Star's wand has been acting up again, firing faulty spells. Glossaryck informs her that they need to go into the wand and find something that "doesn't belong" to fix it. Once inside, however, the two are separated and things start getting weird.
Tropes:
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Glossaryck warns Star not to listen to anything but the sound of his voice. Naturally, Star gets distracted and ends up getting lost.
- Black Sheep: Eclipsa took a monster as her lover and fled Mewni.
- Blink-and-You-Miss-It:
- When Star first enters the school, a future version of Star can be seen riding past. As mentioned by Star's other self, the longer she remains trapped in her wand, the more at risk she'd be of being replaced by her future self, and since this Star seems to be the only one unaware of the dangers till her past self revealed it, it appears that this is our Star while the Freeze-Frame Bonus Star was a future memory.
- When Star grabs Toffee's severed finger, a bunch of still images quickly pass. First is Toffee smirking while the wand explodes, then the star in Star's wand cracking, a closeup of Eclipsa's face, a green colored image of the cracking wand again, and an even closer, distorted image of Toffee's smirk again.
- But Thou Must!: Invoked; Star tries to avoid going to the recreation of Echo Creek school in her wand, but she keeps running into it. Eventually she goes in.
- Call-Back:
- In his first appearance, Toffee had made a reference to the Butterfly family cheating him with magic, while looking at the full moon. Here we learn that Moon Butterfly defeated him in battle. We also finally learn how he lost his finger.
- Star finally finds out partly why her wand has been acting differently.
- Comically Missing the Point: When Star first tries to tell Glossaryck about her wand issues by showing off her faulty summons, he assumes that she just killed a bunch of animals and pulls out some bleach to remove any evidence.
- Eye Scream: Glossaryck gets Star out of the wand by putting her inside his eyeball, which serves as a portal. After she goes through, his eye is left stretched out and dangling from his socket until Star points it out.
- Fairytale Motifs: Star puts on Marco's red hoodie, and then goes on a journey that leads to a place dedicated to her grandmothers. These are all obvious cues from Little Red Riding Hood.
- False Reassurance: After explaining what will happen to her if she stays in the wand for too long, Past-Star tells Star "But don't worry. You'll never know the difference." She'll never know the difference because she'll no longer exist.
- Fingore: Queen Moon was the one who took off Toffee's finger, and it's in the wand. Star takes it out and throws it in the closet.
- It Runs in the Family: Star discovers the Butterfly side of the family has a history of fighting monsters as well, as seen with the tapestries of Queen Solaria and Queen Moon.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: The wand is an extension of Star's memories, so when she goes inside it, she ends up inside a landscape made up not only of her own memories, but also those of the former bearers of the wand.
- Laser Blade: Star's ancestor Solaria is seen using the wand as a laser-sword to fight off a horde of monsters.
- The Magnificent: The hall of former wand-wielders gives each of them a title, such as "Celena the Shy", "Solaria the Monster-Carver", and "Eclipsa the Queen of Darkness". Star's mom is "Moon the Undaunted." Star jokingly refers to herself as "future Queen Star the Underestimated" which is very appropriate, but not (yet) official.
- Mind Screw:
- This is a weird episode. With atmosphere, alternate timelines intruding, and a scavenger hunt for something "that doesn't belong" in her memories.
- Star at first doesn't realize she's in the wand because the wand creates a projection of her room, with Marco coming in to ask about his hoodie. She takes a while to realize when Glossaryck tells her and Marco comes in twice.
- Never the Selves Shall Meet: Star starts running into lots of duplicates of herself, and one of them casually informs her that she runs the risk of being overwritten by her own past memories if she stays in the wand too long.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Glossaryck mistakes Star's faulty magic animals for dead ones, which causes him to panic and start removing what he thinks to be crime scene evidence.
- The tapestry depicting Toffee shows him to be noticeably terrified as his finger gets blasted off by Moon.
- Glossaryck starts freaking out once he finds out that Star had already seen her alternate selves.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Given that Toffee in Season One was The Stoic, it's very off-putting to see him making an Oh, Crap! expression in the tapestry.
- Parasol of Pain: Eclipsa's wand takes the form of a parasol.
- The Reveal: We knew Toffee could regenerate limbs, but the tapestry claims that he's immortal. This means there's a very good chance Toffee could come back. It's also shown that Toffee's missing finger was severed by Moon using a dark spell.
- Royally Screwed Up: It's subtly implied that Mewni's Royal Family is one. Celena kept dark secrets, Eclipsa ran away with a monster lover, and given what we have learned so far about Mewmans and Monsters, Solaria's monster carving might not be entirely heroic.
- Shout-Out:
- Marco's locker has a Sev'ral Timez sticker on the inside of the door.
- Eclipsa's monster husband looks like Trigon the Terrible.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Queen Moon's tapestry shows that she looked very identical to Star when she was younger, except for different hair color and facial marks.
- Wham Episode: While it had been lightly hinted that Toffee had a bad history with the royal family, this episode confirms that he and Queen Moon were enemies, and she was the one who blew off his missing finger. Said severed finger also turns out to have gotten into Star's wand, so Star captures it and stores it in her closet of secrets.Star: "The immortal monster will long be haunted by the darkest spell of Moon the Undaunted"... My Mom fought Toffee?
- This is also the episode that introduces us to past queens of Mewni - Celena the Shy, Solaria the Monster Carver, and Eclipsa, Queen of Darkness. Each of these characters (minus Celena) hold importance for the show going forward.
