‘Marvel’s Moon Girl And Devil Dinosaur’ Is What The Kids Want And Deserve – Review
Sometimes it feels like Marvel needs to remember that a key demographic is kids. There’s certainly no shortage of cartoons, but in the superhero genre, most of the content is adaptations or spinoffs of PG-13 movies. Even if many kids have seen these movies, they weren’t the target audience. There’s nothing wrong with that—the business model seems to be working—but it does leave a gap. Is there a superhero that the kids don’t have to share? With their latest animated show, Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Marvel tells us that they haven’t forgotten about the kids at all; better yet, the series fits nicely into the Disney Channel slate.
This show has everything kids love: action, superheroes, meme humour, and of course, dinosaurs! But the most important is that the show has a lot of heart. Lunella Lafayette (Diamond White), affectionately nicknamed Lu, is a 13-year-old girl who wants to help her city. The electrifying Aftershock is a power-hungry villain who is determined to suck up all the electricity from the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She’s so set on it that she doesn’t care if it endangers the city and shuts down local businesses. That’s where my girl Lu comes in.
She isn’t your average thirteen-year-old. She has a genius IQ, a secret lair under her room, and an obsession with the ill-fated OG Moon Girl. Seeing nobody else stand up, Lu takes it upon herself to get to the bottom of the city-wide power outages. Despite these good intentions, she accidentally rips a hole in the space-time continuum and invites a T-Rex (Fred Tatasciore) into her home. Hate it when that happens. But Lu doesn’t just scream and run away. No, she’s much cooler than that. Instead, she takes this as a sign that the impossible is no longer impossible. She can defeat Aftershock and restore the city’s power grid, but only if she takes on the Moon Girl moniker and teams up with her new Jurassic friend.
If you’re wondering how a dinosaur can restore electricity, you’re sure in for a special treat. Not only is the unlikely duo more than capable, but they’re compatible too. They’re both brave, strong, and really good at science!
This show is such a joy. The animation is reminiscent of Into the Spider-Verse with its vibrant colors, cute action bubbles, and panel-to-panel transitions. The humor is very much Gen Z, to be expected, but they have tasteful jokes here and there that the adults can laugh at. What’s arguably the most refreshing is how authentic it is. New York is a cultural melting pot, and the show reflects this perfectly. We see food from the Jewish community, hear English comingled with Spanish, and get a taste of one of Black culture’s many past times: roller disco. One of Lu’s classmates even sees a Trans Pride flag on their water bottle. These things may sound trivial, but they will undoubtedly ruffle conservative feathers, especially those who have taken issue with the revived Proud Family series. We love to see them mad.
Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is genuine fun for the whole family, with kids getting a hero they can relate to on multiple levels. Moon Girl and T-Rex will heroically lead Disney’s new slate of kid-friendly superhero shows.
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur premieres on the Disney Channel on February 10, followed by a debut on Disney+ on February 15.
