YMMV / 3Below

• Accidental Innuendo: We get these lines in episode 2:
  Old man: Checkmate, buttsnack! [laughs]
  Vervatos: Your BUTT shall be MINE TO SNACK UPON!
• Adorkable: Stuart is a huge admirer of royal families of the galaxy and becomes endearingly giddy when he discovers who Aja and Krel are, as House Tarron is his favorite among royal dynasties.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Kubritz's last-minute betrayal of Morando after finally seeing the monster that he truly is a genuine attempt to redeem herself, or simply a pragmatic way of self-preservation since destroying Earth would mean that she can't become the supreme power with alien technology? Also, was her horror at seeing Tronos killed a case of genuine, albeit hypocritical case of standards, or simply her being afraid of being the next You Have Failed Me target of Morando?
• Applicability:
  • The premise of the series is about two teenagers who are forced to flee for their lives when a dictator stages a violent coup on their home planet, and get separated from their parents in the process. They wind up in the United States of America, struggling to adjust to an entirely new culture and way of life, which is made easier by them meeting and befriending one alien who's been living on Earth for a while now and gladly teaches them human culture. Some humans also discriminate against them due to being aliens in, depending on who's in the loop, either the foreigner or the extraterrestrial sense of the word. Through it all, the siblings try to hold onto hope they can return home, reunite with their parents, and the dictatorship over their home collapses. That story, without any of the alien sci-fi elements, can be applied to any refugee seeking asylum in better-off countries.
  • In the first episode Krel is marked as the king-in-waiting by his father in a public ceremony that was used by his ancestors for centuries, with his father telling him that he did this with his father. In the second episode, Aja is marked queen-in-waiting by Varvatos, who would be present in the normal ceremony but not in this role, and with only her brother looking on, and in a completely different setting without much of the ritual. This has a lot of applicability to trying to maintain customs and traditions after being displaced and trying to connect to a sundered heritage.
  • In the series finale, Krel decides to remain on Earth because he considers it his new home and he wants to remain with the friends he made there. Meanwhile, Aja chooses to return to Akiridion-5 to accept the planet's throne and help repair the damage Morando had done during his rule. These are two choices refugees have to make when the trouble in their home countries subside; either remain in their adopted homes and continue with the lives they had created there or return to their original homelands to help rebuild them.
• Captain Obvious Aesop: The story is very unsubtle and never shuts up about the difficulties faced by immigrants and the racism that follows.
  • Krel and Aja are literal aliens (and even then, "aliens" are considered an offensive slur) who wind up in the sleepy American town of Arcadia as refugees when their planet suffers a coup. The normally stoic and heartless Señor Uhl becomes protective of them when he finds out (though he thinks they come from a foreign country) and vows to protect them, becoming hostile to people who single out Krel and Aja for their foreign-ness or use the term "illegal aliens", implying that he himself has faced such discrimination before.
  • Krel's human form was deliberately designed to make him appear as a "Latino" because the data collected by the ship's AI believed that people care the least about them, with various characters like Seamus' father and Birdy^note Who was really a bounty hunter in disguise implying that "someone like him" would not have the mathematic skills that he does without cheating.
  • In "Ill-Gotten Gains", Krel and Aja's human friends chase Area 49B away by threatening to record Kubritz's xenophobic statements on their phones and make them go viral on social media if she doesn't leave Aja and Krel alone, a popular technique that minorities and their allies use to defend themselves from bigots with authority.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Sergeant Costas is the Only Sane Man working for Kubritz, but he did participate in betraying the Tarrons after their Enemymine with Warehouse 51 ended as well as arrest the Blanks, AAARRRGGHH!!!, Toby, Steve, and Eli for the crime of defending their friends. Not to mention it's implied he also experimented on their alien captures. Thus, when he comes and turns himself into the Tarrons, Varvatos puts him in a well-deserved Neck Lift and asks why they should trust him when Ares 49B lied before. Costa is terrified but admits they have a point. We also find out it wasn't a Fake Defector trick; he really did warn them about Kubritz attacking the town!
  • While it's a No-Sell on Kubritz, Eli shows no fear when she grabs him with her superpowered armor and he proceeds to pelt her with ninja stars. When it doesn't work, he merely admits that he needs to upgrade his weapons. He exposes Kubritz for being a giant power-hungry bully while refusing to give up his new best friends. This motivates the rest of the townfolk to lie where the Tarrons are, and then tell her off for threatening innocent children. Aja and Krel proceed to lead her away while everyone else cheers. It's revealed that this convinces Nancy to give Varvatos a chance; she gives him The Big Damn Kiss and says when Toby is ready for college, she wants to move to Akiridion with him.
  • In addition to being a Gut Punch, Morando's death via supersonic cannon is "Glorious!" in Varvatos's words. Considering the royal parents sacrifice their cores — and their lives— to ensure Aja and Krel don't have to make that choice, it's satisfying that he goes "POOF!" like that.
• Cliché Storm: There are a lot of story parts that are borrowed from other Science Fiction works in the story. i.e. The 1950s based disguise, Area 51, Interspecies Romance, a crash involving a flying saucer, Aliens Among Us, Etc.
• Complete Monster: General Val Morando is a would-be Galactic Conqueror who, in the premiere, takes over the planet Akiridion-5 and reduces it to a fascistic hellhole through a brutal coup. Morando plays Varvatos Vex, the defender of the royal family, for years, having murdered Vex's entire family alongside hundreds of other innocent people simply to use a fake pretext to manipulate Vex. When Vex catches onto his lies, Morando gleefully pledges to make Vex watch as he kills his new Family of Choice instead. Throughout the series, Morando murders failed minions and bounty hunters, sometimes for reasons as petty as delivering bad news; strings along the bigoted Colonel Kubritz before killing her as well when she disobeys him; kills many of the heroes' allies; and attempts to transform himself into a god in order to destroy and remake the entire universe to give it the "order" he so craves, nearly wiping out much of Arcadia Bay in the process.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Eli has shown many hints that he may be mildly diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder, as he's obsessed with proving the existence of the supernatural and usually suspicious to anyone who disbelieves his evidence. He was even paranoid that Aja and Krel were aliens that have come to destroy humanity (which he later learns he was wrong and was just way over his head).
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Alpha. He quickly gained fans for his cool design and badassery. Being the only surviving member of the Zeron Brotherhood, he also became popular as a source of fan theories and Fanfic Fuel.
  • Tronos Madu gathered fans due to his Tragic Villain backstory. His subsequent Heel–Face Door-Slam and being killed by Morando only added to it.
• Genius Bonus: Varvatos' quickly lost chess game in "Flying the Coop" really is one of the fastest possible checkmates, known as Fool's Mate.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Tatiana Maslany and Diego Luna play the lead characters, which they almost were in Rogue One, in which Maslany almost had the part of Jyn Erso opposite to Luna being Cassian Andor until she had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. Perhaps they dodged a bullet there, since Jyn and Cassian had romantic subtext while Aja and Krel are siblings, akin to Aaron Taylor Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Godzilla (2014) (which was also directed by Rogue One director Gareth Edwards) or Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort in Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Morando crossed this long before the series even began, when he hired the Zeron Brotherhood to massacre hundreds of innocent civilians at Sattelite-Nine, Varvatos Vex's family alongside them, hiding this fact from him and manipulating him into lowering the shields so Morando can implement his rule over Akiridion-5 by force.
  • The Zeron Brotherhood crosses it by kidnapping Varvatos in season 2 after his attempted Suicide Mission and gloating about how they're going to deliver him to Morando for eternal torture.
  • Kubritz crosses it in the Series Finale. Before, she at least had some standards about Earth not getting killed. To emphasize how bad this is, Agent Costas turns himself into the Akiridions and explains he can't side with her on her scheme to lure out the Tarrons: by taking everyone in Arcadia hostage under the guise of "martial law". To show she's snapped, she starts firing at innocent civilians at the screening of Toby's movie, who at first mistake it as All Part of the Show. Then she rounds them up and threatens to murder them all if they don't give up the Tarrons, taking up Eli in a Neck Lift when he fires ninja stars at her. Detective Scott refuses to recognize her word as law, since Jurisdiction Friction doesn't begin to cover her war crimes against the people he's sworn to protect. It's no surprise that though Aja convinces her that Morando is going to destroy the Earth anyway and she turns against him in response, it was far too late and no one mourns Kubritz when Morando crushes her with a car and blows her up to boot.
• Popular with Furries: The Zeron Brotherhood in general, for being a group of evil and cool characters. Among them, Alpha is still the most popular one.
• Ship Mates: Steve/Aja shippers have gotten some friends who also ship Jim/Claire, the other Official Couple. Some shippers also started shipping Krel/Eli as a companion ship to this show's main couple.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Krel/Eli, which has gotten traction over the idea of it being a companion couple to Steve/Aja and that Eli, with his nerdy personality, would be attracted to a super-intelligent alien.
• Signature Scene: Aja and Steve's Big Damn Kiss in "Last Night on Earth".
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: General Morando, of all characters. Many fans lament that despite his charisma and threat factor, he ultimately received an unoriginal backstory and little characterization, making him something barely above a Generic Doomsday Villain.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Krel and Aja’s Broken Pedestal regarding their parents’ refusal to help save Tronos Madu’s planet is rather unresolved, it helps them understand their parents aren't perfect, but otherwise we get no explanation for why they did it. This could be mitigated somewhat if the final Tales of Arcadia installment, Rise of the Titans resolves this, but as of now, whether the topic will come up is unknown.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Colonel Kubritz is a US government official who detains and captures "illegal aliens" without trial or jury, imprisoning them indefinitely with the paper-thin pretense of protecting the country even if it comes at the expense of actual legal citizens. She also dismisses all evidence to the contrary (even from her own allies), doubling down on her decisions and siding with an Authoritarian figure everyone else says is untrustworthy. It does not help that Krel - one of her two biggest targets - has a human form deliberately made to look like a Latino.

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