magicman111

[magicman111]

Amphibia - Sky Beasts  (drabble)

All this just to prove to Hop Pop he was responsible.

Sprig had been ruminating on that thought for minutes, curled up in the glowing blue... jar thing he found himself trapped within. He tried pounding the walls until his knuckles ached, he tried knocking the stupid thing over. No luck. He was stuck here, helplessly awaiting whatever terrible fate the sky beasts had planned for him.

If he were a betting frog, he’d put his coppers on getting taken back to their shiny flying castle to be eaten. Or being stuffed by the crazy blonde one with the boomstick and made into a conversation piece at their parties.

Frog, he only hoped Ivy and Maddie managed to escape and got back to Wartwood safely. With any luck, they’d rally the mob and come to his rescue.

Then all he’d have to worry about was Hop Pop killing him instead. He could live with being chained to the front porch for the rest of his life if…

Someone was coming. Or something. Sprig stood up in the jar at full alert. Footsteps way too heavy to be a frog’s were coming from the bushes dead ahead.

He could feel his heart rising to his throat. There was nowhere to run this time, nowhere to hide.

The bush bristled and out emerged one of the very creatures he’d been dreading.

Giant head. Spindly limbs. Face bump. Boomstick.

“Caught ya!” she grinned down at her capture, flashing those hideous teeth bones as she reached for her weapon. “Thought you got the best of ol' Anne, eh? Well, you d--” Her predatory grin crumpled. “Waaait, you’re not a giant bug.”

An awkward silence followed, until Sprig took a deep breath and let out a drum-puncturing scream so loud they could hear it all the way in Newtopia.

“SKYY BEEEEAASST!!”

The sky beast known as ‘Anne’ blinked a couple times, eyes shifting to the miniature boomstick attached to her hip. As if something clicked in her head, she held up her hands and started laughing nervously.

“Ohhhh nonononono!”

Sprig was already lost in a pink ball bouncing freneticaly off the walls of his prison.

“SKY BEAST! SKY BEAST! SKY BEAST! SKY BEAST!”

He was interrupted mid panic when Anne scooped the jar up and gave him a shake.

“DUDE! Stop that!” she hissed, forehead pressed against the surface so their eyes were level. “What is wrong with you?!”

Too disoriented to question how the jar had no bottom, Sprig glared defiantly at his captor.

“I have bad news for you, beast!” he yelled, “I taste terrible!”

Anne looked positively revolted at the insinuation. “Eww, I am not gonna eat you,” she stated bluntly.

“You tried to eat Wally!”

“No-I-didn’t! “Wally” ran off screaming the second he saw me and my friends!”

Sprig opened his mouth to retort, but the more he thought about it, the more plausible the creature’’s story sounded.

He had to concede, “That does sound like Wally... b-but what’s with you guys’ leaving traps all over the place, huh?” He stomped his foot against the strange casing to demonstrate his point.

Heaving her shoulders in a sigh, Anne got down one one knee, gently planting Sprig’s jar back on the ground.

“It wasn’t for you. Here, lemme...” She rummaged through her pockets and pulled out a palm sized device. When she noted his anxious expression, she smiled, “Dude, relax, I’m gonna get you outta there.”

In that instant, a bestial roar pierced the humid afternoon air. Their heads whipped toward the sound, the same direction from which Anne emerged, and saw trees in the near distance falling one by one and getting closer.

All color drained from their faces.

Spring offered the obvious, “Oh, it’s for that thing, wasn’t it?”

“Aaand we are outta here!”

Slamming whatever the heck she was holding against the surface, the jar vanished into thin air as if by magic. Before Sprig could even hit the ground, Anne had scooped him up, tucked him under her arm and bolted it through the nearest clearing.

[magicman111]

Andrias: “Stings, doesn’t it?”

Barrel: “I protected you in school, and now I’m gonna kick your royal ass”

Andrias: “Oooh!!”

(I just want Zeno Robinson to do his best Bully Maguire impression XD)

[magicman111]

There’s a strong possibility that this is going to be the ‘Reality Ensues’ episode for which fans have long been bellyaching, when the consequences the crew has discussed in the past will finally come home to roost for our heroes.

The tone of the promo art alone teases almost Bojack Horseman levels of shit hitting the fan and Anne’s world of the past half season falling to pieces. Here’s a rough taste of what I’m getting at:

Mr. Wu: “Then why didn’t you call us?! You were back for Weeks, Anne, you didn’t call us!”

And Anne most likely won’t have an answer.

Promo Art by Jenner Strickland!

[magicman111]

Marcy savoured the moment. She caressed the Box, her birthright, allowing her bloodied fingers to trace the outlines of the intricate designs that decorated the exterior. The power that radidated from it was intoxicating. This must have only been a fraction of what her ancestors felt.

She started pressing the gems in the correct order that would shut down the portal. Regarding the horror stricken human and frogs with a deranged cheshire cat grin that stretched from ear to ear, Marcy rocked her head back and forth. An inhuman giggling fit shook her rib cage.

“You’re not going anywhere...”

A Moth to a Flame, Chapter 7 https://archiveofourown.org/works/31786669/chapters/78685435

All credit for this marvellous piece of art goes to the one and only and incredibly talented @issabolical

[magicman111]

A Moth to a Flame’, Chapter 7

Marcy savoured the moment. She caressed the Box, her birthright, allowing her bloodied fingers to trace the outlines of the intricate designs that decorated the exterior. The power that radidated from it was intoxicating. This must have only been a fraction of what her ancestors felt.

She started pressing the gems in the correct order that would shut down the portal. Regarding the horror stricken human and frogs with a deranged, bloodied cheshire cat grin that stretched from ear to ear, Marcy rocked her head back and forth. An inhuman giggling fit shook her rib cage.

“You’re not going anywhere...”

All credit for this marvellous, haunting piece goes to the one and only Janky Bones; https://twitter.com/bonejanky?s=21

[magicman111]

Hey guys, sorry for breaking the news, but there’s something that I really don’t like that I should not read long ago. It’s a “Moth To A Flame”, a dark AU of Amphibia and I really hate that story. Do you know why? I’ll tell you why?

Marcy Wu is NOT evil! A friend should never do that to Anne or Sasha or Sprig or anyone she cares! I don’t care what that jerk says something about what I said, but face it! Marcy is a good kid!

And what’s nearly broke or my heart or shed a tear when ANNE HAS GATHERED HER GIFT FROM MARCY LIKE BIRTHDAY OR CHRISTMAS AND PLANS TO BURN IT TO THE GROUND IF IT WERE’NT FOR THOSE DAMNED CLANS, OR THAT NEWT TYRANNICAL MANAIC HAS RUINED ANNE AND MARCY’S FRIENDSHIPS!!!

Excuse my potty mouth………….

I HATE QUISLING!!!! I REALLY HATE THIS STUPID MOTHERFUCKING GODDAMNED FORSAKEN PIECE OF SHIT DARK AU!!!!!

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

(pant) (pant) (pant) (pant)

I’m sorry….. it’s just that Marcy is my favorite character. Please try to understand that I have autism. I don’t want her to end up like Super Man from Injustice. If you don’t want to support me, that’s fine. I don’t want to cause any more trouble and I swear that I will never read this ever again.

Thanks for understanding and I hope you that you’ll understand my feelings. Whenever people ask request for Dark AU, TRUST NO ONE!

I’m doing what’s best for me. For Anne. And for Marcy.

Taglist:

@ilovetvtoons @kevintoons915 @marcanne-lover @crazydisneynerd123 @iamnota-sexualperson-deactivate @dodelidoo @diamond28869 @a-pastel-unicorn @lmjdraws @multifandoms13

[magicman111]

God Lord, THANK YOU, MATT!

An excerpt from this fascinating article from MEDIUM, https://medium.com/@darya.png/matt-braly-on-amphibia-culture-and-alienation-the-metaphorical-and-fantastical-6887b1d527e8

[magicman111]

If Amphibia’s story was the same, but was written with the tone and style of ‘F is for Family’?

Hop Pop: “When I get back, I wanna see half of those chores finish, or as Frog as my witness, I will put you through that froggin wall!”

Sprig: “We’re outside, genius! There is no wall!”

Hop Pop: “Then I will build one and I WILL FROGGIN PUT YOUR THROUGH IT!!!”

(Weeks ago, when Anne and Sasha run from the arcade)

Sasha: “Our names are Maggie Fitzsimmons!!”

[magicman111]

The way I see it, Darcy seems to be fusion between Marcy and the Core, rather than a straightforward possession. There is clearly a large part of Marcy’s mind there, it’s just been assimilated into the collective. And part of that assimilation, I think, has required stripping away a lot of her inhibitions, her heart, etc. I think, yeah, this part of her always existed, the Core has brought it to forefront.

Darcy's badass behavior makes me wonder: has Marcy always been able to speak like that, to put people in their places, taunt them right where it hurts most, but chose not to?

[magicman111]

I’m glad this headcanon has seemingly been confirmed. However...

I find myself getting apprehensive when I see people treating this revelation basically as ifi ts the sole reason Sasha had ended up the way she has. Now look, please don’t mistake me. As someone whose parents split up when they were a toddler, I totally understand the impact that has on a child. It’s rough, and absolutely, I can understand how a lot of kids can end up acting out to deal with it. You can easily make the connection from Sasha’s need for control to her being unable to control her family situation. However, I think it’s important we avoid falling down the pitfall of treating this like the smoking gun behind Sasha’s behaviour, or worse, an excuse for her actions. It can explain a lot, yes, but Sasha is an individual responsible for her own decisions and human beings are more complex than a freudian excuse. What I’m saying is her parents’ divorce is a large piece of the puzzle that is Sasha Waybright, but shouldn’t be treated as the full picture.

[magicman111]

Hmmm, I mean, sure, I can get behind this kind of explanation as to why Anne would be too scared to reach out the parents at this point. Hell, any kid in her position would.

On the other hand, though, you’d still kinda think maybe her parents could’ve reached out to the Wus and Mr. and Mrs. Waybright on her behalf, right? I’d say they’d be in a much better position to do so, potentially acting as an emotional buffer between her and the other parents. I just can’t understand why the Boonchuys, whom of all people should have the scope for empathy, weren’t the first to contact the Wus and Waybrights, at least to let them know. If the other families flat out ask Anne’s parents--not Anne, them specifically--why they didn’t reach out, I struggle to conjure up a good enough answer they could give. I dunno, I just think her own parents presence here and why they don’t seem to have much involvement or concern regarding the other two girls continues to perplexes me.

I don’t think anyone has noted this yet, but the fact Anne is not saying her full name but an alias already harbors a lot of implications.

Think about it for a second. If people already gotten alerted to Anne’s presence, and there is a possibility that one or all of the families are still in the city, then they probably would’ve heard this news by now. It had been a month since Anne came back to LA. It had been a month of the families probably hearing that out of all three of the girls, only Anne came back.

And no one actively came to them after Anne came back, or the show didn’t show Anne actively go over to their houses to apologize or talk about the girls until now. Just like the letters implied, the families probably believed their daughters were dead before this. And then months later, only one survived.

There’s a high probability that Anne avoided the topic of Marcy and Sasha entirely or had them always in the back of her mind, but was too scared to really push herself to confront the parents head-on until now.

And even so, it had been one month. Anne putting on an alias, rewriting her messages to perfection, and then reassuring the families that their daughters are alive seems like an attempt to reach out and reassure that people are thinking of their daughters. But Anne knows it feels too late if she tried to write this under her own name.

The families are probably going to not like that she took so much time to contact them.

That’s why she’s writing this at such a late night, after the festivities are done. That’s why she looks so concerned, so lost in thought as she attempts to write all these letters down to their final draft.

How do you articulate a letter that is far too late yet still remain to be salvageable?

[magicman111]

Nah brah, this ain’t a simple case of mind-control...

Darcy holding a twenty-sided die here says a lot more than we think. A lot of us thought Marcy’s brain was simply hijacked and her body’s been relegated to a mere puppet. Yet this token of her love for DnD and the strength of her voice over the others from the Core strongly suggests, at least to me, that Marcy’s mind is still very much active, it’s just been warped and assimilated into a massive part of the collective hive mind. She is the host, after all, it only makes sense. Darcy isn’t exactly Marcy or the Core, but rather a merger of the two. And yes, that is far darker and bleak than what we originally thought.

[magicman111]

You’re right, I was feeling something very similar when I first watched this scene.

It’s a really good snapshot of the immigrant experience. She and her husband are first generation, dark-skinned immigrants from Southeast Asia who’ve come to the States pursuing their American dream.

In many ways, they’ve succeeded. The run a successful, highly-rated restaurant and their daughter attends a good school. On the other hand, they’ve moved to a country that, let’s be real here, hasn’t always been welcoming even in the best of times to people like them. As successful and hardworking as they are, as much as they make the effort to integrate and engage with the wider community outside their own, there’s always gonna be something a bit ‘other’ about them.

So when they make this parade, it feels like they’ve broken that last barrier, at least to them. As you said, Bork, they made it. For them, they’ve fully achieved their American Dream.

I have to be honest, seeing Mrs. Boonchuy talk about her experience feeling out of place as an immigrant, is one of the few moments that actually got me to tear up over the special.

It just makes a lot of things like the Thai Temple’s insistence to accept the frogs and even small details such as Mr. Boonchuy crying over Turantu-lad’s wanting to find a home hit even more with this context being confirmed. It feels real to me. It feels very real. To use my parents as an example, they basically worked their hardest to find the communities that would support them because, in places like California, there are others who would make them feel unwelcomed or out-of-place due to the fact they came from somewhere else. And they found others who felt the same and then protected each other as a result.

These communities wanted each member to feel safe and home in a world that is new and different, and to the Boonchuys they became the personified form of that experience.

People like in the Thai Temple weren’t going to out others because they understand the hardships of being alienated in a new space for the way one looked and identified, and kept quiet as a result. Add that the Boonchuys went through the grief of their daughter going missing, you get people who will fight in making sure the Boonchuys stayed afloat, and even after all of that, Mrs. Boonchuy still wanted to prove that they made it.

That they got involved in a community wholeheartedly. That people wanted them, that people accepted them into the society they once feared they weren’t apart of.

And Mrs. Boonchuy got what she wanted.

They made it.

[magicman111]

The Reason Behind Amphibia’s Weird Tone

Amphibia is a show powered by emotions. At its core is this powerful familial bond between Anne and the Plantars. There’s also the relationship between Anne, Sasha, and Marcy, borne of strong feelings and fears and complicated by a pattern of codependency. This show has succeeded at providing emotional gut punches and the cathartic reward of how the characters cope with it.

So then why does Season 3 feel so numb?

It’s especially prevalent when you look at the Anne episodes. Anne really doesn’t feel like the same person she was before.

Before season 3, Anne had a lot of emotional issues. She compartmentalized heavily, leading to a lot of snapping at people and crying over things.

When Hop Pop hid the box, she stormed away and sulked for an entire episode. Then she said she forgave him, which turned out to be an empty promise. The problems didn’t go away overnight, and it wasn’t as if the previous episode suddenly hadn’t happened. The events from before had an effect on the plot afterwards.

Look at Anne’s anger at Sasha. She literally headbutted a guard out of rage at Sasha’s betrayal. We’ve heard these huge lines from her, about not wanting to be pushed around anymore, how Sasha is a horrible friend, and we see that Sasha’s actions are too big to ignore, and Anne can’t stay silent about them.

Even if we look at Anne’s crying. She cried a lot, often over things that just didn’t really matter. Look at the humorous crying in Day at the Aquarium. She’s right in the middle of that sob pile, afraid to leave her frog family behind.

And damn, did she long for her friends a lot. In Best Fronds and Marcy at the Gates, she stares at that polaroid she carries around everywhere. She mentions Sasha and Marcy offhand all the time, reminiscing over all the things they used to do back home, and how she’s excited to spend more time with them once they reunite.

Well, then Marcy died. And Anne didn’t seem to feel anything at all.

I mean, sure, we saw her say that Marcy has to be alive somehow, but she didn’t really talk about it at all after that. And while there have been allusions to her staying up late at night, the focus has seemingly shifted to the goal of getting the frogs back home. 

Which, according to her speech in The New Normal, isn’t even her main goal. Anne wants to find a way to get her friends back and make peace with them, and she wants to finish defeating Andrias. Getting the frogs home? That’s, like, her 3rd most important goal. The goals that are closest to her heart are the goals that have to do with regaining her friends and getting revenge.

In The New Normal, we actually did see a lot of this emotion. That episode felt like coming home for a lot of viewers. Anne was reasonably stressed about keeping secrets from her parents. Her dad dropped hints about Sasha and Marcy (when he said “you three–I mean, four”) and we saw their names carved into Anne’s bedpost. Anne even looked at the picture of the three of them, the one she has saved to her phone. We haven’t seen it since.

Actually, Anne has been increasingly more emotionless since then.

I mean, look at her. She’s been staying up late researching ways to get back to Amphibia, but she’s been doing it more to get the frogs home than anything else. 

And she’s been going on a lot of irrelevant adventures. Like when she made cookies for the frogs. Or when she took them to the movies. 

Actually, after her blue-charged fight with the cloak-bot, Anne seems to have lost interest in her main goal–a fact only highlighted by its pairing with the horrific events that have happened to Marcy.

That’s when we see this overarching pattern: every time Anne uses her powers, the subsequent episodes get less and less focused on Anne’s emotional goals. Hell, they don’t even show as much emotion.

See If You Give a Frog a Cookie, for example. That episode showed a lot of the Plantars in full tears, crying on the floor around Anne. Which seems like normal Plantar shenanigans, until you think about how, in Day at the Aquarium, Anne was crying with them.

Or think about Hop til you Drop, where the frogs do all of this irresponsible stuff. Anne blames herself, almost halfheartedly, instead of getting mad at them for abusing her hospitality and being blatantly direspectful. Which seems like decent character growth, except didn’t she just have a season finale, two episodes ago, where her anger motivated her to try to murder a newt king?

It almost feels like Anne’s desires, her motives, her emotions, are being drained from her.

Or, put another way:

Anne is losing her heart.

And suddenly, this has a lot of chilling implications.

Let’s take, for example, the part in The New Normal where she mentions to Sprig that these powers feel bad, somehow. Every time she uses her powers, she passes out for a little bit. Watching her weakened, watching her energy get drained by these powers, it’s hard not to wonder if it’s not just her energy getting drained.

Using the powers is triggered by a need to protect. By principle, Anne’s desire to protect people is rooted in her love for them–that is to say, an emotional attachment driven by her heart.

It has been logical to assume that the heart gem enhances these qualities. However, enhancing is not the only thing it does.

The most perplexing thing about the Amphibian temples is their function. These temples have been repeatedly used to remove powers. Why would a society set up trials to test that someone is worthy to have their powers removed? Wouldn’t a temple exist to reward powers to those who deserve them?

That’s where it gets kind of creepy that Anne’s heart seems to be drained. 

Wouldn’t it be easy to use a test to find people strong of heart, and then let the gem drain that heart from them, to put it somewhere else?

Let’s take a look at Marcy. She used to be a heavily emotionally-driven character, with her fear and trust issues leading her to send her friends to another dimension. Now she has become Darcy, a character known for its cold detachment and robot qualities.

It’s almost as if Andrias’s goal requires Anne, Sasha, and Marcy to be drained of the very qualities that they are strongest at.

Because where else is someone going to find a natural charge for a gem? The temples transferred them, sure, but the charge itself has to be activated by the correct combination, the perfect group of three.

The box hadn’t been activated before. It wasn’t activated by Sasha randomly opening it in True Colors. The only thing that could activate the box by merely opening it was the perfect combination of three people who already possessed each gem’s trait.

Now all the box needs to do is drain it from them.

[magicman111]

What is the Core?

We thought it was an olm. We thought it was The Night. We thought it was a prophesied villain that was deeply linked to the calamity gems.

Then this episode revealed the horrific truth: The Core is something far worse, a computerized yet sentient being that holds the knowledge of “Amphibia’s greatest minds.” It is now clear that this thing is not the prophesied Night–however, it is still deeply interwoven with Amphibia’s past and future. 

Here’s how.

The Core’s Contents and Synthesis

This is terrifying. It would be easy to say that the Core is the database of all knowledge, a massive supercomputer. But it’s more than this. While the Calamity power draws parallels to Zelda with its magical, trait-enhancing properties, the Core works in a much different way. 

The Core is made of souls.

In his Reddit AMA, Matt Braly said that he took a lot of influence from Dark Souls. While I haven’t played the game, I have researched enough lore to determine the goal of it. The player must collect souls in order to survive.

Remember what Ally and Jess said in Fixing Frobo? Anything with memories has a soul, and boy do robots have memory.

Here’s what I think. The Core itself is not a sentient being. It is a collection of them, a database of stolen souls, compressed into one place. Thousands of memories, taken from the residents of Amphibia and consolidated into the core. All of the smartest people, none as smart as Andrias but still smart enough.

Now, where did those people come from?

There’s a couple places it could come from, but they all have one common thread. This is a place to put people who cause problems. People who are too smart to leave on their own, too smart to be manipulated.

Here’s some fun facts. There was once a great race of olms, powerful enough to create an entire series of temples, with the purpose of testing the worthiness of a Calamity wielder. Despite creating grand buildings, they disappeared. Now Amphibia is in a dark age, and the only olms we know are the two from Quarreler’s Pass.

So where did they go? Where do you keep an entire race of olms, with the knowledge required to protect a sacred and dangerous resource–a resource that Andrias so badly wants?

That’s right. You hollow out their souls until their motives are gone, then put all those souls in a semi-sentient supercomputer. 

Now all Andrias needs, in order to access that sacred knowledge, is a willing host.

The Core’s Mechanism

If the Core needs a host, that means it is not a complete entity. We have seen Andrias refer to this creature as his lord; however, it has never spoken in response, up until now. Furthermore, Andrias mentions that the Core should be allowed a chance to say what its “destiny” is.

This implies that the Core has a motive. A desire. A goal. And we already know that it’s full of souls, which have knowledge. But that’s not enough to create a real character. The Core isn’t a real being, but rather an extension–a database and a desire, to be added to someone whose desire has been snuffed.

Now we add it to Marcy. Marcy, a character with her own mannerisms and quirks. Marcy, a character who can create intricate and insightful connections in her mind, an alarmingly quick problem solver. If Andrias could remove Marcy’s motives, her desires and fears, then he could have the perfect strategist, an unbeatable enemy. 

That’s why Andrias let Marcy try to escape.

The simulation revealed each person’s worst fears. While it’s nice to know that Olivia has mommy issues and Yunan adds fuel to the Anne Loses An Arm fire, the biggest reason behind that was so that Andrias could watch and see what it is that Marcy fears, what she wants.

That’s simple. Marcy wants Anne and Sasha to stay with her.

Every person has mannerisms, skill, purpose, fear, and desire. The Core needs to know what Marcy fears in order to manipulate her. If it can change her motive, then it can change her entire personality. But first it needs to know what to look for.

And it makes sense, really. It’s the core. It changes her core desires. So then, when she fights Anne, it won’t be due to her being a mindless vessel. It will be her choice.

Because her past, her future, even the two other stars that serve as her light..none of them will have meaning. She won’t care anymore. Marcy will be truly heartless.

Keep reading

[magicman111]

I've noticed a certain number of people are a bit disappointed Olivia and Yunan don’t entirely fulfil the ‘Newt Mom’ role we were hoping they would. That their primary goal was freeing Marcy so she could help them defeat Andrias.

But... that makes total sense, doesn't it? Olivia may have some genuine affection for Marcy, but her priority rightly should be the overall welfare of her kingdom, no? The trio certainly grow closer and fonder of each other by episode's end... however, that doesn’t automatically equal the ‘found family trope’. They don’t really know each other that well, nowhere near to the level Anne and the Plantars do.

I just have to wonder if the fandom projected way too heavily on the titular characters. Did we just want Marcy to have adoptive newt moms because we want a happy ending for her. I honestly see the parallels to how we routinely vilify her parents despite knowing little to nothing about them as a cheap excuse for Marcy’s selfish actions in basically kidnapping her friends.

One of the major points of Marcy’s story is how she hasn’t truly gained much from this venture. That running away from her problems only made them much, much worse. So perhaps this episode was just another example of the whole Isekai deconstruction.

[magicman111]

A continuation of the AU where Sprig, Maddie and Ivy were transported to the human world. Before I continue, however, I will say half these ideas came out of the head of my friend, TheGreatestofAllTime. Credit where credit is due and all that.

* Anne meets Sprig when, following social media sightings of a talking pink frog somewhere in LA, she, Sasha and Marcy decide a fun night out would be to go searching for the thing.

* The second episode would be where Anne reveals Sprig to her parents, subverting the ‘hide from the parents’ very early on.

* The temples quest plays out similarly on earth, only here there’s a ton of monuments or environments to choose from that can contain hidden underground temples and such. E.g. underneath the Lincoln Memorial, the Taj Mahal, Big Ben, the Russian Ural Mountains, the Alaskan Wilderness, etc.

* Ivy landed in NYC, therefore, a season 2 premise could have Sprig, the Boonchuys and company road tripping to the Big Apple, where they meet guess-who lol

* The frog kids’ backstory together can be rooted in how they all lost parents in the heron attack. Maddie lost her mom, Ivy lost her dad, Sprig and his sister lost both. It’s this tragic thing they all have in common.

* While Maddie is the toughest of the three and did rescue Sprig and Ivy from bullies, Maddie’s relationship with them is also one where Sprig and Ivy who showed her kindness, as the girl was shunned during her early childhood. She responded to her mother’s death by becoming more withdrawn and confrontational, and delved into magic partly because it’s her passion, but she learnt how her mother was a talented spell caster too.

Therefore, when Maddie wants to get back home, her fierce desire to maintain her only friendships are what drives her to do extreme things.

* The pink frog who was allies with Andrias was Sprig’s ancestor. She hid the Box deep within the Plantar’s house where Sprig found it one day, sharing the secret with Maddie and Ivy. Then on his birthday, after a day playing hookie with Maddie, Ivy quite insistently say she wants to get another look at it…

* A huge subplot of season 2 could be Sprig and Ivy developing their relationship:

https://youtu.be/pxE8mQz9aZ0

(And yes, Mr. B would totally be the one miming the song in the foreground)

Stay tuned for more!