne herself notes that she'll probably deal with some existential crisis later on.
• The Guardian takes the form of an old-style computer, and then Anne's cat Domino, to meet Anne as according to them, glimpsing their true form "would make [Anne's] human brain explode". When Anne confidently states that she has Seen It All, we got a Jump Scare Smash Cut of the Guardian in their Lovecraftian true form. Anne immediately panics. Doubles as very, VERY funny.
• The Guardian implies that they will only have to wait 78 years more until Anne can possibly replace them for the position. If you do the math, she's fated to die by the age of 91. While it's indeed a ripe old age, it's still horrifying to be told the exact number of years you have left. Let's hope Anne completely forgot about that...

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