Meggy Splezter. She is known for many things within the series: she can be known as an intelligent, badass fighter who never gave up on her dreams and fought to reach her goals. She can be known as a tragic, broken character who was forced to witness the death of two of her closest friends. She can be known as the character with the most emotional baggage of the entire series.
She can also be seen as a narc who yells and gets mad at her friends for trivial things; a naggy, annoying bitch who antagonizes, abuses, dehumanizes, and maliciously bullies the people who are supposed to be her friends, forcing them to do things that they're not willing to do, and generally have little regard for her "friends", especially Mario.
She can be remembered as the star and best part of almost every arc, or as the girl who Luke and Kevin practically simp over and choose to be in arcs over other decent characters. She can be remembered as a beautifully written character with incredible emotional baggage and a better arc than any other character in the series; or she can be remembered as the most divisive character in SMG4 history, with decisions made dealing with her being so polarizing that it completely broke the fanbase.
Love her or hate her, one thing's for certain; this inkling-turned-human girl changed the SMG4 channel forever, for better or for worse. Today, we're going to be diving into Meggy's character. We'll go over what made her good, what made her bad, and everything in-between.
Meggy debuted in the episode "If Mario Was In... Splatoon", in which she'd be released from a paint can that she was trapped in after Mario opened it, and traveled back to Inkopolis, unintentionally leading Mario there in the process. Now, something that's important to know about Meggy is that she loves sports. And at this point in the series, her one goal/dream in life is to win the Splatfest and be like her idol, One Shot Wren.
Anyways, at first, Mario and Meggy aren't off to a good start, as Meggy believes that Mario is the one who trapped her in the paint can. This continues when Mario, after finding out about the Splatfest, asks to be on Meggy's team, to which she declines, laughing and saying that he wasn't skilled enough. However, Mario is determined, and attempts to show Meggy that he was skilled enough. But because it's Mario, these attempts end horribly. One of the attempts fail so miserably, in fact, that it ends up killing one of Meggy's team mates; and having no other immediate replacements, this event forces Meggy to add Mario to her team.
Once on the team, Mario attempts to train with Meggy and her team; of course, still failing. However, despite this, Meggy would grow to become fond of Mario; she saw that he was trying and was amused by his stupidity. Then, the day of the Splatfest came. Meggy's team seemed to be putting up a good fight; however, despite their best efforts, Meggy lost to the Inkbrigade that day. Meggy feels defeated. After all the energy and hard work she put into the Splatfest, she still couldn't secure her victory. Maybe she wasn't good enough. Mario, who goofed around during the first half of the game, feels bad, and attempts to console her. However, he ends up forgetting what he was saying and begins talking about spaghetti.
Mario's stupidity in this scene makes her laugh. And seeing his carefree ways shows her that she shouldn't worry about her loss too much, and should instead think about how she could do better next year.
From her debut episode, Meggy was already controversial. In the following episodes, Meggy would join Mario and the rest of the crew in adventures, often replacing SMG4 as the "only sane one" in the group. She would also continue to showcase her skills, showing that she was a competent and capable fighter, which led to some pretty badass moments. While some fans liked her for her fighting skills, intelligence, and more emotional driven moments, many fans disliked her for one very obvious reason; Meggy wasn't funny.
In the following episodes, Meggy would be shown to be this badass, intelligent, nearly flawless character that was supposed to be taken very seriously. However, this went against SMG4 standards completely; she didn't fit in with the rest of the characters at all. Meggy was basically flawless, having perfect accuracy when shooting and a nearly unmatched athletic ability. She wasn't funny at all, and didn't add much to the humor of the episode. Even SMG4, the other "sane" character in the series, had some weird quirks and character traits that allowed him to fit in with the rest of the cast, while still being more sane than everyone else. (We'll talk about this later, though, as it's not very relevant right now.)
However, at this point in the series, this was okay. Despite not being funny, she didn't detract from the humor of the show; and honestly, it was still pretty funny to see her interact with some of the other characters and witness their stupidity. Between that and the appeal to her more emotional side, she was still an entertaining character to watch.
But the best part about Meggy, and one of the main reasons why people loved her so much is because of her relationship with Mario. Mario and Meggy had the most wholesome relationship in the entire series. From cooking together, to having Meggy be Mario's second in command, to spending that first Christmas together. Mario even saved Meggy in "Wild, Wild Mario", showing that he had Meggy's back and that Meggy wasn't entirely perfect like she seemed to be. Meggy was the first person that Mario cared about more than spaghetti. Meggy taught him to be a more caring, thoughtful person, while Mario taught her to be more carefree and not as tense about things.
However, there was still the problem of Meggy not fitting in with the rest of the cast. Luke and Kevin realized this, and wanted to change this. However, they couldn't just rewrite her character by making her stupid and crazy like everyone else. So, they had two options:
A): Change nothing and continue to make good content.
B): Introduce more unfunny characters like Meggy, replace the funny characters with these new, unfunny characters, have the remaining cast members conform with these newer characters to be not as funny, and slowly shift Mario from the position of "main character" to "comic relief".
And, well, we all know which option they chose. This choice would lead to another controversy; and this one is still going on today.
In 2018, two new characters would be introduced to the SMG4 series: Saiko and Tari. Now, don't get me wrong; Saiko was entertaining at first, when she was an antagonist. I honestly thought she was going to be the new Enzo. She acted out because nobody ever paid enough attention to her, and in my opinion, this was the most entertaining version of Saiko. The problem began when she was added to the main cast, some time after the Waluigi Arc. She went from the psychotic ex-girlfriend who wanted revenge on just about the entire cast to essentially being Meggy but angrier. It wasn't very entertaining. It wasn't funny. It was just... boring. The only time her character actually worked was in the arcs. I actually kind of enjoyed her in the arcs. But outside of that, she wasn't really that exciting.
Then, there was Tari. Tari is basically just modern Luigi. She didn't really add to the humor in any way, and was always kind of just... there.
What does this have to do with Meggy? Well, while it's not necessarily any fault of her own, her existence paved the way for new, normal characters to infiltrate the main cast and replace actual good characters. And what I'm describing is only the beginning.
What made the more sane characters from before work is that they bounced off of the crazy environment around them. So, when they're placed into an environment where almost everyone is normal, then those already normal characters seem more boring as a result. This affected Luigi, who would bounce off Tari, leading them to become practically identical characters; it would affect SMG4, who would slowly begin his transformation into literally just becoming Luke; but most importantly of all, it would affect Meggy.
Now, this isn't all bad; at the time, all three of these characters were still good characters, and would go on to have many great moments after these changes. Another thing to note is that Meggy's existence also paved the way for some of the most suspenseful and emotional arcs in SMG4 history, redefining storytelling within the series as we knew it.
I think it's time to talk about Desti.
(to be continued in the next part, i'm tired and i wanna go watch the new smg4 episode already.)
