Recap / Amphibia S3E06 "Fight at the Museum"

Now, if you'll excuse me... the hunt's afoot.

Anne and the Plantars try to rob a museum to obtain an artifact which could give them a hint to get back to Amphibia. Meanwhile, a dangerous enemy tracks down Anne.

Full Recap

Anne has been staying up all night trying to research the concept of alternate universes. This obviously results in her becoming exhausted. Anne can't understand why the Planters can relax at time like this while they were binning to some soap opera, and they tell her that she needs to relax. Mrs. Boonchuy after being amazed at how Anne wants to do research, something she never wanted to do before, suggest they should all go to the museum and get educated; adding that since Anne has been gone for five months, she needs to catch up on her school work. Furthermore, she wants them out of the house because somehow they have left slime all over the place and she wants to clean it.

They arrived at the museum and Mrs Boonchuy says she will pick them up at 6. In the museum, the Planters were so amazed by all the rare Artifacts. Then, they were so amazed at a very mysterious vase that had a picture of a frog and the Calamity Box. Then, they were surprised by a curator and adamant admirer of all things supernatural named Dr. Jan who is approached them when she saw that they were interested into the mysterious vase and finding their first real clue, but a paranoid Anne wards her off.

Despite the Plantars' reservations Anne comes up with a plan to break into the museum, which Hop Pop wasn't sure about, but then agrees to stick to the plan. Soon enough, they managed to distract the guards, open the door and knock out all the security cameras. But little they did know that Andrias' Frog-Bot Assassin, who has been fully repaired, had taken a picture of Sprig and found their location. At last, Anne and the Planters saw the vase, and with Polly's help to get past the laser security, they finally reach the vase. But soon they are once again attacked by the Frog-Bot. A fight breaks out as the Frog-Bot chases them all over the museum. They manage to drop a massive dinosaur skeleton on the Cloak-Bot, but this was not enough to stop it completely, and Cloak-Bot scoops up Anne in its grasp; just before it could kill her, Dr. Jan and the security guards barge in, and the robot retreats for now, sparing her life.

Dr. Jan immediately became obsessed with the talking frogs after seeing them without their disguises. Dr. Jan distracted the guards so they could escape. After hearing their story and earning their trust, Dr. Jan offers to help them in their quest; she also gives Anne some sound advice, by telling her that while she understand her desire to help her friends get back to their world, she still needs to take a break once and while and sends her home for some much needed rest. After doing some research the whole night till next day, Dr. Jan discovers the Vase has a hidden message in Amphibian Alphabet when using a UV light torch once turned off the lights in her room.

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Tropes:

• An Arm and a Leg: When the Robot tries to impale Anne again by turning its hand into a drill, it ends up missing and embeds the drill in the wall behind a guillotine exhibit, right between the supports. Hop Pop uses the opportunity to drop the blade and sever the robot's left forearm.
  Hop Pop: Eat the rich!
• Any Last Words?: The assassin asks Anne this before he smites her. Her response is, "You're history!"
• Armor Is Useless: Averted. The Plantars attack the assassin with a makeshift frog totem pole incorporating a medieval knight's armor and armaments. When Polly throws a mace at it, the assassin catches the projectile and chucks it right back, but since the only target it hits is Sprig, who was wearing the armored breastplate, he's left unharmed.
• Big Damn Heroes: Dr. Jan and the museum security barging right into the museum and witnessing Anne's fight with the Cloak-Bot right before it could kill her, who realizes and quickly flees the museum, sparing her life.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Anne claims she's doing a report instead of planning a heist when her mother asks how she's doing. She doesn't believe Anne, but doesn't press the issue.
    Polly: I think she bought it.
  • Jan passes off the destruction in the museum as part of an act, which the guards instantly buy.
• Both Sides Have a Point: The Plantars and Dr. Jan point out that if Anne wanted to know more about the ancient pot, she could have just directly asked Jan about its origins. However, Anne wanted to keep the Plantars a secret from as many people as possible in case they got taken away for government dissection, and didn't really know Dr. Jan, so it would have been a massive risk trusting a random stranger with their secret. In addition, it's implied that learning that both Marcy and Sasha betrayed her in "True Colors" gave Anne trust issues after her two closest friends used her for their own ends, but on the other hand, Hop Pop points out that there's only so far the quartet can get searching for a way back to Amphibia on their own.
• Brick Joke:
  • While at the museum, Hop Pop is surprised to see a model of the Earth depicting it to be round, mocking the idea of a round planet. When they leave the museum later that night, he says that he still doubts that round Earth model.
  • Before they go to steal the pod from the museum, Anne suggests that there might be a secret message that can only be seen by black light. Later, before she goes home after she tells the truth to Dr. Jan, she asks her the same thing, which the curator does check the next day, only to find out that Anne was right all along (the hidden message is translated in the next episode).
• Casting Gag: A character voiced by Anika Noni Rose who eventually becomes part of a supernatural event involving frogs where the Big Bad is voiced by Keith David.
• Catch and Return: Once again, the assassin does this with the projectiles with Plantars throw at it to distract it from Anne, only this time the returned object is a medieval mace Polly grabbed.
• Chekhov's Gag: Anne suggests that the ancient pot might have secrets on it related to how to find a way back to Amphibia, like a map printed on the bottom or a secret message that would show up under a blacklight. This is laughed off by Dr. Jan, but by the episode's end she decides to humour Anne's suggestion and is shocked to actually discover a secret message on the pot written in the Amphibian script used in the temples.
• Chekhov's Gun: When Anne attacked the assassin with her powers back in "The New Normal", badly damaging its exterior, one of the components that was torn off was the antenna it was using to triangulate her Calamity Box energy signature. This episode reveals that without it, the assassin can no longer track Anne's energy and instead has to rely on hacking into Earth technology to find her or the Plantars using Earth's multiple cameras and online recording devices.
• Chekhov's Skill: Being in a museum with access to medieval weaponry allows Anne to briefly bring her sword-fighting skills to bear against the damaged robot as a distraction before the Plantars drop the skeleton of a Mosasaurus on top of it.
• Cobweb of Disuse: The schoolbooks that Anne left behind have these to indicate how far behind she is on schoolwork.
• Continuity Nod: The Cloak-Bot from "The New Normal" is finally back for round 2.
• Deadly Dodging: An accidental example. Anne genuinely is barely dodging the assassin's strikes when one of its attacks ends up embedding its arm in the wall behind her, right between the supports of a French guillotine. Anne wasn't planning on that happening, but Hop Pop takes advantage of the situation to sever the robot's arm before it can pull free.
• Death by Looking Up: Subverted. Anne lures the assassin under a hanging Mosasaurus skeleton which the Plantars then drop on top of it. They celebrate their victory, but the assassin simply leaps out of the bones, further damaged but still functional.
• Dented Iron: Though it has mostly repaired itself from the damage Anne inflicted upon it in "The New Normal", the assassin hasn't managed to restore its more delicate or sophisticated systems, like the tracking device it was using the triangulate Anne's Calamity Box energy, forcing it to use alternative means of finding her or the Plantars. By the conclusion of their second fight, it's lost its left arm and taken severe damage to its left eye, affecting its visual perception, but still nearly kills Anne before Jan and the museum guards interrupt the fight and compel it to retreat.
• Destroy the Security Camera: Sprig does this with his tongue to take out the museum cameras. Unfortunately, one of the cameras does end up catching a glimpse of his face before he smashes it, drawing the attention of the robot assassin that is searching the city using the nearby radio tower's signals.
• Didn't See That Coming: The assassin remains focused on killing Anne this time, ignoring the Plantars unless they're directly between her and it, as it was distracted by them last time and gave Anne time to activate her Super Mode. This allows them to take it off-guard by attacking it with the museum's exhibits, eventually causing it irreparable damage.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: Once it's sufficiently repaired itself to resume hunting Anne again, it's revealed that the damage the assassin sustained from getting attacked by her Super Mode irreparably broke the tracking antenna the robot was using to locate Anne's exact position, meaning that it can't simply find her at its leisure. Instead, it has to hack into the surveillance and communication devices of Earth to indirectly locate her or the Plantars, meaning there's now some breathing room for them to deal with its attacks in between face-to-face confrontations.
• Eat the Rich: Quoted verbatim by Hop Pop when he uses a guillotine. The trope does not actually appear in the episode, though.
• Everything Is Online: The assassin plugs into a transmission tower and from there is able to hack into the museum security system and spot Sprig destroying the camera, with the implication that it's using every electrical device in the area to find Anne now that its ability to directly track her has been lost.
• Exhaustion-Induced Idiocy: Anne's lack of sleep exacerbates trust issues stemming from the events of "True Colors", leading to her becoming paranoid, and warps her approach to logic, leading to her making bizarre or even outright nonsensical decisions. Both of these contribute to her thinking robbing a museum is a good idea; when pressed on it by Dr. Jan, she admits that the plan doesn't make sense in hindsight and attributes thinking it did to the fact she was, and is, running on fumes. Hearing that Anne hasn't been letting herself sleep, Dr. Jan recounts accidentally destroying a fossil she was trying to excavate as a result of her own self-inflicted sleep deprivation.
• Eye Scream: When the Plantars drop the mosasaur exhibit on top of the assassin, it survives the impact, but its left eye socket is cracked, with the POV shot of it seeing the guards implying that the iris underneath the glass was broken from the impact.
• Feel No Pain: Subverted. Despite being a robot, the assassin is heard giving an electronic scream of pain when Hop Pop slices its left arm off.
• Fictional Counterpart: At the beginning of the episode, Anne is shown using a blatant expy of Google, browsing through a blatant expy of Wikipedia that quotes the page for "Multiverse" verbatim, and contemplating watching a faux-YouTube review of an isekai anime that resembles Inuyasha.
• Flat World: Discussed. When Anne and the Plantars see a model of the Earth, Hop Pop is surprised and baffled by the concept of a round planet. Later, he says he still doesn't buy "this spinning globe theory" in response to Dr. Jan assuring that the world will still be spinning.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • The titles of Anne’s schoolbooks are “Science: It is what it is”, “History & such” and “Ew, it’s Math”'
  • When Anne is researching portals in the beginning, she ends up on YouTube on a video about how to write a "realistic" Isekai fanfic. Over in the recommended section, that same YouTuber, Amy-Chan, has apparently done something bad enough to warrant uploading an Apology video, complete with teary-eyed thumbnail.
• Gilligan Cut: Hop Pop has this to say when Anne is reluctant to ask Dr. Jan for help.
  Hop Pop: Well, if you don't wanna ask that Dr. Jan for help, what are we gonna do? (rolls his eyes) Rob the museum?
  (Cut to Anne's room, later that day)
  Hop Pop: (angry) I still can't believe we're robbin' the museum!
• Gory Discretion Shot: When Hop Pop severs the assassin's left arm with a guillotine blade, all that's shown is the sound of the blade slicing through the arm and the assassin's robotic screams of pain, as the sparks from its severed stump illuminate its shadow across the museum wall showing the damage.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: The guards at the museum are easily fooled by the cat disguise that Hop Pop shows to them and leave their post to chase him, and according to him, they stopped chasing them to head to a coffee shop. And when they finally come back to the place with Dr. Jan, they easily buy her Blatant Lies and take the night off.
• Hand Gagging: Sprig asks Dr. Jan too many detailed questions, causing Anne to do this to him.
• Handicapped Badass: This time round, Anne doesn't rely on her Calamity Box powers to fight off the Assassin, instead using whatever objects were in the museum to hold it off whilst she tries to come up with a realistic means of taking it down, ranging from a sword to a Mosasaurus exhibit dropped on its head, thus not being quite as combat-efficient as she otherwise is when using her abilities. On top of that, using her powers may not be a good idea anyway since she hasn't slept for days and is running on fumes and adrenaline. On the other side, the assassin ends up having its left arm severed by Hop Pop before it engages Anne in a close-range sword fight, and despite losing access to one of its most versatile weapons, it still easily overpowers Anne and nearly kills her before Jan and the guards interrupt the fight.
• Heist Episode: Anne and the Plantars attempt to liberate a unique vase that could be their one clue to returning back to Amphibia. It goes well, at least until the assassin returns for another round.
• Hypocritical Humor: Even though Polly had a point with Anne's suspicion towards Dr. Jan, the Plantars have no room to talk since they (along with all of Wartwood's citizens) are extremely paranoid.
• Improvised Weapon: Played With. The assassin takes the Plantars off-guard by attacking them mid-heist, but since they're fighting in an empty museum, Anne and the Plantars actually have access to real weaponry they can use directly against the robot. However trying to fight the assassin head-on proves to be futile, as it's able to out-fight Anne even when she's armed with a sword and it's down an arm, and the exhibits they use to actually damage the robot (a guillotine blade and a gigantic skeleton) aren't straightforward fighting tools anyway.
• Innocently Insensitive: When Sprig tries to query Dr. Jan on whether she knows anything about inter-dimensional portals or historical artefacts related to that, Anne cuts him and the conversation off by hastily claiming that she doesn't need to hear anymore because she hates history and hates museums. Jan points out that says this to the face of a museum curator is a tad insulting.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: Anne tells Sprig there doesn't have to be a dramatic twist after their heist goes according to plan. Naturally that happens.
• Internal Reveal: Dr. Jan is told about Amphibia after she catches Anne and the Plantars fighting the Assassin.
• It Only Works Once: The assassin lost the last fight because it got distracted by the Plantars at a crucial moment and switched focus to killing them, giving Anne time to activate her Super Mode. This time it remains focused only on her and actively ignores the Plantars unless they're directly between her and it, which allows them to take it off-guard several times by attacking the with museum exhibits.
• It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: When Dr. Jan presses her on it, Anne admits that the heist doesn't make sense in hindsight, and only made sense because she was, and is, too tired to make sensible decisions.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While she said due to sleep deprivation and trust issues from her experiences in the Season 2 finale, Anne has every right to not ask Dr. Jan informations about how to get back to Amphibia, since they can't trust some random stranger they just met. Even when she eventually finds the truth, they were just lucky that she covered up and wanted to help them because she also wanted to know the truth.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Hop Pop describes their trip to the museum as a "fun, one-off adventure".
• Near-Villain Victory: The Cloak-Bot comes within two seconds of completely killing Anne, if it hadn't been for Dr. Jan and the guards bursting through the front doors which prompts it to leave her alone and retreat.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: Played With. When the assassin shows up, it wastes no time trying to blast Anne with its Eye Beams and focuses on attacking her to the exclusion of the Plantars, so as not to give her time to activate her Super Mode again, but it blows the element of surprise by smashing through the museum's glass ceiling and attacking her head on, rather than trying to use its Invisibility to sneak attack her like last time. Once its arm has been sliced off, it falls for her taunts to fight her close-range rather than continuing to use its lasers against her, even asking her Any Last Words? when it's about to strike the killing blow, showing that it's clearly relishing the opportunity to personally kill Anne. It's implied to be a side-effect of the damage dealt to it affecting its programming, resulting in the assassin starting to take the mission more personally and less professionally as it continues to get more and more damaged trying to take Anne out, clearly wanting to enjoy the kill more as time goes on rather than maximizing efficiency to kill her as pragmatically as possible.
• No OSHA Compliance: A few examples at the museum, namely a working guillotine with little in the way of keeping people from hurting themselves with it.
• No, You: After Anne delivers the Pre-Asskicking One-Liner seen above in Any Last Words?, a large skeleton is dropped on the Assassin, and she thinks it's dead. But then the Assassin pops out of the wreckage, grabs Anne, and tells her, "No, you're history!"
• Oblivious to His Own Description: Mrs Boonchuy encourages Anne and the Plantars to visit the museum in part to get Anne to relax and stop obsessively researching, but also because there's slime all over the place from the Plantars living with them, and she needs them all out of the way whilst she cleans up. Polly assumes she was referring to Anne leaving the goop behind. Later on, when Dr. Jan introduces herself to the group, she says that she's a lover of all things ancient whilst winking at Hop Pop.
  Hop Pop: (confused) Why'd she wink at me?
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Anne and the Plantars when they see the Cloak-Bot has come back.
  • The Cloak-Bot when it sees Dr. Jan and her guards, meaning it almost blew its cover.
    Cloak-Bot: ALERT! ALERT! DO NOT BE SEEN!
• Oh, No... Not Again!: Basically the reactions of Anne and the Plantars when the Cloak-Bot from before returns to hunt them down...AGAIN.
• "Open!" Says Me: Dr. Jan and two of the guards kick the museum doors open and witness the Cloak-Bot, which saves Anne's life last minute.
• Plug 'n' Play Technology: The assassin robot, made from technology a thousand years divorced from any possible Earth standard, can effortlessly hack into Earth technology simply by tapping into a nearby transmission tower.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: The assassin asks Anne Any Last Words? before it finishes her off with its axe-hand, only for Anne to respond with "You're history!" as the Plantars drop the mosasaur exhibit on top of it. However, the assassin survives getting crushed, grapples Anne and shoots back that she's history as it prepares to finish her off, just before Dr. Jan and the security guards arrive which causes it to flee for now, saving her life.
• Raptor Attack: The museum has a display of a Deinonychus with feathers. It still possesses inaccurate feathering, cat-like slit-pupils, and pronated hands stereotypical of dromaeosaurids.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Jan ends up being this. When she finds out that her theory on "aliens from another dimension" is true, she helps cover up the attempted jar heist and tells Anne that their secret is safe with her. Dr. Jan promises that they can come to her for help, and she'll try to scan the jar for answers since she's also interested in them, with the only condition being that Anne lets herself sleep since her self-inflicted sleep deprivation is causing her to reach for the Idiot Ball.
• Reflective Eyes: When Dr. Jan sees the Cloak-bot flee the museum, it reflects into her glasses lenses.
• Secret-Keeper: Dr. Jan becomes one to Anne and the Plantars.
• Shout-Out:
  • The title is one to Night at the Museum.
  • While Anne is browsing the parody of YouTube, one of the videos is a Top 10 Anime Openings with a thumbnail that includes references to One Piece and Naruto.
  • The Plantars are seen binge-watching a British series that parodies shows like Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs.
  • During the scene where the security guards are conversing, a wanted poster of Feathers McGraw can be seen on the pillar.
  • Hop Pop distracts the museum guards by dressing as a "fabulous cat".
• Sleep Cute: In the beginning of the episode, Polly is sleeping next to Domino in her cat bed.
• Sleepyhead: Looking up research obsessively without any rest has taken a heavy toll on Anne. By the time she and the Plantars return to the museum at night, Anne is so exhausted that she can barely stay awake.
• Stating the Simple Solution: The Plantars point out to Anne that if she wants to know more information about the historical artifact, she could just ask Dr. Jan about it, but a combination of wanting to keep the Plantars' existence under wraps as much as possible, trust issues stemming from the betrayals she endured in "True Colors" and poor decision making from sleep deprivation lead Anne to decide that stealing the pot from the museum is the better choice. Dr. Jan herself points this out after she helps the group cover up what happened, but in fairness to Anne, it would have been a big risk to take revealing the Plantars to another human without really knowing much about them.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Anne and the Plantars try to destroy the assassin for good by dropping a mosasaur exhibit on top of it. It seems to work at first and Anne says that they managed to destroy it. Cue the assassin immediately jumping out of the rubble, grappling her, and coming close to finishing her off. Only Jan and the museum guards arrival compels it to retreat instead. While its left eye still got damaged from the shock, did you really expect a pile of falling bones to destroy a robot made out of a metal tough enough to endure Anne's Calamity Box powers?
• Tempting Fate: Sprig notes that stealing the jar was surprisingly easy. Anne chastises him for thinking everything is like a movie with a dramatic twist, right before the assassin crashes in.
• Underestimating Badassery: Played With. The assassin lost the last fight because it switched focus from killing Anne to killing the Plantars once they distracted it, giving her time to activate her Super Mode when she saw them in danger. This time the assassin remains focused only on killing Anne, actively ignoring the Plantars unless they're directly between her and it or attacking it, so as not to give Anne another chance to use her powers against it. Whilst Anne is the strongest and most dangerous of the group, the Plantars are no slouches in a fight and take the robot off-guard by dropping objects on it when it's distracted fighting Anne (a guillotine blade and a Mosasaurus skeleton respectively) eventually causing irreparable damage to it.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: When Dr. Jan and the guards come upon the scene of the Cloak-Bot's attack, the Cloak-Bot realizes and quickly flees the museum.
• Wham Shot:
  • In-Universe and out. The Plantars and Anne see an old jar in the museum with a depiction of Andrias' female frog friend appearing through a portal to gift the Calamity Box to what appears to be a group of Vikings sailing a longboat. For the Plantars and Anne, it's their first actual clue to finding a possible way back to Amphibia, as well as a hint to the box's history before it wound up in the thrift store. For the viewers, it's confirmation that it was one of Andrias' friends that stole the box from him and transported it to Earth, proving that there was a grain of truth to his claims that they 'betrayed' him for some reason, though obviously he's hardly the most impartial viewer of their actions.
  • Jan seeing the unmasked Plantars and realizing that there are real 'aliens' in the world is one for her.
  • Jan finds a blacklight message on the jar in ancient frog script.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Double Subverted. Now that it's fighting Anne in an empty museum and not a crowded food market, the assassin has no problems trying to instantly blast her with its Eye Beams once it arrives, only switching to trying to impale her again once it gets close enough to try for a Finishing Move. However, once Hop Pop slices its left arm off, the assassin becomes pissed, and attacks Anne close-range with its remaining limb rather than just shooting her with its lasers again, so as to enjoy the kill more.
• Wingding Eyes: The Cloak-bot's eyes turn into exclamation marks when it sees Dr. Jan and the security guards burst right into the museum, prompting it to spare Anne and flee the scene, saving her life.

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