- Title: Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur – Moon Girl Landing
- IMDb: link
Simplifying origins of the Marvel Comics characters, the first double-sized episode of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur introduces us to brilliant 13 year-old Lunella Lafayette (Diamond White) who attempts to solve her neighborhood’s power shortage (which is actually being caused by a super-villain, more on that later) by recreating what she believes is a power generator but is actually a portal generator which a red dinosaur walks through. With the help of a social media obsessed classmate (Libe Barer) and her new dino pal, our young teen takes to the street with an assortment of homemade gadgets and dinosaur sidekick to fight for the safety of the Lower East Side.
Although the double-length of the episode does run a bit long in places, “Moon Girl Landing” checks all the boxes in introducing us to Lunella, her family, her new friends, her school life, the neighborhood in which they live, and in the introduction of the super-villain Aftershock (Alison Brie). Our heroine will go through all the stages of heroism in the first episode, loosing her confidence and giving up before retaking her mantle and defeating Aftershock restoring power to the slowly dying neighborhood and offering hope to the locals who haven’t yet been forced to leave.
Relying on a bit of Scooy-Doo logic in accepting Lunella’s friendship with the dinosaur she’ll name Devil (Fred Tatasciore), the episode straddles the line for an all-ages cartoon providing something for both kids and adults. And, despite relying on the old cliché of a genius kid (who, it helps, is immensely likable), it’s fun! I’ll be curious to see how much of the characters’ comic history will eventually make it on to the show, and whether their heroics will eventually garner interest of other major Marvel characters (you think a giant dinosaur rampaging around the Lower East Side might grab the attention of an Avenger or two).
