YMMV / Disenchantment

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Bean herself. Is she actually a confined princess who has no real say on what goes on in her life, or is she just a spoiled brat who only cares about getting drunk and constantly complains about not getting her way?
  • Luci playing the role of a (reluctant) Shipper on Deck for Elfo's crush on Bean. Is he actually supportive of the relationship, or annoyed by Elfo's constant Cannot Spit It Out routine, or doing it to cause both Bean and Elfo more misery?
  • Luci making Bean move away from Malfus as soon as he is going to tell a story about how he knows who exactly Bean is. Is he in on Cloyd's and the Enchantress' plans and is trying to stop Bean from learning anything that might harm it, or is he just not in the mood to listen to another long story? (It's most likely the latter explanation, but still.)
  • King Zog. While he's obviously a terrible king and a pretty bad father, he does genuinely care for Bean, and even most of his harsher moments with her seem to be the result of him simply not knowing how to handle her misbehavior (something he admits himself). Even his stubborn insistence, in earlier episodes, on forcing her into an arranged marriage for political purposes, has to be seen in light of the fact that his second marriage is later shown to be a loveless political marriage as well. Later episodes also make it clear that he never wanted to be king, was only forced into the role when his brother died, and is completely aware of how awful he is at it. Whether this is enough to make him sympathetic, depends a lot on whether you view his worse actions as Comedic Sociopathy or take them seriously.
  • Has either of Zog's wives ever really loved him? In Oona's case, she was a marriage of convenience, rather than love, but she did try to bond with Bean and Zog, and is greatly hurt by how Zog is not over Dagmar and how little he shows to care for her, it could be either that she has an Unrequited Love for him or simply feels disrespected. Part 3 reveals the truth: She was actually in love with his older brother, Yog, and married Zog both out of a sense of duty to her country and also because he was similar enough to him.In Dagmar's case, they lived a clearly happy life for a time, but Dagmar's attempt on his life and destroying his kingdom muddies whether there was ever real love between them, worsened by how she declares that everything she is doing is not personal, which leaves unclear whether she was manipulating him all along or genuinely loved him, but had a mission to fulfill despite it. Later seasons establish she is so thoroughly sociopathic she is incapable of loving anyone.
  • The elves of Elfwood. Are they actually constantly happy, or Stepford Smilers at best? The way they cheerfully sing about hanging Elfo, and a line in their introductory song ("We drink all night uncontrollably") puts their emotional status in a questionable light.
  • Throughout the first two seasons, Odval makes several direct efforts to deny Bean access to the mechanisms of government. He most frequently does this by locking her out of council sessions by claiming that women aren't permitted to address it, but takes other measures to place himself between her and her father when it comes to matters of state. The series frames it as part of the same institutionalized misogyny Bean faces elsewhere in her life. However in light of Season 2's revelations, is it really because she's a woman? Or is it because Odval recognizes that despite being a useless drunk and layabout, Bean is probably the most astute and on-the-ball person in the kingdom? By contrast, Zog can be relatively easily distracted, and Derek is highly manipulable; while neither Sorcerio (who is also part of the same secret society, anyway) nor Pendergast are particularly bright. Bean, however, would pose a direct threat to his plans. Additionally, Odval is conspiring directly with the Arch-Druidess, so clearly he has no compunctions against working alongside a woman to control the kingdom.
    • Also, is Odval an Evil Chancellor or the Only Sane Man? In season two, Dreamland is even more financially insolvent than it was in season one! Zog shows little interest in rectifying this beyond heavily-taxing the elves that have taken up residence within the city and even then, purely on a whim, he decides to return all the taxes collected. As Prime Minister, Odval has to actually keep the books for the kingdom and realizes just how deep in the hole they really are. Meanwhile, Bean continues to be an unreliable adventurer rather than a responsible royal, and Derek is childish to the point of leading the audience to suspect a mental disorder. The kingdom has multiple enemies (including the Bozaks and Maru), but no true allies. Zog spends much of the season pursuing personal interests rather than ruling. From a slightly different perspective, Odval might be seen as the hero if only because he seems to care whether or not the kingdom survives mundane problems like financial collapse or the plague!
• Arc Fatigue: Much of Season 1 was dedicated to standard Slice of Life episodes, and it took some time for the Myth Arc to start up with the return of Dagmar, ending the season with a Plot Twist. Season 2 almost follows the same trajectory (the first three eps were a three-parter) and it's not until the last episodes that things start moving again. Season 3 mostly forgets about it, while focusing on a new conspiracy.
  • Each season has sadly fallen into a repeating loop of Bean eluding her mother's plans in the first episode of the season, only for Dagmar to come back in the last episode of the season and seemingly win to leave off on a cliffhanger ending, then immediately losing in the first episode of the next season, etc. It's gotten to the point of much noted tedium.
• Awesome Art: While Bean, Elfo, and Mora are escaping from Steamland on a steam ship in Season 3, the backgrounds are gorgeously painted, and noticeably more effort has been put into the shading and water animation.
• Awesome Music:
  • The official trailer has a medieval-style cover of David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel" that's quite catchy. Some were disappointed that the song was not used in the actual show itself.
  • The same can be said of the medieval-style cover of Blondie's "Call Me" which, again, is used in the Season 2 trailer but not in any actual episode at all.
  • The show's main theme tune is also considered to be quite good.
  • The show's overall soundtrack, composed by Mark Mothersbaugh.
• Base-Breaking Character: Elfo's naivety either makes him endearing or annoying depending on who you ask. His Dogged Nice Guy crush on Bean also contributes to his base-breaking status, although few viewers actually like that aspect, so it's more between people who find it tolerable and those for whom it ruins his character.
• Broken Base: Some Brazilians really like their country's Portuguese dub due to adding a huge amount of memetic and pop culture references specific to Brazil. Others dislike the dub for adding jokes where there weren't any in the first place. For example, the dubs adds the joke "Irineu, você não sabe, nem eu." (a memetic rhyme meaning "you don't know my name and neither do I") when originally the character just states his name.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After so long of Bean suffering outrageous sexism from the entire kingdom, at the end of Season 3 she's finally in a position where she's the only one who can save them all, and forces the entire council to literally beg for her help on their hands and knees. And by the episode's end they respectfully acknowledge her as queen.
  • Similarly, after more than a season of Odval torturing and gaslighting Zog to gain more power over the throne, Zog finally gets to give him some comeuppance by expressing himself through his puppet, shrilly speaking over him, slapping him, and biting him on the nose, with Odval only able to meekly go along with his antics.
• Complete Monster: Queen Dagmar, mother of Princess Bean, murdered her own parents to seize control of her kingdom. To fulfill a prophecy for hell, Dagmar screwed a crown onto her brother's head which left him with severe brain damage and later tried to poison her husband King Zog. When a switch left Dagmar turned to stone, she revives her plan upon Bean bringing her back to life and turns almost everyone in the kingdom to stone, which she expects to be fatal. Murdering her own siblings and also trying to kill Bean, Dagmar creates an evil clone of her daughter and gleefully tricks Bean into seemingly murdering her own girlfriend. Upon defeat, Dagmar attempts to ensure that Bean's friend Elfo dies in the process, being so wicked that even Satan himself fears her.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The elves singing a song about hanging Elfo.
  Hanging Elfo from the Gumdrop Tree,
  A strangly-dangly activity!
  • Princess Bean congratulating herself on doing a great job as a butcher's apprentice... which is fine, except that she took a job as a pet store apprentice.
• Discredited Meme: People unimpressed with the show saying they were now disenchanted with Matt Groening very quickly became overused, until anyone who now says it with any confidence like they're the first to come up with it just looks ridiculous.
• Epileptic Trees: A brief Easter Egg of the Time Machine containing Fry, Bender, and Farnsworth (from the episode "The Late Phillip J. Fry") in the Season 1 finale "Dreamland Falls" resulted in some amusingly intricate and intensive theories that Disenchantment, Futurama, and perhaps The Simpsons as well,^note which itself has already been formally linked to Futurama via the (non-)canon crossover episode "Simpsorama" are all forming a Shared Universe of Matt Groening shows (a "Groening-verse"?), that will keep getting closer together until some grand crossover special between all three series happens.
• Growing the Beard: Reactions to most of Season 1 were severely mixed, but the final three episodes are viewed much more positively among those who made it that far, featuring several major plot twists that the season had actually been effectively building up on an almost subconscious level, and a nail-biting cliffhanger ending that has quite a few clamoring for Season 2. TV Guide would even retract its lukewarm review based on the first seven episodes after the last three came out to add more praise to the show.
  • From a more speculative view of this trope, some people who weren't very impressed with the first season as a whole have faith that the show will improve over time, considering how even Matt Groening's previous shows were also considered to have somewhat of a rocky start before eventually getting much better.
  • Season 3 got a lot of praise for a new level of storytelling confidence while still being funny, saying it feels like the show has achieved its best form just like the third season of The Simpsons.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In-universe. In a flashback, young Bean reaches for one of the glasses of wine that had been poured for her parents; her mother chides her, gently telling her "That's not for you." Given the reveal that Dagmar tried to poison her husband with that wine, the line takes on a new, sinister meaning.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Watching the old man sell "me-flavored water" is a lot funnier now that Internet celebrity Belle Delphine is selling her bath water.
  • Bean mocking her father's tendency to fall for non-humans, after she herself falls in love with a mermaid.
• Hollywood Homely: Princess Bean is designed to look rather average. Her own father bluntly points out her "weak chin" and "buck teeth" (though with Matt Groening's art style, almost everyone seems to have an overbite).
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Princess Bean. Many of her crazy, hedonistic antics go way too far and she can't always excuse them, but it is somewhat understandable due to her miserable life; what with her dad trying to force her to get married to men she doesn't love, and most especially her mournful longing for her dead mother.
  • King Zog. He's one of the worst excuses for human beings in the show, considering how many people he's causally executed just for annoying him. But just like Bean, he's still a pathetic and miserable person who misses his dead wife, whom he loved far more than his current one.
  • Queen Oona gets some of this too, despite her cold and stoic exterior. She's trapped in a loveless, miserable marriage to Zog, and never gets any respect from her stepdaughter Bean either. After Dagmar returns, Oona does start some trouble out of jealousy that Zog prefers his first wife, however the resulting conflicts and increasing paranoia lead to Zog and Oona both (mistakenly) suspecting that their spouse wants to kill them, forcing Oona to flee into hiding out of fear for her life.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • Despite Elfo's death, no one thinks that he'll actually stay dead, especially with the show opening a big mystery about his Missing Mom in the very same episode, not to mention the strong likelihood that he can be resurrected just like Bean's dead mother. Also with (almost) everyone in Dreamland being turned to stone; especially considering that if Dagmar can be saved from this fate, then so will her victims. Both these issues were resolved within two episodes after.
  • In Season 2, Bean accidentally shoots Zog in the chest in the penultimate episode and at the end of the finale, the main trio are being burned at the stake. At the very end, Zog's back up walking around and the trio get saved at the last second.
• Moe: A flashback shows that Bean was pretty adorable as a little girl.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Hansel and Gretel revealing that they've spent a lifetime murdering and eating countless people, starting with their first victims: their own parents. Oh, and not to mention framing an innocent old witch for their crimes.
  • Queen Dagmar, on top of two (failed) murder attempts against her own husband, kills almost everyone in Dreamland with a potion that turned them into lifeless statues.
  • Odval, fully aware that Bean wasn't trying to kill her father, decides to exploit the occasion and frame her as a witch so he can use Derek as a puppet king and rule Dreamland.
• Obvious Judas: There are some people who weren't quite taken aback when Odval is revealed to be scheming against King Zog and planning to steal the throne. A lot of this may have to do with him becoming more sexist and unpleasant in Season 2, him being the leader of a secret society, calling dibs on stabbing the king to test out the Elixir of Life, and just giving off some rather suspicious vibes in general.
• Realism-Induced Horror: Zog's slow slippage into insanity, complete with several discussions about if he's still fit to rule and who will handle the kingdom if he's not, plays similarly to an adult dealing with an aging parent with dementia, and the discomfort that comes with having to make decisions about what's best for them even if it's in defiance of said parent's own autonomy and puts a lot more responsibilities on said adult.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: For those who were annoyed with Elfo's Dogged Nice Guy antics, his irritating behavior and his naivete, season 2 has Elfo take on a more cynical worldview and view Bean from a Broken Pedestal. Season 3 continues this path, while also making him more smart and resourceful. He still makes remarks about his attraction to Bean from time to time, but they don't nearly consume his character as much as they did in the first season.
• Romantic Plot Tumor:
  • Elfo's crush on Bean consumed a lot of screentime and almost the entirety of his characterization through the first season; some fans feel like this has already been overplayed in the first season and delayed the start of the main Story Arc.
  • Some fans have begun to see Bean and Mora's relationship as this, particularly with the lack of interaction between them until season 5 and their overall lack of chemistry. Mora getting revived after Bean killed her and the two of them leaving Dreamland without saying goodbye to Elfo certainly didn't help fan opinion of the couple.
• Rooting for the Empire: After sitting through scene after scene after scene of every single person in Dreamland besides the core trio being infuriating ignorant and sexist assholes, it's hard not to think any of the various villains actually succeeding in conquering the kingdom would be a lateral move at worst. Season 2 even ends with Dagmar saving Bean in a scene pretty darn close to the Trope Namer for Big Damn Heroes.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The show takes its sweet time to get its Myth Arc rolling, despite setting the foreshadowing in pretty soon, it's not until "The Limits of Immortality" that they start to pay off, the previous 6 episodes being mostly made out of episodic world-building focused on comedy rather than anything lore or plot-related.
• So Okay, It's Average: The overall consensus on this series. While not considered terrible, it was considered a Tough Act to Follow from The Simpsons and Futurama. Some feel the show suffered from the characters being unlikable at times, the premise feeling like Futurama In A Fantasy World, and Bean's tendency to trust Dagmar (albeit when she's in a desperate situation) after proving herself untrustworthy in the past got frustrating. It's telling that when the final season streamed, not many talked about it.
• Strangled by the Red String: Some fans felt this way about the romance between Bean and Mora. The consensus among them was that while the whole thing may or may not have been Bean's dream, the two characters didn’t get enough interaction with each other to warrant Bean developing such strong romantic feelings for Mora. Possibly justified as Bean is a teenager, and teens are well-known for mistaking crushes for love. It was also the first time Bean opened up and allowed herself to experience romantic attraction, and The First Cut Is the Deepest. The handling of the relationship in Part 5 certainly didn't help alleviate fan concerns, showing that the two of them don't understand each other or their interests very well, Bean becoming completely unresponsive and uncaring of her friends following Mora's death, and then leaving Dreamland without saying goodbye to Elfo in the finale so she could be with Mora. It says a lot that some fans wished that Mora had stayed dead after Bean killed her instead of being resuscitated!
• Spiritual Adaptation: With the introduction of Steamland, this show feels like a Lighter and Softer comedic take on Gormenghast.
• Tough Act to Follow: Disenchantment is a really solid show, however it has to live up to its creator's predecessors: the cult classic Futurama and the pop culture symbol The Simpsons, and it's no wonder why some people were disappointed.
• Ugly Cute: Elfo, Luci, and Derek. Lampshaded when two girls even call Luci "Ugly Sexy".
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Bean can fall into this, particularly in season one. The first two episodes focus on an Arranged Marriage plot, but after that her Rebellious Princess shticks really boils down to her getting drunk, doing drugs and occasionally robbing people, then whining that Zog is mean for telling her not to. The only reason he doesn't come off as the good guy is because his parenting attempts are so cartoonish. Season two scales back these sort of plotlines and at least throws in more Straw Misogynists when it wants Bean to seem "oppressed." Season 3 salvages her character by putting her focus solely on helping others and learning to focus on protecting her kingdom.
• The Woobie:
  • Prince Guysbert, good lord. He spends the majority of his screentime being painfully impaled through the head, and seems to be genuinely looking forward to his Arranged Marriage to Bean in his last appearance (clearly not getting the hint that it's already been long cancelled). Worse still, his own family doesn't even seem to care about what's happened to him. He isn't even a jerkass at all like his brother Merkimer, and didn't do anything to deserve his fate, beyond being stupid enough to get himself into this mess.
  • Gwen the Witch from "Faster, Princess! Kill! Kill!". She was just a kind old lady who made the mistake of adopting two young orphans who turned out to be evil little psychopaths, chaining up Gwen and her sister and keeping them captive, while the two kids grew up to become serial killers who used Gwen's house to commit murders. And then she gets wrongly convicted for their crimes, and thus sentenced to death. Fortunately, she is eventually spared and allowed to go free with her sister.
  • Tess the Giantess from "Love's Tender Rampage". She was just a graduate student who gets kidnapped and taken from her home, caged up like a wild animal, forced to date some stranger just to keep up his convoluted lie that got her into this mess in the first place, and suffers Fantastic Racism just for being a big, scary giant. Fortunately, she does get the chance to escape from all of this stupid, crazy crap.
• Woolseyism: Downplayed quite a bit, at least in the Latin American Spanish dub; unlike with Groening's previous two series, when this trope was used in full force in that region, due to Netflix's policies regarding translations, many of the jokes were translated literally from English with barely any changes. Despite this, there's some changes compared with the original English version.
  • The dub uses a notorious amount of profanity compared with the English version. For a better comparison, Bunty's line "Whores rouge, ladies leech" replaced the word "whores" with the much more vulgar "bitches" ("putas" in Spanish). This is especially egregious if you take into account this line was a shout-out from The Simpsons, when a less vulgar version of the same line was used. Also, Luci has no problem with saying the word "to fuck" ("coger" in Spanish) when in the English version, he only said "to have sex" instead.
  • The dub also has Shelly introducing herself as a "mamá luchona con dos bendiciones" (fighter mom with two blessings). ^Note"Mamá luchona" is a jokey way of calling a single mom in Latin America (although it carries the implication of the mom being irresponsible), and "bendición" is a sarcastic way of calling children in the context of mamás luchonas.
  • The Brazilian Portuguese dub is really guilty of this, inserting local expressions and memes that outsiders likely wouldn't be familiar with. The first episode alone has Bean saying "Demônios machistas não passarão" ^Translation"Sexist demons will not pass", which is a common slogan with Brazilian feminists instead of "And that, my friend, is how one returns a gift" when she kicks Luci down the stairs; and later on just before Luci scares Merkimer, he says "Hora do show, o monstro vai sair da jaula"^Translation"Showtime, the monster is out of the cage", a famous meme associated with reality show star/bodybuilder Kleber Bambam rather than "Watch as this non-chump chumps these chumps".

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