Eclipsa has always been the enigma of the Butterfly family.
While each queen of Mewni has her own motif, and chapter in the book of spells, Eclipsa
is unique in that she seems to have an entire domain as her motif, that of the darkness.
In other words, while the other queens all occupy slices of the realm of “light,”
Eclipsa, it seems, is the exclusive occupant of its diametric space.
This is, of course, as far as we’re aware of in the canon of the show.
We know that of all the chapters in the family spell book, only Eclipsa’s has a connotation
of being forbidden, requiring Glossaryk to unlock it.
Given the intrigue surrounding the character, Eclipsa’s re-emergence in the narrative
raises some questions about where Star and the series are heading.
Since the show’s inception, we’ve seen that “The forces of evil” are not such
a simple thing to place.
What initially was a struggle for power between “good” Mewman’s and “evil” monsters,
was shown to be much more complex.
Mewni is a kingdom rife with inequality, with leaders who care about their subjects but
at the same time view them as easily suggestible and lesser than themselves.
Monsters, likewise, are not homogenous, and suffering from poverty, under the table politicking,
and disorder.
Over the series, the “evil” has taken many forms, from Ludo’s attempts to steal
the wand, to Toffee’s manipulation and destruction of many of the characters.
Amid all of the interpersonal conflict, though, there has been another steady narrative going
on.
Star herself has been changing throughout the series.
One thing to recall is that Star was originally sent to Earth so that she could better be
trained to be a queen.
Coming to Earth was a compromise she made so she wouldn’t be sent to St. Olga’s.
Interpreted this way, a lot of the series is geared towards Star becoming more and more
becoming of someone who deserves to be the Queen of Mewni.
From being able to fight and defend her kingdom to being able to deal with other people in
a mature and diplomatic way, Star’s experiences are honing her to be a better person and a
better Queen, and the series is documenting that.
Something that is generally agreed upon is that Star is maturing.
She’s made many personal sacrifices for the things she cares about, destroying her
wand (not once, but twice), risking her life, leaving her life on Earth in order to protect
her friends and her kingdom.
After the Battle for Mewni mini-movie, there is seemingly little else to prevent Star from
being considered a true queen.
In Queen Moon’s words, Star wasn’t just “a happy child” any more.
She has become significantly stronger, more patient, more selfless, and more responsible
than when she was first introduced.
At the same time, it appears as though the “evil” she’s supposed to be against
is reformed, or vanquished, marked by Ludo’s commitment to reflection and Toffee’s apparent
destruction.
It’s striking that the end of the Battle for Mewni showed Eclipsa’s crystal being
fractured.
But her appearance as a potential threat to the main characters might be subtler than
those of the previous antagonists.
1.
What Eclipsa Represents
Eclipsa made her first appearance in Into the Wand, on her tapestry from Star’s memory
of the Grandma room.
And her status as a member of the family was until then kept hidden from Star, as we learn
in Star and Marco's Guide to Mastering Every Dimension.
The Butterfly family likely felt that Eclipsa’s very existence was too dangerous for Star
to know about at this point in her life.
Later, in Page Turner, the Magic High Commission react with much fear that Star is reading
Eclipsa’s chapter in the book.
But then, when we finally see the end of the episode, she appeared unaffected by the new
information presented to her.
In the end, all her reading amounted to Star’s using only one spell, the all-seeing eye,
a spell meant to watch someone else without their knowing.
From the way the older characters reacted to Star’s reading Eclipsa’s chapter, we
had expected spells on murder, death, and in general of a much darker nature.
It’s worth noting then, why a surveillance spell is up there alongside those of say,
Eclipsa’s spell to kill the un-killable monster.
It may very well be that the show is framing things like consent, choice, and nonviolence
as important values that need to be upheld.
And this puts in clearer perspective, why Eclipsa is so feared in the first place.
A persistent theme in the narratives of Eclipsa is simply her person.
Eclipsa isn’t often viewed by the characters as a previous queen of Mewni, or a great and
powerful wielder of magic in so much as she’s simply Eclipsa.
In the show, her name needs no introduction, and she herself requires no qualifiers.
When characters mention her, all of the weight her name carries speaks for itself, and the
listeners react with corresponding awe and horror.
And we gather then, based on context, all these other facts about her.
In Into the Wand, we recognise her as a previous queen because of her presence in the Grandma
Room.
In Baby and Page Turner, we get a glimpse of just how powerful Eclipsa’s magic is
and the fear she brings with her.
Yet we’ve seen similarly powerful magic users before.
Rhombulus was able to contain her, and based on her assessment, Star’s power could Rival
Eclipsa’s own, but they don’t elicit the kind of fear that invoking Eclipsa’s name
does.
Something unique to Eclipsa, then, is a certain self-orientedness we don’t see in other
queens, which, coupled with her power, makes her both unpredictable and terrifying.
For instance, while the other tapestries in the Grandma Room, both from Into the Wand
and the Guidebook, showcase previous queens of Mewni in terms of their motif, a great
act they did for the kingdom, or something they stood for, Eclipsa’s entry is very
personal.
“Eclipsa Queen of Mewni to a Mewman King was wed,
But took a Monster for her love and away from Mewni fled.”
Unlike those of the other queens, Eclipsa’s tapestry is very focused on her private life.
Even the image on the tapestry captures an un-queenly aspect of her life, her being held
by a large demon, wearing a ring on his finger.
From the episode Moon the Undaunted, we know that the tapestries don’t capture the moments
in the exact way they happened.
Even Moon’s blasting off Toffee’s finger was stylised for the tapestry.
This highlights the idea that the representations captured are great and decisive moments in
the lives of the queens.
For Moon, it was being able to intimidate the un-killable monsters and preventing them
from attacking the kingdom.
That act not only saved Mewni, but cemented her role as a strong and capable queen, earning
her authority in the eyes of much older parties.
In that way, Moon’s moment had large- and personal-scale implications worth recording.
If Eclipsa’s decisive moment was her choosing personal interest, that is, her demon love,
over her kingdom, then the large-scale implication is apparent.
Mewni’s queen had left, and her daughter, or the next Butterfly in line would be queen.
On a personal level, it tells us a lot about Eclipsa.
She’s not only aware of her own power, but she’s also very confident about it.
Her identity isn’t tied to being a queen or to Mewni.
Glossaryk himself said that the only queen who had never bothered him with questions
was Eclipsa.
Her character has a large focus on interiority, and it’s likely she made a lot of her decisions
on her own.
Eclipsa’s strong individuality on its own, doesn’t seem to be dark and evil.
That in itself ties in with many of the show’s themes about prejudice and making judgements.
What that individuality and stubbornness has brought, though, is a lot of very spells that
impinge on the lives of others.
A common theme linking the spells for “Power of darkness, forces of evil, eternal suffering,
blah, blah, blah” that Star saw in Eclipsa’s chapter is their disregard of others.
When spying on Marco, Star would have rather been on her own rather than be honest about
her feelings, or at least talk to her friends so that things wouldn’t have been as awkward.
And the use of that power was intoxicating, because she was calling these shots on her
own, seemingly detached from the mercy of others, but it didn’t respect Marco or Jackie’s
privacy.
The act of killing someone else is the ultimate disregard for their being an individual, because
it likens their life as something worth much less than the life of the killer.
Toffee’s attempted erasure of Star and Glossaryk, particularly in the context of means to an
end, exemplifies that.
The reason Eclipsa’s chapter and dark magic in general may be so dangerous is its promotion
of this very self-oriented worldview, which is definitely not something to be supported
in a queen, who is to be responsible for many individuals.
The theme of singularity in Eclipsa is even more apparent now, as she appears to be the
last of her generation of Butterflies, being Star’s ninth great-grandmother.
She’s been encased in her crystal, alone for hundreds of years.
Now that she’s returning, the carefully crafted narrative that things were always
a certain way, or that a princess always had to follow certain steps before becoming a
queen, could change drastically.
2.
The upturn of values
Looking at the now-established narrative, that good queens are supposed to sacrifice
for their kingdom and their loved ones, we see no character exemplify this better than
Moon.
In the rare occasions we saw Moon in the first two seasons, she was worried over Star but
was very torn about telling her the truth of what was going on.
Even in the Battle for Mewni, she thought that she could continue letting Star believe
that most things were still okay, and that she had a plan and a solution, when in fact,
she was just as clueless about what to do as Star.
Moon wanted to spare even River the suffering and anxiety of the wild magic climate caused
by Toffee’s influence and left without telling him the details of her journey.
Even without such an urgent concern, though, River tells Marco in Marco and the King that
he’s used to being left on his own, not knowing about Moon’s whereabouts, when she
leaves on business.
This sort of thinking applies to the people Moon rules as well.
In Face the Music, she makes it a point to remind Star that Mewmans “wanted to believe”
in perfect princesses instead of knowing the truth.
But when we look at the episode, the Mewmans were fine with Star’s song until they realised
they were being lied to.
It wasn’t so much that they couldn’t handle the truth as that they felt disrespected.
Because when Ludo does take over the Kingdom in King Ludo, the Mewmans aren’t easily
swayed fools.
They reject his reign in both explicit and subtle ways.
Even under the threat of violence, they can’t give themselves to this new king, fully knowing
that the old king wasn’t perfect himself.
In other words, the climate for princesses and queens of Mewni now is one of self-sacrifice,
of working oneself to exhaustion without letting those around you know.
And the way it’s being exercised, it’s not healthy.
This attitude, taken into excess, has not only harmed those around Moon but Moon herself,
who feels she can’t confide in anyone and is incredibly stressed about it.
Queens not only represent their kingdoms.
They are themselves individuals.
In this respect, both Eclipsa’s and Moon’s philosophies are not in themselves wrong.
But a balance must be reached.
When Moon made use of Eclipsa’s spell, she officially became queen.
It was more than just a show of strength, because it was then that she stopped being
overwhelmed with just pleasing everyone.
It was the act of an individual, and it earned her their respect.
It’s interesting that Moon’s tapestry doesn’t depict the darkness that had begun
to envelope her hands after she cast the spell that blasted Toffee’s finger off.
It could be that by and large, Moon got what she wanted from her transaction with Eclipsa,
and that her intention had been only to warn and intimidate.
But years later, when Toffee took Star away from her, we see those dark veins crawl higher
on her skin.
It could be that only then did Moon truly feel the desire to see Toffee dead, and in
Star’s return and destruction of Toffee, Eclipsa’s crystal cracked because the transaction
was complete.
Because Moon’s identity derives from her being a queen, responsible for her kingdom.
Even when she’s at her lowest, when she has no idea what to do next, she’s propelled
forward by her sense of responsibility for Star, River, and the Mewmans.
It’s rare that we see her act out of self-interest, and the emotional scene when she and Marco
faced Toffee was one of them.
Viewed in this manner, Eclipsa’s reintroduction and what she stands for, herself, isn’t
inherently harmful.
But it can be.
3.
Eclipsa and Star
When Star comes face to face with Eclipsa, the worry isn’t that she will be taken by
dark magic.
She’s already been exposed to it, and she regretted it immensely.
Even so, dark magic is just another form of power, and Star doesn’t really feel the
need for it.
Eclipsa and dark magic’s allure is the very temptation that one is powerful enough to
do what one wants.
Based on what we saw from Eclipsa in the episode Toffee, she doesn’t seem angry or violent.
But she does seem very self-oriented and impulsive.
When unfrozen, her first order of business is a candy bar, and she didn’t seem in a
rush to get out or to convince Moon she deserved her freedom.
Eclipsa is someone who is certain of her place in the world.
From what we’ve seen of her, it appears she wasn’t as interested in power itself
as much as the enjoyment and freedom it would give her.
That’s likely why she left her position and her kingdom.
This is why it’s unlikely her end goal is going to be more power or to seize control
of the kingdom.
She doesn’t seem to want responsibility.
She wants what she wants, when it comes to her.
And that is a very appealing way to live.
Instead of power for its own sake, she might offer Star something else.
Freedom.
Star has always been torn between change and tradition.
She’s searching for her identity and wants to bring that into the way she rules as queen,
even though it rivals tradition.
And Star has some very valid points in that regard, though she can overstep at times,
because she can lack sensitivity, or maturity.
Moon wasn’t as susceptible to Eclipsa’s offer because she was firmly anchored in that
very tradition, which also told her what was and wasn’t acceptable.
Star, on the other hand, had never really felt as though she fit in, and a lot of her
life-changing experiences happened off-Mewni.
If Eclipsa introduced any danger into the narrative, aside from the negative externalities
of her doing whatever she wanted, it would be how appealing her lifestyle would be for
Star, who at this point, may feel as though she’d already given up so much for Mewni
and her loved ones.
This dilemma will, like most character development, run in the background of much larger-scale
events, as is the tradition of the show.
But it will nonetheless shape the episodes to come and the protagonist we end
up with.