SPOILERS FOR ALL OF AMPHIBIA!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!
Leif, Leif, Leif. One of the best examples of a posthumous character who influenced the plot with actions rather than passivity. And she only appears onscreen (alive) TWICE. Let me break it down:
Leif lived in Newtopia a thousand years ago, a gardener working at the palace with her friends; Barrel and Andrias. Newtopia’s culture is largely colonial, with them using the Calamity Box (yes that’s where my username came from) to travel to other planets to strip mine their resources. Leif doesn’t see anything wrong with this, until one fateful day…
“The Core and the King”. Banger episode (only complaint is that it should have been longer). Andrias finally inherited the Calamity Box, and he and his friends were goofing off, throwing the box around, when Leif gets a vision from holding it; Amphibia, war torn, strip mined, the moon falling to the ground. Terrified, she begs Andrias to not use the box, going as far as to appeal to all of the Newtopia court herself. To no avail. And so she steals the box herself, freeing one of the Moss Men to escape. She hides the box on earth, and upon returning, never sets foot in Newtopia again.
Now, here’s what I like. She is an active character (Barrel is both her foil and a reactive character, but that’s for next week).
Examples of her actions affecting the plot: A.) Inventing the Plantar family dance; without it, her descendants wouldn’t have tamed the herons in “All In”. B.) Stealing the Calamity Box; kicks off the whole story to begin with, Anne and her friends would have never made it to Amphibia. C.) Writing about the Box; lead to Hop Pop and Anne’s fallout, but also foreshadowed the Box’s true nature despite Andrias’s claims. D.) FOUNDING the Plantar home; literally Anne (and later the rebellion) would have nowhere to stay without this. E.) Freeing one of the Moss Men, a minor one, but it foreshadows that other dimensional creatures exist, and we get a good Wally and Anne friendship episode from it. And finally F.) Her final message to Andrias to open his heart, which allowed him to be defeated and semi reformed.
So yeah, I love Leif a lot. We love active girl characters, and despite being long gone by the start of the series, her actions made ripples that are felt in every season. She’s great. Amphibia’s great. Yeah. Cool.
