Several years after its comics debut, Marvel’s “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur” is now a colorful Disney Channel cartoon, starring Diamond White as Lunella Lafayette, the brilliant 13-year old defender of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and Fred Tatasciore as the big, red prehistoric pet she accidentally brings to the present day. The first two episodes premiered this weekend, so without further ado, let’s dive into the pair’s 44-minute origin story. As always, spoilers ahead…
1. An Epic Origin Story Writ Small
With its stylish, heavily comic book-inspired visuals, Moon Girl resembles a smaller cousin of the Spider-Verse movies and Ms. Marvel, but it feels a lot like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, between the emphasis on Lunella as a local hero who has to earn her community’s trust, and the decision to have a story where she decides to give up being a hero right away. I won’t lie, I wasn’t expecting to be feeling this touched by Lunella’s insecurities so early on: typically, Disney Channel shows like these (The Owl House, Amphibia etc.) focus on goofy, standalone adventures before becoming darker and more emotional as they progress – must be the Marvel factor.
2. New Friends
He may not be able to talk, but Devil Dinosaur is a fairly smart boy; however, at the same time, it is a bit much to expect Lunella to carry all the show’s dialogue, so unsurprisingly, showrunners Steve Loter, Jeffrey M. Howard, and Kate Kondell have created Casey Calderon (Libe Barer), a social media enthusiast who becomes Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur’s PR manager. She adds a nice bit of Latin and Jewish representation to the show, and her introductory scene is a good reminder that even “popular” girls can be picked on, or feel isolated in ways that aren’t as apparent as they are with Lunella – it’s also pretty good that the show’s creators didn’t feel the need to give our leads a human male sidekick.
3. It’s All About Gentrification
A cursory glance at the Lower East Side’s history will tell you gentrification is a major issue in the area, and it’s a major theme from the start, with Lunella’s family even namedropping the Avengers to emphasize that no one cares about the troubles in their neighborhood. It pays off when it turns out this episode’s villain, Aftershock/Allison Dillon (Alison Brie), preyed on the LES’s power supply because she knew no one important enough would notice. It’s also really striking that Dillon got herself hired as Lunella’s new science teacher: while the twist was probably playing on the same tropes as a Spider-Man film, it did feel reflective of how, in the real world, white teachers are (on average) worse for Black students than non-white ones.
4. Raphael Sedate
Raphael Saadiq is a brilliant music composer and producer, but his score has a very chill, laidback quality that makes it a slightly strange fit for an action cartoon: he relies on the original songs (including the main theme, sung by Diamond White herself) to generate excitement during the climax and ending, but otherwise he approaches the action scenes, such as the first fight with Aftershock, with a minimalistic level of music. That’s not a bad idea (John Williams’s career is full of major moments made more intense by the lack of music), but it does make the first episode feel slower paced than you’d expect.
5. No Beyonder?
It was announced along with the rest of the cast that executive producer Laurence Fishburne would be voicing the Beyonder, the all-powerful villain behind the original “Secret Wars” comics, so it was surprising he didn’t even show up here during an end tag revealing he’s observing Lunella. Still, there’s a couple of seeds planted here that’ll probably pay off in later episodes, namely: what became of the original “Moon Girl,” who designed the generator that brought Devil through time? And should we be concerned about how Devil’s name in “dino-saurian” literally translates to “Terrifying Fire Beast Who Will Bring About the End of All Things”? Just saying, it might not only be a joke!
All in all, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is a zany delight that should entertain young and old audiences alike, that’s as funny, poignant, and as educational for a kids’ show as you might hope it to be. Bittersweetly, it’s probably the best Disney cable series based on a Marvel comic since Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes wrapped up a decade ago.
The Disney Channel is now airing two new episodes of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur a week, and the first five episodes will be added to Disney+ on Wednesday. The first two episodes are also available now globally on Disney’s YouTube channel.
