Wax Museum

"Wax Museum" is the second segment of the fifth episode of the second season of Amphibia, and the forty-ninth episode overall.

It premiered on August 8, 2020, alongside "Swamp and Sensibility".

Synopsis
The family visits a mysterious roadside oddities museum where every treasure comes with a price.

Plot
The Plantars arrive in the town of Stony Gulch, but with a low money budget, they cannot buy anything and can only afford window shopping. Anne takes off her hood from the excessive heat, startling the onlookers but Anne shows she is friendly by doing parlor tricks and acts. The townspeople are invested in Anne and tip Anne with money. Anne performs to the crowd until sunset, when the Plantars collect enough money from tips. They decide to visit the Curiosity Hut, though the Plantars insist on Anne that she needs to keep her hood up to avoid detection. Upon entering, they are greeted by the hut's eccentric owner, the Curator. He gives them a tour of his wax figures of creatures and monsters of Amphibia, one of which freaks out Polly when she sees its eyes moving. Unsettled by the museum, the Plantars decide to leave while Anne continues on the tour.

Before she leaves with the family, Anne notices an exhibit of a CD player from the human world. She decides to cut a deal with the Curator to give her the Skipman in exchange for being his human display for one day. The Curator deviously accepts the terms, and they agree to meet back later. However, Hop Pop bans her from going, but Anne sneaks out after the Plantars fall asleep that night.

As Anne returns to the hut where the Curator is waiting, he places Anne on a grandiose stage with an X marked on the floor. When Anne steps on it, the Curator drops a large tube over her. He reveals that the wax statues in his museum are real creatures he froze in wax, and Anne will soon be among them, much to her horror.

Back at the wagon, Hop Pop and the others wake up and find Anne is missing. They rush to the museum where Anne is moments away from being coated in wax. The Curator begins to fight with Sprig and Hop Pop over Anne's life. Polly spots the wax figure from earlier looking at her again, and confronts the creature with a torch, freeing it from the wax. Hop Pop and the kids melt the rest of the statues. The monsters proceed to gang up on the Curator and drag them to the storage room where red liquid then leaks from underneath (which the Curator humorously ensures is simply wax) as the Plantars rescue the nearly-frozen Anne. The wax over Anne melts next to a fire by morning, and Anne apologizes for her rash decision with Hop Pop telling her that she needs to be careful. Anne remarks that the Curator got the Skipman from Newtopia, to which Sprig reveals he acquired and gives to her. Excited with it, Anne shows off its laser pointer, which she accidentally shines into Hop Pop's eye.

Main Cast

 * Brenda Song as Anne Boonchuy
 * Justin Felbinger as Sprig Plantar
 * Bill Farmer as Hop Pop Plantar
 * Amanda Leighton as Polly Plantar
 * Alex Hirsch as Curator Ponds, Frog Soos (credited as additional voices), & Frog Shmebulock (credited as additional voices)

Additional voices

 * Eden Riegel as Green Pollywog, Pollywog's Mother
 * Fred Tatasciore as Mustache Frog & Deformed Monster
 * Sam Riegel as Ushanka Hat Frog

Trivia

 * This is the first episode to use the stock crying sound effect most notably used for Baby Kate on Arthur, which can be heard by the polliwog with a flower hat who gets frightened by Anne.
 * This episode pays homage to the Disney Channel series Gravity Falls, featuring Alex Hirsch as a guest actor.
 * In the tradition of Gravity Falls' use of, there are two cryptograms deciphered in the episode, one on the clown frog painting's top left corner that says "There is a Soos in every dimension" and another near the closet door's downright corner that said "Dipcifica 4 lyfe". Both use Caesar cipher ROT+3, the inverse of the ROT-3 normally used in Gravity Falls.
 * In the scene with Frog Soos and Curator Ponds, Frog Soos breaks the fourth wall saying "Say Mr. Ponds, do you get the feeling that we exist simultaneously in multiple parallel universes, completely unaware of the other's very existence?"
 * This could also hint to the Gravity Falls lore, in which the character, Ford Pines traveled and discovered the existence of multiple dimensions other than his. This likely means that the series takes place in an alternate universe from Gravity Falls, or, at the very least, the world of Amphibia itself.
 * The Curator eats canned meat, which is what Stan ate and mentioned throughout Gravity Falls.

Continuity

 * Sprig's action figures from "Flood, Sweat & Tears" and "Handy Anne" appear in this episode.
 * Hop Pop sleeps with his eyes open, just like he did in "Best Fronds".
 * However, in other episodes, like "A Night at the Inn", he can be seen sleeping with his eyes closed.

Errors

 * The Disney+ captions claim Frog Shmebulock said "Wish me luck!" instead of "Shmebulock!"

Allusions

 *  - The wax sculptures from the Curiosity Hut being actual living beings encased in wax is an homage to the House of Wax horror movies (1933, 1953 and 2005) wherein the story revolves around a mad sculptor kidnapping people and transforming them into wax sculptures. The Curator trying to turn Anne into a wax statue mirrors the movies' climax where the female-lead is nearly turned into a statue herself.
 *  - Air Bug, the Bugball-playing praying mantis, is a parody of the film's basketball-playing golden retriever. The line about there being rules against a mantis playing Bugball refers to a line from the movie regarding a dog playing basketball.
 * Gravity Falls - Several references and homages are made to the series.
 * The "Curiosity Hut" is based on the Mystery Shack.
 * Curator Ponds and Frog Soos are based on the characters Stan Pines and Soos Ramirez.
 * The surname "Ponds" is even a reference to Stan's last name "Pines".
 * Bill Cipher can be seen on the carpet of the Curiosity Hut.
 * The "living wax figures" concept and Polly melting them references the plot of the Gravity Falls episode "Headhunters".
 * The "Fromes" serve as the Amphibia versions of gnomes. One of the Fromes said "Shmebulock" as he's freed, a reference to the gnome of the same name in the series.
 * The clown painting in the back room references Stan's love of clown paintings that was established in the episode "The Hand That Rocks the Mabel".
 * The concept art of the Curiosity Hut is designed like the Mystery Shack.
 * The Curator references "I'm not going back to frog prison" when attacking Sprig is what happened to Stan in Gravity Falls throughout his life.
 * Anne getting covered in wax is what happened to Dipper in "Into the Bunker" and "Northwest Mansion Mystery", except in said episodes, he froze his clone, the Shape-Shifter, and was turned to wood by Archibald Corduroy (a.k.a the Ghost of Northwest Manor).
 *  - The 1934 hoax photograph of the fabled Loch Ness Monster is framed in the Curiosity Hut.
 * Sony  - Anne finds a CD player called "SKIP MAN" in the Curiosity Hut and the Curator said it costs a million coppers, which is a reference to the popular.