If you didn’t know it, then now you know!
Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is a Disney Channel animated series based on the characters appearing in Marvel Comics. It is produced by Disney Television Animation (a first since Disney’s acquisition of Marvel), developed by Steve Loter (Kim Possible, The Ghost and Molly McGee), Jeffrey M. Howard, and Kate Kondell. Laurence Fishburne executive produces.
True to the comics, the show follows young genius Lunella Lafayette (Diamond White) as she accidentally summons - and befriends - the T. rex Devil Dinosaur (Fred Tatasciore). Together, they set out to protect New York’s Lower East Side from villains.
Also in the voice cast are Sasheer Zamata, Jermaine Fowler, Libe Barer, Gary Anthony Williams, and Alfre Woodard, with Fishburne voicing the Beyonder in a recurring capacity. The series premiered with a two-part episode on February 10, 2023, after several delays. A second season
premiered on February 2, 2024.
Previews: Sneak Peak, Music Featurette, Comic Con Sneak Peak, Trailer 1, Extended Theme Song, 2023 New Year’s Sneak Peak, Trailer 2, Trailer 3, Season 2 Teaser, Season 2 Trailer
Tropes:
- A Boy and His X: Much like the original comics, this superhero tale chronicles the life of a girl and her dinosaur. Devil Dinosaur even acts like he's Lunella’s dog!
- Adaptational Backstory Change: In the comics, Devil Dinosaur was brought to the present by Kree technology. Here, he came to New York through a portal that Lunella built based on blueprints by the original Moon Girl, a human scientist who just so happens to be Lunella’s grandmother.
- Adapted Out: Moon Boy and the rival caveman tribe from the comics do not appear…yet.
- Adaptation Expansion: Lunella’s extended family, namely her grandparents, as well as friends from her school, are introduced in the series.
- Age Lift: Lunella was nine years old in the comics. According to the trailer, she’s thirteen here.
- All Animals Are Dogs: Devil Dinosaur shows these traits within the series, including licking Lunella like a dog. Casey even refers to him as Clifford in "Moon Girl Landing", who's also big and red but actually a canine.
- Animation Bump: When Lunella plays her music on her cassette, expect a visually colorful and buttery smooth fight to come along with it.
- Animesque: The series has a number of anime-like expressions, such as the face Casey makes when her phone is knocked out of her hand.
- Autobots, Rock Out!: This trope appears in pretty much every episode, with Moon Girl usually fighting villains while playing music from the cassette player her mother gave her.
- Bait-and-Switch: When Lunella grabs a ton of food from the fridge to feed Devil, Mimi stops her and tells Lunella that she can't be eating all that food... without some pie too. Mimi then puts a slice of pie on the stack that Lunella gives to Devil.
- Big Applesauce: The series is set in the Lower East Side. Naturally. This is Marvel, after all.
- Big Eater: Devil Dinosaur has an insatiable appetite (especially for hot dogs). His ability to eat large amounts of food actually comes in handy once or twice.
- Bookends: Season 1 begins and ends with the Villain of the Week having a personal connection to Lunella and figuring out her identity as Moon Girl (Aftershock was Lunella's science teacher, Morlak was Mimi's lab partner). Both even suffer an Uncertain Doom by Irony (Aftershock was pulled into the LES power grid, which she used to charge her electricity powers; Morlak was pulled into Mimi's portal generator, which he wanted to use to summon an army of interdimensional monsters).
- Bottomless Magazines: Moon Girl always has way more boxing gloves than she should be able to carry. Yet, she keeps firing them repeatedly without ever running out of them. Lampshaded by Aftershock.Aftershock: How many gloves do you have?Lunella: It's gloves all the way down, baby!
- Brains and Brawn: Lunella names this trope when describing how she (the teen genius) and Devil Dinosaur (the giant dinosaur) could become superheroes.
- The Cameo:
- Captain America appears as a mural on a building neighboring Lunella’s apartment.
- Silhouettes of Black Panther, Shuri, and M'Baku are glimpsed in Lunella's Imagine Spot during "The Beyonder".
- When Lunella briefly travels decades into the future during "Skip This Ad...olescence", the "Wanted!" Poster behind her shows a bunch of lesser known Avengers-related characters like Blue Marvel, Hellcat, Deathlok, Jolt, Jocasta, Moondragon, Swordsman, D-Man, White Tiger, Nighthawk, Stingray, Darkhawk, Sleepwalker, Paladin, Triathlon and Smasher.
- Captain America (Sam Wilson) appears at the very end of "Today, I Am a Woman" to apprehend Odessa Drake after she's defeated by Lunella.
- Canon Foreigner: The series includes some new characters who do not originate from the comics, such as Casey, Lunella’s grandparents, and some of the supervillains who can be glimpsed in the series poster.
- Creative Closing Credits: Each episode contains a unique animated looping moment related to the episode.
- Continuity Nod: After having a literal fight with her cut off hair, Lunella always wears her sleeping cap at night to look after it properly.
- Create Your Own Hero: Aftershock is indirectly responsible for Lunella becoming Moon Girl, as Aftershock's constant draining of the Lower East Side spurs Lunella to create the temporal portal generator in an attempt to fix the power issue. This in turn brings Devil Dinosaur to the present and Casey subsequently convinces Lunella to become Moon Girl and investigate the constant blackouts.
- Disney Acid Sequence: The mixtape segments in each episode will have the trippiness of the visuals kicked up a notch to match the energy of the music, depending on the fight.
- "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: Diamond White (Lunella) performs the theme song, as confirmed by the music featurette.
- Dramatic Ammo Depletion: Well, gravity goo. Gravitas is overly reliant on his gravity fluid as a weapon against Moon Girl. So she calculates the volume of the cylinder used to supply the fluid and spends an extended sequence dodging until he runs out. Just when it looks like he has her cornered, he hears an empty click as he'd spent it all.
- Elaborate Underground Base:
- Lunella's lab is accessed via a secret elevator in her closet that leads to an abandoned subway station. She keeps all of her experiments and equipment down there, including a fusion reactor and the portal generator that brought Devil to the present.
- The Hot Tomatoes' home in the desert is small and cozy, but it contains a shuttle that leads underground to a sprawling and fantastic lab in a warehouse built into the side of a mountain. It's filled with metal forges, laser beams, synthetic tissue facilities, and much more.
- Electric Jellyfish: When Devil has an Imagine Spot of being stung by jellyfish, he's depicted as being shocked as if he were being electrocuted rather than hit with poison stingers.
- Epic Fail: In her first outing as a superhero, the crooks Lunella comes across mock her over the fact that she doesn't even have a name yet. Plus, Devil Dinosaur leaves to go eat garbage. As Lunella attempts to get Devil under control, the crooks just pack up their car and leave. Lunella tries to fire a boxing glove at the crooks, which misses wide, ricochets off a light pole, and knocks Casey's phone out of her hand while the crooks just drive off. If not for Casey finding out the robbers with her phone, they would have gotten away scot-free.
- Expressive Mask: Lunella’s goggles are shown to have slots designed to imitate her eyebrows and eyelids.
- Eye Catch: Each episode contains special colored record covers with the series' logo, played against cool instrumentals from the soundtrack.
- Family Business: Lunella’s family runs the local rollerskating rink Roll With It, and have for several decades.
- Family-Friendly Firearms: A Season 1 teaser shows Maria Hill holding a boxy high-tech pistol instead of her usual semiautomatic.
- Fear Is Normal: Lunela is terrified of Coney Island after an accident there when she was only 5. Unfortunately for her, not only did her grandma buy tickets for a trip there, but she encounters The Beyonder who is fascinated by her fear. She's embarrassed by how afraid she is, but a pep talk from Mimi and a demonstration by Devil show her that she doesn't have to get over her fears, she just has to perservere through them.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The series of clips from Lunella's time jump's during "Skip This Ad...olescence" contains multiple, Continuity Nod's, Shout-out's, and Foreshadowing. while the most time is given to the scene of her at a dance with Eduardo, and the Wanted Posters in what looks like a dystopian future, we also see clips of the Volley Ball Team singing Karaoke from the earlier episode "Goodnight, Moon Girl", her standing over a tiny Devil Dinosaur from the latter episode "Devil on Her Shoulder", facing a shadowy figure who judging by the ring is Marious, and a scene of her fighting with what looks like it could be another version of herself dressed in a red and orange version of her consume, that might be a hint at the events of a future episode.
- Friend on the Force: Lunella sends Abyss and the Muzzlers into SHIELD custody.
- Gelatinous Encasement: When The Beyonder regains his powers, he defeats Molecule Man by turning him into a baby and trapping him in a gelatin mold.
- Homage:
- Lunella has a hack pack that looks like a Super-Deformed version of her Moon Girl face. It looks like Lunella might have seen Radical Edward on video with her nerdy dad at some point.
- In the "Mane" episode, the titular villain steals Lunella's wig and boils it, a la a certain bunny boiling madwoman from film.
- Brooklyn's little brother has a resemblance to Mandark.
- In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: While this series notably has Disney Television Animation has a co-producer, it's specifically marketed as Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.
- Joisey: "The Armpit of America" variety. In the first episode, Adria voices her concerns about the blacksouts' effects on the community, and declares that she refuses to raise her daughter in Jersey. She then immediately follows this with "No disrespect to Jersey!" Later, Lunella states she needs to protect the Lower East Side from supervillains, or else she'll need to move to New Jersey. She immediately follows this with "No disrespect to Jersey".
- Mythology Gag:
- One of the shops in Lunella’s neighborhood is a toy and game shop called Battleworld, as in the setting of the various Secret Wars miniseries.
- One of Lunella's ideas for her superhero costume is basically Shatterstar with hockey sticks instead of swords.
- There's also a girl who skates at the family's rink who strongly resembles Gwen Stacy.
- At one point, Casey refers to Aftershock as "being like living lightning", referencing the superhero Living Lightning, probably best known as a West Coast Avenger.
- The brief shot where Lunella is sent decades into the future during "Skip This Ad...olescence" is an homage to the legendary cover of Days of Future Past, but with the members of the X-Men replaced by Avengers characters.
- Ninja Prop:
- In “Run The Rink” Moon Girl and Casey have a Split-Screen Phone Call with a split they can physically interact with. Casey reaches around it to stick her hand onto Moon Girl’s side, and Moon Girl ends the call by physically shoving it away.
- In “Check Yourself” Lunella spawns a bunch of party emojis when ranting about being fun, and the noisemaker one startles Casey when it goes off.
- In "Goodnight, Moon Girl", Lunella responds to the volleyball team's invitation to their slumber party with Visible Silence; Brooklyn, the team leader, sees the speech bubble and moves it aside.
- Overly Long Name: Casey's full name is Casey María Eva Duarte Goldberg-Calderon.
- Phoneaholic Teenager:
- Casey always holds her phone with her to record her friend's superhero exploits on social media. In "Moon Girl Landing", she briefly shows more concern that her knocked-out phone is okay over Lunella's embarrassing first hero outing, for which she apologizes.
- The alien symbiote Syphonator becomes a monstrous rare male example. He specifically has a second pair of arms to always be texting and trolling on the internet, while trying to pummel Lunella with his free arms.
- Lunella herself becomes this in "Skip This Ad...olescence", when she invents a phone app that allows her to use Mental Time Travel to skip past all the boring parts of life. Unfortunately, using the app so many times causes it to start automatically skipping through life without her input, based on her prior actions.
- Red Boxing Gloves: Lunella has these in her arsenal. She can even launch them like rockets.
- Rewatch Bonus: After the season one finale, look closely at how Mimi interacts with Lunella when it's just the two of them, alone. This hints at how Mimi has known since the very beginning that Lunella was Moon Girl. She was even helping to keep her crime-fighting equipment in good condition. Also, in the episode "Devil On Her Shoulder", she clearly sees the shrunken Devil Dinosaur, and covers for Lunella by calling it the toy out of the cereal box.
- Rollerblade Good: One of Lunella's primary forms of movement, in and out of costume. Since her family owns a rollerskating ring in this iteration, she incorporates her skills fighting off Faceless Mooks, monsters, and tech-based villains on a pair of roller skates.
- Running Gag:
- Pretty much every character born past the Millennial generation has no idea what a cassette player is. Most obvious with Lunella and kids her age. But even young adults like Odessa Drake fail to recognize one on sight.
- Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur just can't seem to catch Rockin' Rudy. It even get lampshaded at one point when Moon Girl points out that all he has to escape them with is a car.
- Secret-Keeper: Casey is the only human who knows about Lunella's double life as Moon Girl. While she occasionally uses Moon Girl's fame to her advantage, she is very good with keeping her best friend's secret safe. By the end of "OMG", it's revealed that Mimi has been this from the start, as she was the first in Lunella's family to figure out Lunella's identity. Not only did she keep it from everyone else, but not even Lunella realized that she knew.
- Secret Identity: Lunella has to keep her identity as Moon Girl a secret from most of the city, especially her family, with Casey being the only one in on it.
- Secret Pet Plot: Literally the entire series is. Because Lunella practically has treated and cared for Devil like a household pet, and like most pets, Devil has given his affection, care, and loyalty in return. However because Devil is a dinosaur, Lunella has had to keep his relationship with him, a total secret. Lunella mostly keeps Devil in her secret lab when they’re not fighting crime, and the only time Lunella and Devil are ever seen together by the general public, is when they’re Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. Aside from her best friend, Casey Calderon and Mimi Lafayette, who has been aware of Lunella’s secret superhero life from the very start, no one in the entire LES, not even her family knows, that Lunellla Lafayette has a secret pet dinosaur.
- The Social Expert: Casey is a skilled social media influencer who handles Moon Girl's PR and social media presence.
- Source Music: Once an Episode the third act climax has attention drawn to the background music with shots of Moon Girl inserting a tape and playing it on her cassette. Some episodes play with the formula by having other sources for the backing soundtrack, like an actual band being called on to play or someone else otherwise playing their own music.
- Superman Stays Out of Gotham: The Avengers do exist in this continuity, but they tend to be busy with bigger threats and Mimi questions if "they even go below 14th Street". Moon Girl occasionally references calling S.H.I.E.L.D. to arrest defeated villains, but they're never seen. When Captain America (Sam Wilson) does make an appearance in Episode 12, he's seen only from the back. SHIELD and Agent Maria Hill even make an appearance in the season one finale to help capture the enemy agents.
- Teen Genius: Lunella is smart enough to modify a security system to blast intruders with blue goo. The trailer has her boast that she’s the world’s smartest thirteen-year-old. Moon Girl's also gained enough notoriety in the superhero/scientist community that people like Dr. Foster treat her with respect.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Lunella is a science genius superhero. Her best friend Casey is a makeup-loving social media influencer.
- What Are Records?: In "Moon Girl Landing", Casey spots an old tape recorder in Lunella's room and asks what it is. Lunella just responds that her mom gave it to her and she has no idea what it does. However, she eventually becomes acquainted with it and uses it as part of her superhero kit.
- Wham Episode: "OMG Issue #1" reveals that the original Moon Girl is none other than Lunella's grandma Mimi.
- Wingding Eyes: In addition to imitating her eye movements, Lunella's goggles also show different wacky designs depending on what she's feeling, like a loading circle when figuring something out or question marks when confused.
Moon Girl Magic!
