Year produced: 2022
Original air date: 2/10/23 (TV), 2/15/23 (Disney+)
Production code: 101
In her efforts to resolve an ongoing energy crisis in the Lower East Side, Lunella recreates an invention of a missing scientist, only to accidentally summon a dinosaur to the present day. Together, the two set out to bring down the supervillain behind the blackouts.
Tropes
- 10-Minute Retirement: Out of concern for Devil's safety and her family's, Lunella plans to retire from being a superhero once Aftershock threatens them both.
- Apathetic Teacher: Aftershock ends up like this after only a week of teaching.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: The Avengers exist in this setting, a dinosaur is roaming the streets, and Lunella's grandfather believes there are lizard people living in the sewers. Yet Lunella's family laughs when she says an "electricity vampire" is causing the blackouts in the first episode.
- Aside Glance:
- Aftershock gives a sinister look to the camera, once we found out her introduction.
- Casey and Moon Girl give a confused look to the camera after the latter asks Moon Girl what if she doesn’t expose Aftershock.
- Blatant Lies: When Lunella's mother brings her a bowl of blueberries asking if she's hungry, she claims she's not before immediately grabbing all the blueberries at once and cramming them in her mouth.
- Bottomless Magazines: Lunella develops inflatable boxing gloves that can be fired off. She fires a lot more than she should reasonably have at Aftershock during their final fight, which gets lampshaded when Aftershock asks, "How many gloves do you have?!" Moon Girl replies; "It's gloves all the way down, baby!"
- A Boy and His X: Or, rather, a girl and her dinosaur best friend.
- Bland-Name Product: The cassette player Lunella's Mom gives her is a "Fony".
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: When Casey was asking what if Moon Girl can't defeat Aftershock or expose her as the one behind the blackouts, Moon Girl answers "Then we get canceled after one episode."
- Changed My Mind, Kid: Worried for Devil after he was seriously hurt by Aftershock, Lunella gets him to return home through the portal. Later, just when it seems that Aftershock has the upper hand, Devil returns to pull a Big Damn Heroes moment.
- Death by Secret Identity: In their first confrontation, Aftershock quickly catches Lunella and unmasks her. The next day, both discover that she's the new science teacher working at Lu's school, and she threatens to go after Lunella's family if not left alone. Lunella does so anyway, and the lightning rod she rigged up to defeat Aftershock sucks her energized form into the power grid, leaving her fate currently unknown.
- Delicious Distraction: Devil is kept from stopping some criminals when he gets distracted by food. He learns to overcome this by the end of the episode.
- Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: The final battle between Moon Girl, Devil, and the community of the LES against Aftershock involves the show's theme music playing right up until the villainess' defeat.
- Evil Teacher: Aftershock becomes Lunella's science teacher.
- Exact Words: Lunella assures her mother that she's not keeping radioactive material in her room. It's in her secret lab underneath her room.
- Hero with Bad Publicity: After their first failed attempt to capture Aftershock, Moon Girl and Devil are blamed for the blackouts. Moon Girl actually uses this to her advantage, leading a mob of angry citizens to Aftershock when she's recharging, thus exposing her as the true criminal.
- Joisey: A Running Gag is the Lafayette family's fear that they might have to leave New York City and move to New Jersey. "No disrespect to Jersey, of course."
- Origins Episode: Seeing as how it's the show's pilot, the episode shows how Lunella met Devil Dinosaur, how she and Casey became friends, and how she decided to become a vigilante using the name Moon Girl.
- Overly Long Name: After learning his language in a single afternoon, Lunella translates the long series of growls and grunts into English. She quickly adds they've agreed to go with "Devil" for short.
- Rubik's Cube: International Genius Symbol: Eduardo apparently regularly has Lunella entertain him at lunch by giving her an unsolved cube so she can solve it one-handed without looking.
- Rule of Three: The episode opens with Lunella happily rollerskating through her neighborhood, greeting all her neighbors, set to "Where You Come From". In the middle, when Lunella has given up on stopping Aftershock, there's another montage of her and everyone in her neighborhood now depressed from the recurring blackouts causing people to have to move away. After defeating Aftershock, there is another montage of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur participating in their revitalized neighborhood, set to the closing of "Where You Come From".
- Shapes of Disappearance: Moon Girl tries to scare some burglars with Devil, but when that doesn't work, she turns around and sees a blinking white dotted outline of Devil where he should have been.
- Shock and Awe: Aftershock, the electrical "vampire" who is sucking up the town's energy and causing several blackouts.
- Shoo the Dog: Lunella tries to get Devil to go back into the portal by telling him that she doesn't love him anymore. Thankfully, Devil knows she's lying and comes back for his Big Damn Heroes moment.
- Shout-Out:
- When Aftershock messes with the school’s power to intimidate Lunella, a trio of students resembling Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno, and Sasuke Uchiha can be seen in a classroom.
- Casey at one point calls Devil Clifford.
- Lunella comments that one of the burglars splattered by a blue dye pack from her security system looks “Smurfy”.
- When Moon Girl's inflatable punch misses the burglars, it hits a nearby pole and makes the "o"s from the "Wooooo" onomatopiea fly out like Rings, complete with sound effect.
- Starter Villain: Aftershock is the first supervillain Moon Girl faces.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Lunella's initial refusal to get herself a superhero name prompts Casey to say that, if Lunella won't take herself seriously, nobody else will. One of the burglars they later meet says the same thing.
- Title Drop: Halfway through the episode, after catching the burglars, Lunella decides that her hero name will be Moon Girl, and proceeds to do this trope.
- Teen Genius: Lunella. This thirteen-year-old girl figured out how to build a time portal, designed an arsenal of nonlethal yet effective crime-fighting gadgets, and learned to speak an entire new language (Devil Dinosaur's language)...all in less than a week.
- Uncertain Doom: Aftershock is sucked into the Lower East Side's power grid, recharging the city, but what happened to her consciousness is unknown.
- The Voiceless: Casey calls one of the burglars "the one who never talks."
- What Are Records?:
- Lunella may be a scientific genius, but when her mom loans her a cassette player, she has no idea what it is.
- When Casey sees the cassette player, she asks if it's one of Lunella's inventions.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Subverted.Aftershock: Aw, I can't hurt an innocent child... but I should at least try.
