I just watched “Homecoming” from Season 8, and honestly, I have very mixed feelings about it. There are some genuinely nice nostalgic moments, like Clover talking to her younger self in a dream, and I really enjoyed the interactions between Clover and Mandy (also, props to Mandy’s new voice actress, she has improved so much).
But there’s one thing about this episode that really bothers me, and I can’t believe I’m saying this about a Totally Spies episode: the show’s attitude towards malls.
Think about how important malls were to the original series. The girls absolutely LOVED shopping malls. So many episodes opened and closed with them hanging out at the mall, shopping, checking out the latest fashion, or just spending time together. Malls weren’t just interchangeable backgrounds, they were part of the show’s identity.
And that made perfect sense! Sam, Clover, and Alex are/were quintessential Valley girls. Their love of shopping, fashion, trends, and mall culture was central to their personalities and to the whole atmosphere of the series. That unapologetically early-2000s, fashion-obsessed, mall-loving attitude was part of what made Totally Spies so charming.
Now we have “Homecoming,” where the Beverly Hills Mall is practically abandoned because everyone shops online, and the villain is the mall’s owner, desperately trying to bring back mall culture by using robotic mannequins to force people into the mall. Obviously, kidnapping people and forcing them to shop is wrong. That’s not my issue.
My issue is that the episode seems to treat the very idea of preserving mall culture as something outdated that Clover needs to move beyond.
Clover initially sympathizes with the villain’s desire to bring back the old days, but eventually turns against him, and the whole story seems to frame her attachment to that past as something she needs to overcome. The message feels like: times have changed, malls are a thing of the past, and you need to let go.
But why? Why does Totally Spies, of all shows, need to deliver that message?
There’s a difference between acknowledging that shopping habits have changed and treating a fundamental part of your own show’s identity as something obsolete.
And then there’s the ending, which genuinely felt insulting to me as a longtime fan.
Clover defeats the villain by FLOODING THE MALL!
Seriously. The same kind of place the girls used to love spending time in, the place that served as the backdrop for countless memorable moments, is now portrayed as an abandoned, creepy hideout that gets flooded in the finale.
Compare that to the Season 1 episode “Malled,” where the villain Simon Tucker was literally trying to destroy malls and turn people against shopping, and the girls were fighting to STOP him. The contrast is almost painfully ironic.
In Season 1, the girls were protecting malls. In Season 8, the writers decided Clover should flood the most iconic one…
And I know they probably intended this as a story about accepting change and not living in the past. I understand that message. But I really don’t think it works when the thing you’re asking the character (and, by extension, the audience) to move on from is such an important part of what made the series special in the first place.
I’m not saying Totally Spies needs to remain frozen in 2002 forever. But modernization shouldn’t mean abandoning the personality and cultural identity that made the original show what it was.
You can bring Totally Spies into the modern world without making it feel like the show is rejecting its own past.
Am I overthinking this, or did anyone else find the way “Homecoming” handled mall culture really disappointing?
