YMMV / Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023)

YMMV tropes for the Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023) series

• Awesome Art: The series boasts eye-catching, colorful animation and distinct, charismatic character designs, reminiscent of Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles down to sharing Flying Bark Productions as the animation studio.
• Awesome Ego: The Beyonder's boastful, flamboyant personality only makes him all the more entertaining. It helps that he can back up every single one of his claims.
  Lunella: Beyonder! We were just talking about you.
  Beyonder: Of course you are. I'm fascinating.
• Awesome Music:
  • Moon Girl Magic is so catchy and pumped-up that it may be one of the best theme songs for a cartoon made in the 2020s.
  • Where You Come From is a touching love letter to New York, its culture, and its people that perfectly sums up the love Lunella has for her community.
• Can't Un-Hear It: Due to this cartoon, most people hear Diamond White as Moon Girl whenever they read the comics.
• Epileptic Trees: Given that Ms. Marvel (2022) has changed Kamala Khan from an Inhuman to a mutant, many believed that the same thing would happen to Lunella as well. Ultimately, the final product has her as merely a genius human scientist akin to Iron Man.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • The Beyonder has a slick design, is smoothly played by Laurence Fishburne and has enough Laughably Evil energy and flair (Even including a Villain Song!) to make every appearance from him a delight— especially considering his status as an Anti-Villain.
  • The first season's final antagonist, Maris Morlak, owns every second he's onscreen— fittingly for the final antagonist Lunella faces, he's a stylish No-Nonsense Nemesis who spends all his time methodically taking apart the show's status quo with his brilliant planning and comes the closest of any villain to complete success.
• Harsher in Hindsight: LOS applies for the school's therapist position, and is accepted because they'll work for free. The show's release coincided with the rise of AI programs in various industries, with many people including cartoon artists decrying them as a transparent attempt to get out of paying real employees.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the Beyonder’s episode, he demonstrates his vast power by causing Selena Gomez to follow Casey on social media, only to undo that moments later. A few days after the episode’s air date, Gomez announced she was taking a break from social media.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: Some Lunella and Casey shippers call them "Mediamoon", due to Casey's love of social media and Lunella being Moon Girl.
• I Knew It!:
  • Many believe that Lunella’s Inhuman heritage would be removed for this series similar to Ms. Marvel (2022). The first episode proves this, as the technology used to summon Devil Dinosaur isn’t Kree technology.
  • A portion of the fans guessed that Mimi already knew that Lunella is the new Moon Girl, and that she was the original Moon Girl.
• Improved Second Attempt: Some viewers view the show as a better take on the premise than the comic it's based on, due to cartoon Lunella's more endearing personality, her friendships with original characters like Casey and her grandparents, the lack of distracting crossovers, and the creative and energetic animation. Some at Marvel may agree considering the company greenlit comics based specifically on the show.
• Les Yay: Lunella and Casey have a relationship that can easily be read as being romantic in nature. There are multiple scenes where they blush while near one another, they hold hands frequently, and they're often admiring of one another in ways that can be easily read as not being platonic.
  • Their first meeting in the show. Lunella and Casey lock eyes from across the cafeteria and Lunella is so distracted she spills her lunch all over her notebook.
  • In episode 12, after Lunella as Moon Girl helps Casey out for her Bat Mitzvah, one of Casey's dads remarks to her that "she's a keeper", which Casey doesn't entirely rubbish.
  • At Casey's bat mitzvah, the Rabbi mentions the story of King David and Jonathan, which has plenty of Ho Yay of its own and has been interpreted through a gay lens many times.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • The Beyonder is a reality-warping and omniscient being who comes to Earth to study humanity and determine their worth. He chooses Lunella Lafayette as his guide, and challenges her to win the science fair with the seemingly lazy Eduardo to prove that even humanity's "most useless" member has value. After being lied to by Lunella, he breaks her solo project just before the fair, forcing her into making a creative solution with Eduardo. When their project falls apart, he fakes destroying humanity as a show of power. Later, he tests Lunella regarding fear, following her, her friend Casey, and her grandmother Mimi to Coney Island and endangers them through tampering with the rides, making Lunella come up with creative solutions to save them. He rewinds the episode to deduce her true fear as loss of someone close to her, and makes her search the park for Mimi, forcing Lunella to learn about the nature of fear. After Lunella finds her, Beyonder gives Mimi a warning about her old enemies coming back.
  • "Teacher's Pet:" The Rat King is a brilliant and devious rat with a monstrous hunger for good pizza. After his months of planning a pizza heist is foiled by the unexpected intervention of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, the Rat King vows revenge upon them; he immediately adjusts his plans to engineer a method to face them, tricking their class's pet hamster into entering the sewers before imprisoning the poor hamster as bait for the duo. Using a trap with a delay to catch Lunella off-guard, he abducts her and orders his minions to drop her into the sewers below, then immediately altering his scheme to focus on stealing her cassette player so she cannot use it to deter his rat army, even leaping in to personally grab the player before Devil can. Despite his defeat, the Rat King manages to pull himself back up through sheer tenacity.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: Lunella and Casey are sometimes referred to as "Lucase" by shippers.
• Shocking Moments:
  • In "The Beyonder," the scene near the end where the Beyonder actually wipes out all of humanity is impossible to predict, awash in gorgeous and haunting imagery, and shows just how much more terrifying he is than Lunella's other foes after being a Laughably Evil Anti-Villain the whole episode— culminating in Lunella collapsing in a dark void as the only remaining human and simply murmuring Why? Fortunately, it's all an illusion to trick Lunella and the Beyonder spared humanity, but such a heartwrenching and horrific scene comes from seemingly nowhere nonetheless.
  • In "Skip this Ad... olescene," Lunella skips too far forward in time and finds herself holding hands with Eduardo in what looks like prom. Definitely not something one would expect from their prior relationship of mockery and disrespect.
  • The scene at the end of "Coney Island, Baby!" when Beyonder ominously whispers to Mimi that her greatest fear is about to be fulfilled, and that "they" are coming. This sets the stage for the season finale.
  • The Reveal in "OMG Issue #1!" that Mimi is the original Moon Girl, and has known Lunella's identity the whole time.
  • The ending of "OMG Issue #1!" in which Lunella fails to get back to the lab, which detonates as she watches, seemingly killing Devil.
  • The ending of "OMG Issue #2!" in which Morlak and Lunella end up plunged through the interdimensional portal, which then closes after they're through. The season ends on Mimi heartbrokenly declaring her intent to get Lunella back.
• Signature Scene:
  • The scene in Episode 3 in which Lunella fights Gravitas, set to a censored version of "Sweatpants" by Childish Gambino is featured in a large amount of promotion for the show, serving as the most iconic scene due to showing off the show's combination of Awesome Art, Awesome Music, and Awesomeness by Analysis. Bonus points for it originally being the proof-of-concept that got the series greenlit.
  • For similar reasons, plus the politically charged nature of it, the climax of Episode 11 where the neighborhood assists Lunella in taking down the Muzzlers made the rounds on social media as an example of the show’s greatness.
• Unexpected Character: Rather than only create Canon Foreigner villains for the show like some expected, the show also makes some deep cuts into Marvel lore for villains for Lunella to face, such as Aftershock, Devos, and Abyss.
  • The Beyonder showing up was also a surprise, though him showing up was revealed pre-release.
  • The use of Rat King was also far from expected. In fact, he may be the most obscure of all the villains with a basis in comics, having only appeared in one issue ever.
  • Then there’s Garko the Man-Frog, who not only shares Rat King’s trait of being in a single issue, but had his opponent in that issue be Howard the Duck.
  • The ending of "Today, I Am A Woman" features a surprise appearance from Captain America Sam Wilson.

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