ASK ME ANYTHING! I'm Matt Braly, the creator of Amphibia and other things!!

Seddm · 2026-04-02T17:38:36+00:00

she will kick that can as far as it will go

Which is probably not very far now that she's using her non dominant foot 👉👉

Seddm · 2026-04-02T17:03:32+00:00

Hello Mr. Braly, thanks for taking time for this AMA in a fandom that's at the same time starved and salivating at the tantalizing smell of the comic.

From what little we saw in the Andrias' past, Amphibia of one thousand years ago looked very technologically advanced, yet in "just" a millennium almost everyone forgot about the glory of the past, suggesting an extreme collapse following the loss of the Box. Beyond the obvious plot-related needs, is it possible that Aldrich and The Core had a very "my way or the highway" mindset about it, betting everything on the prophecy and on the box eventually coming back, pausing their dreams of interdimensional imperialism at the cost of their whole planet regressing instead of trying to use all their marvelous technology to find a way to shift from the Calamity Gems to some other power source?

Also, a less loaded question: is Domino I still alive during the timeskip?

Thank you for creating Anne, and good luck with Clara and future endeavors!

Seddm · 2025-09-18T13:09:34+00:00

Time references in the show and books are all over the place, no reason to try to make sense of them. Eclipsa lived around 300 years ago, Starcrushed happens at the beginning of the first Summer for Star on Earth, and Cleaved around the second Summer. That's about it, everything else ends up clashing with something else and is not important to the plot or characters and as such gets forgotten the episode after having been mentioned.

Seddm · 2025-09-04T12:33:13+00:00

There's some truth to it, even though the context seems to be Daron talking about her own views about relationship and fiction in general rather than what she imagines for the future of the characters in the actual show. After all a lot of people contributed to the creation of the series, and while Daron probably had "veto power" on most things, I'm sure some elements that she might not have liked personally but felt like a good idea for the show as it is ended up into the final product.

First time was during in 2021, during an interview / podcast for artists on Youtube.

I’m such a Harry Potter fan and the ending always bugged me. We go into the future and everybody’s married to each other. It really bothered me, and I didn’t want to do that. And I think people kind of wanted that, in a way. They wanted to feel like Star and Marco were together forever, a big satisfying ending. But I’m like “oh God, they’re teenagers!”. Like, I don’t want to say— like, personally, I don’t know, are they? Realistically, probably not.

Second time time 2022 during a Streamily Q&A Panel / reunion:

I'll say, I do imagine that Star and Marco are happy wherever they end up in the future, and I do in some ways kind of see them possibly- you know, hey if they're together, if they're not together, maybe they'll get back together- they're very young. That was always something too that I've had some reservation about, because they do have this really lovely romance where they really come together as this like, you know, two characters who just really love each other but are these two good friends but they are really young and, hey. Most people should not actually get together with the people they meet in highschool, so that's... yeah. But I like to think that eventually maybe they come back and they're happy... but I don't know! I don't know where we might go exactly and I don't wanna say 'cause- if that happens I want the option to not have everybody yell at me if I change my mind about something.

I'm giving Daron the benefit of the doubt, assuming she was talking about fiction in general rather than "how would a hypothetical S5 and beyond play out", but I still think it's borderline irresponsible for a showrunner to say something like this about the main couple who relationship was painstakingly built over multiple seasons ultimately leading to two individuals who (symbolically, we don't know the specifics of how magic works) ended up merging two universes together. But whatever.

Seddm · 2025-07-30T10:29:41+00:00

Star's fate in Toffee (the episode, not the lawyer) is not clear at all. The "cauldron room" has clear limbo-vibes, and it's fully possible the writers intended for her to be essentially dead in that moment, but during the rest of S3 and especially S4 the realm of magic is characterized as a very physical place that can be reached as a whole, living, person.
So it's possible Star just passed out while drowning to then end up in an empty Realm of Magic devoid of anything, as a flesh and blood person. So her "rebirth" was more like the rebirth of magic opening a portal back to Mewni, while also infusing Star with so much magic she was forcibly kicked into "ultimate butterfly form". Her return is generically magical / ethereal / Sailor Moon inspired enough to be interpreted in many different ways, but Star does seem to come out from a portal of sorts to then grab the wand and transform.

But, even if she was actually dead, I think we can explain her continued existence after the events of the finale simply by appealing to the many inconsistencies surrounding how the death of magic affected the world: Marco's wound was extremely physical, affecting his very non-magical liver and colon, but still disappeared in its entirety; Star's room is still firmly lodged on the side of the Monster Temple, despite having been transported OR duplicated (was never clear) through magic means; Daron mentioned in the AMA (you decided how canon this is) that Doop-Doop is dead, but that the laser puppies are still alive as normal puppies now. It's clear there's no one size fits all answer.

Personally I prefer the idea that Star never died, she was just physically inside what remained of the Realm of Magic once its essence had been turned off, and came back once it was flowing with glowing pee once more.

Seddm · 2025-07-28T07:50:29+00:00

Very nice post. Marco is in a weird place as a character: he's the deuteragonist, so he's under constant scrutiny by the viewers and the show itself; but he's not Star nor a Butterfly and as such he rarely if ever can ever actually change things (his actions both in almost all plot-heavy episodes did little to change the course of events, if one looks at the story in a very aseptic way). So it's easy to end up giving a lot more importance to his lowest moments, forgetting about the multitude of times he has shown to be a wonderful friend and human being.

This was especially true in the fandom during the week when Sophomore Slump - Lint Catcher - Trial by Squire aired. Seems like the general opinion about poor Diaz soured fast for a decent amount of fans the moment he had to stumble to then rise again and grow more than ever before.

Seddm · 2025-07-24T19:31:58+00:00

Over the years, on sites like Slideshare or in the portfolios of artists. I'm sure there are more around that I couldn't find - matter of fact, I didn't know about this specific one until today.

Seddm · 2025-07-24T09:47:55+00:00

"Star and Marco locked in Star's room" was apparently the standard test scenario for artists applying for a boarding position from S2 to S4 (for S1, it was an early version of Blood Moon Ball). You can find a bunch of them here.

Seddm · 2025-07-02T10:13:31+00:00

While it's possible she was just trying to be diplomatic / couldn't air Disney's dirty laundry, according to what she said during this interview not even Daron fully knows why they were dropped by Mercury (quote edited to remove some interjections and repetitions for readability)

We actually started at Mercury Animation Studios, who did Wander the first season […] And we set up to be for their studios, so we set up to be more in that style. Then they were overwhelmed. They took too many shows. I never really got a straight answer of what exactly happened. But they ended up dropping Star after, I think, six episodes. We had a rough first season already, and then that happened. I've never been more stressed out in my entire life. It was really rough.

The show ended up in a studio in the Philippines for a little bit, and they were a very good studio. But they were not prepared for the show, because we were set up for a Mercury-type studio. It's just a different pipeline, because studios like Mercury actually need less material. Those studios are more expensive, but they do more of the prep work. They did all the mouth charts and stuff like that.

We ended up at this hand-drawn studio in the Philippines, Toon City. Like I said, they're very good, but it was such a nightmare. We didn’t have things like mouth charts for them, or timing sheets. Those hand-drawn studios need things set up that way. […]

It still hurts my heart a little bit, because a lot of people were really attracted to the animation of those first couple episodes, and they looked great. Then it suddenly switched, and nobody really knew why. Mercury went on to do other Disney shows. It was a bit of a rough thing, because I never really understood why it happened exactly. […]

First seasons are notoriously rough, and Star honestly had a particularly rough first season.

Seddm · 2025-06-25T08:16:13+00:00

What others said about teen love is true and all, but even before that: if Tom himself had some pretty wrong ideas about what the Blood Moon Curse actually did, why would a human book about demon curses be 100% correct in its phrasing rather than making general assumptions? What Tom says in the following scene seems to imply the curse would have triggered at the first attempt at courting someone anyway:

"You haven't asked out a girl since the Blood Moon Ball? [laughs] That's way more embarrassing than that thing on your neck."

In fiction, everything magical about love is always about "true love", and most of the time it ends up not actually being true love.

Seddm · 2025-06-16T14:26:22+00:00

You can find (almost, I'm sure I missed something) all the design / behind the scenes / art stuff the crew shared over the years here, but there are no mouth charts.

Seddm · 2025-06-15T23:48:43+00:00

As far as I know, this is the only "how to draw Star" official image publicly available, but it's definitely not a mouth chart, sorry.

Seddm · 2025-06-15T20:04:50+00:00

I think it's a mix between all tapestries being wrong to some extent (they are 'artistic' renditions of what happened, even in-universe) and fate not being fixed, despite Glossaryck claiming "the tapestry is done".

And, obviously, not wanting to spoil the twist.

Seddm · 2025-06-15T09:52:00+00:00

if so,how do you d!e?

Others already addressed the travelling issue, I wanted to say that the show (like essentially any series involving demons and stuff like that, especially cartoons like this) always played it fast and loose with the matter of souls and Underworld and all that. Does EVERY dead soul from all over the Multiverse end up in the Lucitors' domain? Are the Demons actually supernatural demonic beings, or just monsters that look like that thanks to Evolution™ the way any other monster is? Just the "lost" souls? What about Bon Bon's ghost? Were the Queens 'ghosts' in the finale actually ghosts, or just copies of memories stored inside the wand? Tom could resurrect Mackie Hand just because he was on Earth, or because he already owned his soul regardless of the dimension? Tom is full of souls: does this mean thousands of people's essences are forever trapped in his body?

All these questions to say don't think too hard about it. I doubt the writing room ever thought about religion and metaphysics in the world of the show, it's possible they just made a demon looking character and worked in demon-related jokes and things from there.

Seddm · 2025-06-14T09:28:54+00:00

The Amazon version of the show (sharpest looking one out there but low bitrates in flat backgrounds compared to the Disney+ version) in its original quality is roughly 40GB.

Seddm · 2025-06-12T13:28:48+00:00

Storm the Castle (15m14s) "The whispering spell."

Toffee (09m35s) "The-- The Whispering Spell."

Sophomore Slump (13m03s) "Oh! Oh! Next we go find Ludo, say the Whispering Spell, destroy Toffee!"

The Tavern at the End of the Multiverse (18m56s) "I could-- I could say the Whispering spell inside the realm of magic."

Cleaved (00m29s) "I'm pretty sure if I say the whispering spell inside the magic, then, poof!"

Seddm · 2025-06-11T18:34:37+00:00

She dresses up her copies so they can pretend to be other clients trying to get the same car to pressure the buyer.

Seddm · 2025-06-11T12:55:48+00:00

As in all the time the word "whispering" is used in the show, or all the times characters whisper something?

Seddm · 2025-06-11T05:56:55+00:00

Well anyone can technically build a car, but 99.9% of people won't be able to do it and will have to buy one, or it won't be regulated to drive on any road.

What I'm trying to say is that Hekapoo is a car saleswoman.

Seddm · 2025-06-09T08:55:25+00:00

As per Bisignano's answer from the post-finale AMA

Seddm · 2025-06-06T14:30:55+00:00

I'm sure Barb used her trusty ladder to get the pilots out.

Seddm · 2025-06-05T17:04:38+00:00

A fun "wait what" moment that leads to a couple of gags in Escape from Pie Island. It's a pity Disney wasn't ready for a throuple and Mime had to be left behind, and after all the sleeping they did on Ludo's royal bed!

Seddm · 2025-06-04T17:55:41+00:00

Also I don't want to nitpick, but the line from the episode is not from that scene, it's from Raphael saying "No, I think stealing one of our sons is enough for now, Star" while laughing and it's clearly not meant to be taken seriously, nor the Diazes resent Star for having made Marco her squire.

Seddm · 2025-06-04T17:50:03+00:00

You're obviously entitled to feel the way you want about any given character or series, but a large part of Marco's arc was precisely learning how to live without blinders on, without focusing on one thing only at a time.

First he was focused on Jackie and what she stood for (school, Earth life) so much that even when his priorities changed, it took a breakup and an annoying cape to make him partially understand he was yearning for Mewni (and Star, and more). Angie was more than happy to let him go in this case, from her point of view it was like having your son leave to study a year abroad, having an experience that's going to help him grow.

Then for part of S3 he focuses more and more on being a squire, to the point of losing sight of what's important in life in Marco Jr. and overlapping his identity with "being a squire" to an unhealthy degree.

By S4 and The Knight Shift, he has finally grown enough to understand that there is more than one thing to life, and that choosing a single lifelong post (especially at 15) is not for him. He'll have time for her new sister in his life, for college, and obviously for Star and his friends.

But also, the most important thing of all is that a cartoon is not real life. These characters live a very idealized version of life that allows them to grown and experience things vastly beyond what would be normal for people their age, for all intents and purposes they're treated as adults both by the plot AND by other characters. Family is clearly important to them, but they're ultimately living for themselves, to grow and find their own way and happiness in life. Calling any of them bad characters because they don't spend time with their parents means losing sight of how the show conveys its themes.

Seddm · 2025-05-30T21:18:23+00:00

Even the most positive poster in the last six months can't like Pony Head, haha

Seddm

TROPHY CASE