D.W. and the Beastly Birthday is an Arthur special that aired on PBS on May 29, 2017, and the third special to be aired for the show.
D.W. is not enjoying her birthday party, and hides under the stairs while playing hide-and-seek. Her Imaginary Friend, Nadine, gives her a ticket to visit the island of Ukubonga, where she is crowned queen of the island by a bunch of monsters resembling her party guests. While she enjoys it at first, she gets bored of hanging out with the monsters and tries to befriend the dreaded Ruthra.
Meanwhile, Arthur skips D.W.'s party to attend a class trip to the planetarium. He and Buster are transported four years into the future and Arthur meets a future D.W., finding her to be cool and regretting not spending time with her earlier.
D.W. and the Beastly Birthday contains examples of:
- All Just a Dream: Arthur and Buster never did go into the future. Arthur just fell asleep while the presentation was starting and dreamed all of it up. D.W. going to Ukubonga was all in her imagination, too.
- Animalistic Abomination: Downplayed. All of the monsters on Ukubonga have ears identical to those of the Funny Animal the person they're based on is, but don't otherwise resemble animals at all.
- Birthday Episode: This special focuses on D.W.'s birthdaynote .
- Birthday Party Goes Wrong: D.W. is having a lousy birthday party. It's raining outside, the cake isn't the flavor she wanted, the party guests are annoying her (although they don't know it), she didn't get the gift she really wanted, and her brother Arthur isn't attending. Thankfully, things get better when Arthur shows up with the gift she wanted.
- Downer Beginning: The special starts by showing exactly what has been going wrong at D.W.'s party.
- Gratuitous Japanese: Older D.W. wears a shirt with the katakana "ドラ" on it, meaning her first name "Dora."
- Occidental Otaku: Older D.W. is implied to be one— her shirt has her name in Japanese on it, and she watches an Animesque spinoff of Bionic Bunny.
- Time Skip: Arthur's plot takes place four years into the future, although he and Buster haven't aged.
- Sdrawkcab Name: Ruthra, one of the monsters from Ukubonga, looks like Arthur. Fittingly, his name is just "Arthur" backwards (almost).
- Snap Back: D.W. had already turned four in "D.W.'s Perfect Wish" back in 1998.
- Spin-Off: In-universe- future DW watches Cyborg Cindy, a spinoff of Bionic Bunny.
- Viewer Gender Confusion: In-universe. Arthur accidentally buys a birthday card for D.W. that says "To the world's best little brother," not realizing that the character depicted on the front was actually a little boy. Of course, he could have avoided that if he had actually opened the card.
- Also a case of Leaning on the Fourth Wall, as all of DW's voice actors have been little boys.
- Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: Mr. Ratburn delays the class's homework for a day as they adjust to the future. This homework is never brought up again, and Arthur just messes around the next day.
- Whole-Plot Reference: To Where the Wild Things Are.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: A variant. Arthur dreams that he is four years into the future, when in reality, he spent an hour or two at most in the planetarium.
- Yes-Man: D.W. has an extended fantasy in which her friends all become monsters in the style of Where the Wild Things Are and she's the queen. However, they all bow to her whims, and so the only monster only the island she ultimately finds interesting is the one that represents her brother Arthur, simply because he has his own personality and won't do everything she says.
- Younger Than They Look: Future D.W. is only 9, but the way she looks, talks, and acts, you’d think she’s 19. Then again, this is from a dream.
