"Scrap To The Future" is the first segment of the 6th and final episode of the fifth season of Trolls: The Beat Goes On!, and the 62nd overall episode in the series. It premiered on January 18, 2019.
Synopsis[]
Poppy finds a scrapbook that seems to predict the future.
Plot[]
The episode opens up with the village doing crafts at the Hearts and Crafts festival. Poppy is shown a banner that Branch has worked all night to make. Poppy checks off the event item 37: "Make festival sign". Before Branch can relax, Poppy tells him he has to make a backup sign in case something happens to the banner. Branch chases after Poppy as she runs off to the next Troll. He asks her to question on if she is overdoing things.
She arrives at Guy Diamond's booth listed as "event item 604: help Guy Diamond with his glittering booth". She states Trolls may want more than one design to him, and proceeds to give Guy 200 designs. At Harper's booth, Harper is given three more shades of green on top of the previous ones she was given, even though she claims that she doesn't even need green on her painting to begin with.
Branch stops Poppy from going any further, stating that what she is doing is taking things too far, and no matter how much she prepares, something always goes wrong. Branch opens the list of things to do before the festival opens, and Poppy has a long list of items. She says that she won't do that before it opens - she also has her regular duties to do as well. Branch refuses to do the sign for her, and in his refusal faces Poppy doing a sad eyes expression. He then agrees because of the face, and Poppy ticks off "Manipulate Branch into making back up sign" off her list.
As she ticks off Branch's back up sign item, a bright light nearby attracts her attention. Through a wormhole, a scrapbook lands and she runs to it. When she dusts it off, the book appears to have a "∞" on the front. When she opens it up, she finds a figure of Branch painting. A paint can falls off a ladder and lands on him, making him say "aw frosting". Upon rushing to show Branch the scrapbook, Branch jumps in surprise and hits the ladder, causing the depicted scrapbook events to come true. Poppy states that Branch is clueless on what she means, and she only believes it's a normal scrapbook from the future.
Poppy stops Branch from leaving and opens the next prediction; Keith on top of a pyramid and falling. Branch once again tries to leave, but she grabs him.
Keith is on the top of a Troll pyramid. Branch sees it when Poppy points to Keith, but he notes Keith isn't falling. Then the Trolls notice Poppy, and they move causing the pyramid to collapse. Poppy catches Keith, preventing him from falling. Branch is skeptical on the book predicting the future, but with each phrase he says, a figure in the book repeats his line. Branch changes his mind on the book, and believes it to be witchcraft, so he attempts to destroy it, but Poppy stops him. She tells him that she wants to use it to save Trolls in the village by seeing what's going to happen to them and preventing disasters. Branch protests that the book itself brings into too many questions on destiny and fate, but she has already left.
There is a montage of Poppy saving Trolls, such as Creek from falling, DJ Suki from getting eaten, and workers from getting crushed by a pod they are lifting up.
She returns to Branch to sing about saving lots of Trolls. Branch refuses to look at the next prediction, but Poppy looks and sees the Hearts and Craft fair in ruins. It doesn't say what causes the fair to fail, and she can only panic. Fearing Trolls being bummed out, she rushes with Branch to the fair.
At the fair, everything seems fine, with Branch saying it looks fun. Poppy decides that it needs to be more fun, and starts increasing each participant's workload so they can be prepared for anything. Things are fine at first, until Guy asks for a drink from Smidge, who has overstocked barrels because of Poppy. She takes a barrel from the bottom of the pile she has made, and a collapse happens. Stoutberry juice flows through the craft fair, causing Klaus Von Frousting to lose control over his frosting hose. Frosting hits Harper's booth and sends green paint Poppy had her stock up on earlier flying into Rufus' puffalos, which Poppy had filled up with more puffalo. The frightened puffalo storm and destroy the rest of the craft fair, leaving every Troll bummed out and causing the prediction to come true anyway.
Poppy doesn't know how the prediction came true when she did everything to prevent it. Branch then realizes that it was her actions what caused the prediction to come true; he didn't get paint on him until after Poppy came along and surprised him. Keith didn't fall until the Trolls beneath him saw Poppy. He beats all the other predictions were the same, and a montage shows that at least Creek, DJ and the construction workers all had their lives put in danger simply because Poppy was trying to prevent disaster. Branch tells her that it's what she does when things go wrong the thing that really matters.
Poppy has an idea on what to do with the mess, and decides to tell the other Trolls that the craft fair is over. She declares the first "messtival"; Branch and her proceed to throw paint at each other. The other Trolls soon copy their actions, and everyone has fun.
Poppy realizes that relying on the scrapbook was a mistake, and she tosses it away. As she does, a wormhole opens up, where Poppy appears to re-find it.
Cast[]
- Amanda Leighton as Queen Poppy
- Skylar Astin as Branch
- Kevin Michael Richardson as Smidge, Rufus and Klaus Von Frousting
- Kari Wahlgren as Harper
- Declan Churchill Carter as Keith
- Sean T. Krishnan as Guy Diamond
- Matt Lowe as Creek
- Fryda Wolff as DJ Suki
- Other
Songs[]
Physical distribution[]
This episode is available on the "Trolls: The Beat Goes On! - Complete Seasons 5-8" DVD.
Trivia[]
- The "∞" sign is the symbol of infinity, which in this case refers to the infinite loop that the scrapbook is in with Poppy finding it and throwing it away, only for her to find it again.
- The loop in this episode is a Temporal paradox known as a Casual Loop, in which regardless of Poppy's actions, the book always returns to the past for her to find it again and the loop has no beginning or end.
- The title is a reference to Back to the Future.
- This is the second time Back to the Future was referenced in Trolls: The Beat Goes On!. The first was with the Witch's time machine in "Trolly Tales".
- It is possible for the scrapbook to exist and make sense. For an example of how this type of timeloop starts, see this video.
- Essentially, the theory would go that after Poppy goes through the events of the failed festival, a scrapbook is created in reflection of the event and sent back into the past to warn of impending danger. The book going back into the past may or may not be sent intentionally, but it will regardless does so even if it was by accident.
- The scrapbook goes through the wormhole and ends up in the hands of the Poppy of the past, who uses it to avoid failure, creating the very first version of the loop.
- The book does not have to be accurate in the early loops, as any loop that results in a failure would see a new scrapbook created that more accurately depicts events at the festival and that copy is returned to the loop for Poppy of the past to find. So the book slowly becomes more acccurate over time as each loop sees a slight tweak of the book.
- In addition to the book being remade, Poppy's own behaviors (and that in turn of Branch and the other Trolls) would slowly shift over time to accurately match the events within the scrapbook, regardless of if the inital book was 100% correct as the creator of the scrapbook makes tiny adjustments to match how each Troll acts.
- Eventually, a perfect loop forms that sees everything line up in both scrapbook retelling of events and Troll behaviors. Thus, the perfect loop as shown in the episode will continue to take place for a untold number of cycles, until it falls apart during a loop.
- However, because of the fact it was created as a response to a disaster even if it falls apart, it means it fails to prevent said disaster. This causes the festival to fail and a new scrapbook to be created, thus once again beginning the loop.
- Because of this it is entirely possible that the festival did fail originally end in a disaster, but not one of Poppy's creation. It is also possible that the other events such as Keith's fall, were not in the book original and were added in later revisions of the scrapbook as the creator tried to either make it more and more accurate. Alternatively, these other events did result in a disaster happening anyway and thus were added anyway regardles of how insignificant they seemed.
- The original creator of the scrapbook and any versions of it are lost during the loop process, but the book always falls in Poppy's hands and she always tries to use it to avoid a disaster that is ulimately going to happen with or without the book and no matter how many events were recorded in it.
- The episode was one of the stranger episodes made, as Jim Mortensen explained due to the number of episodes they made some ideas were put forward becuase they fun. Others because they were weird. This was one such episode.[1]