The Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur animated series brings a new teenage superhero into the Marvel fold. Moon Girl protects New York’s Lower East Side with her impressive intelligence and technology, but she’s not alone in her fight against crime. She’s got an inter-dimensional dinosaur who packs a prehistoric punch of his own.
Warning: the following article contains spoilers for Moon Girl season one, episode one, “Moon Girl Landing.“
The first episode of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur introduces viewers to Lunella Lafayette, a highly intelligent Black girl with an inventive mind, alongside her loving family who are struggling to keep their businesses safe and profitable. Their area is suffering rolling blackouts and it’s negatively impacting the family’s livelihood. For the Lafayette family, that involves a roller rink and a knish shop, but Lunella isn’t standing idly by as her family suffers. She instead comes up with an idea for a power generator and tells the story of a scientist, a Black woman, who was working on a top-secret project for the space program before vanishing. All that’s left of her work is incomplete blueprints, but if Lunella can finish it, the Lower East Side could have its own power grid.
Devil Dinosaur is from an alternate universe
After an attempted robbery at the skating rink, Lunella goes home and gets to work in her secret lab — Dexter’s Laboratory style — which is located in an old subway station. She starts up the fusion generator she’s built and it creates a portal, allowing a big red dinosaur with horns to emerge, roaring, from the blue glow. A stunned Lunella gives chase as Devil Dinosaur races away through a tunnel, searching for food. In order to win him over, she feeds him hot dogs.
Devil Dinosaur loves her after that, but their moment is short-lived when a woman with electric powers swoops in and attempts to steal the city’s power. As the villain blasts off, a generator box falls down and nearly hits Lunella’s classmate — and social media influencer — Casey Calderone, but Lunella commands Devil Dinosaur to save her and he uses his massive jaws to grab the generator box at the last moment.
Lunella brings Devil Dinosaur back to her lab and tells him about her work and that of the scientist she idolizes, nicknamed Moon Girl. Moon Girl left blueprints for what Lunella thought was a power source, but the contraption instead ripped a hole in the space-time continuum, and brought Devil Dinosaur to the city. Devil Dinosaur’s voyage used up nearly all of the energy synthesized from fuel, and there’s not enough for him to get back. The dinosaur shows that he’s happy to stay with her, but Lunella doesn’t really know what to do with him. He could easily scare people with all that stomping and roaring, but the brilliant Lunella quickly comes up with a solution: they need to become superheroes and fight Aftershock.
Lunella comes up with a plan to use her intelligence to build equipment and trick out her skates to protect her community. With a dangerous super villain on the loose, they have to do something, and Devil Dinosaur is game for helping her out. Casey comes over and, since she already knows what went down, Lunella shows her the lab and details her plan to fight crime. The ever-fashionable Casey agrees to build Lunella’s super suit, and joins her new friend’s plight by using her internet prowess for good, adding a third member to the blossoming team.
Devil Dinosaur is a ferocious beast but he’s got a playful side, especially with Lunella. His deep passion for fast food is a major motivator for the prehistoric beast, even leading him to ditch Moon Girl for a spell during their first mission, in interest of digging into the garbage.
The fresh team has yet to successfully thwart any bad guys, but their failure inspires them to train harder to become more effective. On a rooftop, Lunella tells Devil Dinosaur that her Bubba Bina would call him a “bondit,” which means rascal or devilish, providing the perfect backstory for his new name. Lunella also learns the language “dino-saurian,” and discovers that a literal translation of the dinosaur’s name means a terrifying fire beast who will bring about the end of all things. Devil Dinosaur seems a bit tamer.
You can catch up on Moon Girl and her ferocious dino’s adventures for yourself with a Disney Plus subscription. Fresh episodes of the animated series are set to arrive on the streamer starting Feb. 15.
