- Title: Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur – The Great Beyond-er!
- wiki: link
After jumping through the portal to save her friends and family, closing it after her, the Second Season of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur opens with Lunella (Diamond White) lost in space-time only to be saved by the Beyonder (Laurence Fishburne). Introduced halfway through the show’s First Season, this version of the comic character plays an awful lot like Mister Mxyzptlk, an overpowered creature popping in to cause havoc and chaos for our heroine. This time, the Beyonder saves Moon Girl, but rather than take her straight home he instead chooses to take her to one of his favorite worlds… which unfortunately for them has seen better days since his last visit and where his powers no longer work.
For an episode without appearances by any other regulars, except as cameos, the story comes from Moon Girl attempting to boost the depressed Beyonder’s confidence while working on a plan to get them back to Earth and fight off various enemies the Beyonder has made over the years who now come out in force to attack the powerless troublemaker (giving the episode some similar themes to Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s “Deja Q.” The most notable highlight comes in the cameo for Devil Girl and Moon Dinosaur (alternate versions of our heroes) out for revenge for the science fair fiasco (directly referencing slightly different events to those in “The Beyonder”).
While doing a hell of a job on all fronts, and eventually making it home with the help of the Beyonder who regains his powers, the episode ends on a bit of a dark turn for Moon Girl whose overpowering optimism and confidence in herself is shaken deeply at the hands of Molecule Man (Edward James Olmos) which the show not so subtly foreshadows could be something for Lunella to deal with over the course of several episodes. For such a wacky episode that quickly resets events and gets Lunella home, I didn’t have giving our main character crippling PTSD on my bingo card.
