In my opinion, season three of “Star vs. the Forces of Evil” is by far the best season of the show, and I can’t wait for what’s in store for us when season four rolls around... Hopefully, it'll be sometime this upcoming summer, though that may be wishful thinking. So, I find it very disheartening that fans are starting to drift away from the show towards the end of the third season. This started to become evident since “Booth Buddies” aired, when the fans finally got what we’ve been waiting for: the very first Starco kiss.

Fans have been going crazy, myself included, over this colossal moment, since this was the most anticipated moment of the show for three years now, pretty much since the show's premiere. However, this can be cut both ways: while I am on the side of the fans who couldn’t be happier for the way things are going, that this is the development that our two main characters needed to have in so long, there are fans out there who decided to stop watching the show because of how the kiss happened, viewing it as Star cheating on her boyfriend Tom.

I’m going to say this right here and right now.

Star did not cheat.

I will admit that Star and Marco were in an unusual situation, forced into it by being locked into a photo booth together, and Marco could’ve tried to think of a better tactic to get out that wouldn’t have ended up in their current position, but he really thought that what he was doing was the best way for them to escape. He was under the false belief that the booth was magical in nature and will release them if they took a sincere photo together, so he was only giving the booth what he thought it wanted: a sincere photo of them sharing their first kiss, revealing his true feelings that he kept hidden for so long.

As for Star, it was clear that she didn’t see it coming. In fact, she even asked him just before if there was anything he needed to tell her, which could only mean that she didn’t pick up on what he was implying when he said that things were different for him since her confession to him back in "Starcrushed." In fact, even Adam McArthur, Marco’s voice actor, weighed in on this within a tweet, saying that Marco thought it was the only way out of their situation and that Star did not expect it in the slightest.

Anyway, let me backtrack to the time when Marco was still dating Jackie.

When “Bon Bon the Birthday Clown” first aired, the avid Starco shippers of the fandom wanted nothing more than to see that Jarco be put an end to before it gains too much traction and became especially on edge after “Just Friends” aired. The fans disregarded Jackie as an actual character, a cool skateboarder girl with a nice personality, because of how she was mainly used as a plot device for furthering Star’s character in making her realize her true feelings for Marco.

So, fans wouldn’t have minded in the slightest if Marco decided to drop his relationship with Jackie to be with Star since her confession at the tail-end of season two. Of course, when Star, believing that Marco will never feel the same way about her, got back together with Tom in season three, fans were starting to hate both Tom and the idea of TomStar.

However, here’s the key difference: while Jackie was more or less a static character, Tom has actually grown, a much better character than he was from the past two seasons. This was proven in the most recent season finale when he reacted to Marco’s confession about the kiss in a very mature way. If this were in any of the two previous seasons, he would’ve burst into flames for sure, right away jumping to the conclusion that he was cheated on. And I’m going to say it again.

Star did not cheat.

Tom was aware of how Star really felt for Marco throughout the series, even though neither of them addressed this as fact, so in a way he knew he was gonna lose in the end. And it was pretty obvious that she was still struggling with her emotions since the kiss. So, all of that wouldn’t make sense if she didn’t still care for Tom, though not as much as she so deeply cares for Marco.

Now, I’ll be honest: the show has been heavy on the shipping drama. There’s no denying that and suffice it to say that “Booth Buddies” increased it to top notch, so much so that fans were not completely satisfied with the season finale, because Tom and Star did not break up by then, even after Marco’s confession.

All in all though, since watching the finale, with so much engaging plot and the promise of Starco on the horizon, I honestly can’t wait for when the show comes back after what’s going to be a very long time ahead of us, as in a monster of a hiatus! I’m going to leave you with this: don’t ever think that by sticking with this show, you have to be tainted by the fandom’s increasing toxicity or dragged down by all the shipping drama that the fans love to generate in order to make their version of the show’s story more interesting.

Stay for the plot and for the characters: there’s plenty to go around and you’ll never know what’s going to happen next! Trust me: if you’re adamant enough about how you feel to stand by this beautifully crafted show, which by no means has to be perfect in order to succeed, you’ll be glad you did…