Bessie

“
And it was at that moment I realized Bessie was no ordinary snail, but a kind, clear soul who would help others at a drop of a hat.
”

—Hop Pop about Bessie, "Anne Theft Auto"

**Bessie** is a supporting character of *Amphibia*. She is the Plantar family snail, who was purchased years ago by Hop Pop during an auction. When the Plantars and Anne traveled to Newtopia, she pulled the Fwagon.

## Appearance

Bessie is mostly purple, with a light-violet shaded front. She has a dull-beige underside, and a rusty-orange shell where her saddle and pouches are located. Her eyes are located on two stalks which are a darker shaded purple with dotted pupils.

## Personality

Bessie is a loyal and gentle creature, loving her family completely. She has no problem allowing her family to ride her, as well as being driven by Hop Pop and Anne. Bessie is sometimes motivated by food and sometimes just moves to be fed. When she senses or comes into danger, Bessie hides in her shell. She is also known to make chirping noises whenever she is excited or senses danger. However, she is trained to pop out quickly from it and escape from danger when she hears the words, "Bessie, things are getting messy!". Hop Pop stated that Bessie was no ordinary snail and described her as "a kind clear soul who would help others at the drop of a hat." Although Bessie is quite patient, she can become angry if someone is quite disruptive, as when MicroAngelo didn't listen to her and started causing trouble.

## Background

### Early life

Bessie was born on a particularly cold morning, while the leaves had just changed color. Hop Pop Plantar first encountered Bessie during an auction, and there he realized that Bessie was more than just a snail, that she was a noble and kind soul willing to help others. When Bessie was about to be handed over to the "nefarious" Jim Snapes, Hop Pop decided to raise his bid to four hundred coppers and won, saving Bessie from Snapes. At some point, Hop Pop trained Bessie so that she could escape from danger when told that "things are getting messy."

During one of Hop Pop's trips, both he and Bessie became trapped in the wild snow, and Hop Pop was about to succumb, until he suddenly heard Bessie singing, which gave him the strength to carry on. Hop Pop loved and cared so much about Bessie that he decided to write a book about her, *Bessie's History*, for the purpose that she could be driven in the right way.

Over the years, Bessie has seen Hop Pop grow old, Sprig and Polly born and grow up, and the arrival of human girl Anne Boonchuy into the Plantars' life.

### Driven by Anne

One day after taking a ride with the Plantars on Bessie, Anne is interested in driving Bessie, to which Hop Pop does not refuse, but tells her that she must first read Bessie's book to get to know and feel her, thus being able to drive her, much to Anne's anger as she considers her only "a vehicle." However, taking advantage of Hop Pop being busy bathing Polly, Anne skips the reading and in the company of Sprig, drives Bessie. On the way, Sprig has a road rage with Mrs. Croaker and go for Swamp Slushies, before they decide to take Bessie off the road for fun. When they do, they speed through the woods until they end up in a dark part of the forest, and at that Anne decides to return to the road, but Bessie doesn't move and is hiding in her shell. Despite several attempts to move her, Bessie remains immobile, so Anne tells Sprig to find someone to take him back to the farm to call Hop Pop while she stays with Bessie. While waiting for Sprig, Anne gets bored, so she ends up reading Bessie's book albeit reluctantly.

After reading more of the book, Anne gets to know Bessie in more detail, and in one of the stories, she discovers that Bessie had been hiding in her shell because there was a hedgehog nearby, which is a natural enemy of snails. After this, Anne ends up realizing that they are surrounded by hedgehogs, which is why Bessie is hiding. Anne looks up what to do in the book and sees that when there is danger, one should strongly tell Bessie that "things are getting messy." When she does so, Bessie comes out of hiding and starts running, but they don't manage to outrun the hedgehogs completely, so Anne reads in the book that if they haven't outrun the danger then one must give Bessie some berries that are hidden in a secret compartment at the front of her shell to completely outrun the danger, and when she does so, they manage to escape. Leaving the forest, they return to the road and meet Sprig, who had been tricked by Mrs. Croaker after Sprig's road rage. Returning to the farm, Anne decides to finish reading the book with Bessie, staying up all night to do so.

### Tax fraud

After Mayor Toadstool withheld Wartwood's tax money to keep it for himself, the Toad Tower soldiers Bog, Fens, and Mire, in the company of Anne go to visit everyone in Wartwood to take some of their belongings to settle the apparent tax debt, including Hop Pop, who always pays his taxes. The soldiers threaten to take Bessie as compensation, and when they are about to take her, Anne avoids it by rebelling against them and Sprig subsequently ends up exposing Toadstool's fraud to the soldiers and the town.

### Trapped in the Inn

When Anne and the Plantars go to check the condition of the road to go beyond the valley, they find that it's still blocked by ice, so they have no choice but to return to the farm on Bessie. While being driven by Hop Pop, Bessie began to drift off the road until she stopped with a squeal and quite exhausted. Hop Pop goes to check under her to see what's going on, but at that starts to rain, preventing him from getting under Bessie to check, and Hop Pop don't let Polly do it either for keeping her safe, even though she is enough small to do so, therefore they decide to stay at the Dandy Lion Inn, an inn that was nearby. Polly later discovers that the owners of the inn, Teddy and Martha, alongside two helpers, are cannibals, and that they put the guests to sleep with crackers to eat them later. Polly wakes up Hop Pop, Anne, and Sprig to avoid them from being eaten and goes to the barn where Bessie is. There, they find several snails and discover that Teddy and Martha set traps for the travelers' snails so that they would spend the night at their inn and they could eat the travelers. Anne and the Plantars free all the snails and flee with Bessie from the inn, which explodes thanks to an experiment of Anne.

### Eating Apothecary Gary's spores

After the mind-controlling fungus Apothecary Gary manages to control the minds of Anne, Sprig, and Polly with his mind-controlling mushrooms thanks to Hop Pop, Gary and several infected Wartwood residents arrive at Plantar farm to do the same to Hop Pop, forcing him to flee to Bessie's barn. When they catch up with him and he is about to be infected, he decides to sacrifice his precious battle-ship in order to open Bessie's barn so she could eat the mushrooms of the infected. When he does so, Bessie with great speed begins to eat the mushrooms and when she has eaten most of them, she sees Gary's big mushroom, becoming very interested in it. Gary begs Hop Pop to let him go, but his pleas are in vain as Bessie eats him. Gary, however, ends up surviving thanks to Jeremy the beetle eating some of the spilled elixir that Gary had given Hop Pop.

### Trip to Newtopia

When the roads to go beyond the valley finally opens, the Plantars and Anne finally travel to Newtopia to seek answers on how to return Anne to her world, and they do so in the Fwagon, which is hauled by Bessie.

One night during the trip, a carnivorous roc bird that emerges in the Fwagon tries to eat Bessie, thanks to Polly leaving the bird's egg as her "replacement" when she escaped because she felt unappreciated by her family. Bessie, however, is saved by Polly and the family.

After days of travel, they finally make it to Newtopia.

### Returning to Wartwood

After days of being in Newtopia, Anne and the Plantars finally return to Wartwood. After hours of driving Bessie, Anne and Hop Pop end up exhausted so they decide to rest for a few hours, but forbid Sprig and Polly to drive Bessie as they haven't read her book. However, Sprig and Polly end up driving her, but they end up having problems on the road, especially after the appearance of a mysterious traveler on the road. The traveler tries to take the reins of Bessie and the wagon, but the boys try to stop him, causing a fight to take the reins away, only for the boys and Bessie to end up 3 miles from Wartwood. The boys realize thanks to a statue that the passenger was Zechariah Nettles, who spent his days protecting the travelers on their return to home, thus concluding that the specter of Zechariah was leading them safely to Wartwood, even trying to lead Bessie and the wagon to a safer road. Anne and Hop Pop wake up and are surprised that the boys led Bessie and the wagon 3 miles to Wartwood. Subsequently Hop Pop takes over Bessie's reins and the family makes it to Wartwood.

Days later, when Marcy goes to Wartwood for Anne and the Plantars to go to recharge the first gem of the Calamity Box at the First Temple, she has her sparrow bird Joe Sparrow take her to Wartwood, and when they arrive at the Plantar farm, Joe Sparrow begins to flirt with Bessie, causing her to blush.

### In charge of MicroAngelo

When Anne, Marcy, and the Plantars are preparing to go to the Third Temple, Hop Pop gives Bessie the task of taking care of the snail that Polly got in Newtopia, MicroAngelo, and she accepts. The little snail, however, soon begins to get into trouble, from which Bessie has to get him out of and keep him safe, and when she tries to bring order, the little snail begins to make sad faces at her, making Bessie feel bad and not reprimanding him. Soon after that, MicroAngelo starts chasing a bug, and Bessie, seeing the dangers of the preparations to go to the temple like Polly carrying some weapons and Marcy and Frobo making a potion, starts chasing the little snail to prevent him from getting hurt. In chasing him, Bessie ends up making messes all over the farm, making Hop Pop angry and punishing her by locking her in her barn, angering Bessie with MicroAngelo to the point of ignoring him.

After Anne tries on a suit with a catapult, she launches a small fireball that begins to spread through some maps that lead to many boomshrooms near the Fwagon, where Hop Pop and Polly are, and MicroAngelo sees this and desperately warns Bessie, and although she wanted to ignore it, she sees the situation. As she is chained she can't do anything, so she sends MicroAngelo with a small bucket to put out the fire, but he is trapped by a bat bird, so Bessie seeing that her family is in danger, ends up unchaining herself, and after saving MicroAngelo, both manage to reach the boomshrooms before the fire, thus extinguishing it and saving everyone. Hop Pop later apologizes to Bessie for being hard on her and putting on her shoulders a difficult task such as taking care of MicroAngelo, telling her that she will never have to take care of the little snail again, but she decides to keep doing it, and they both go to the barn while whistling. That same night, Bessie adds the little snail to her family photo.

### War in Amphibia

After King Andrias reveals his true intentions, Anne and the Plantars are teleported to Earth when they escape from Andrias, and Marcy is wounded by Andrias, Sasha and Captain Grime escape to Wartwood, where they take refuge at the Plantar Farm. Feeling bad about cheating on her friends, Sasha prefers to stay in Bessie and MicroAngelo's barn, sleeping next to them all night.

After the war unleashed in Amphibia, Sasha, and Grime formed the Wartwood Resistance, of which Bessie and MicroAngelo become part of.

### Forming a family

Nine months later, after the defeat of Andrias alongside his controller the Core, and the return of the girls to their home, Bessie and Joe Sparrow end up together, and she ends up giving birth to three snail-sparrow hybrids.

## Relationships

### Hop Pop Plantar

Bessie unconditionally loves Hop Pop. After he found her at an auction, he saw in Bessie a noble soul willing to help others, which prompted him to raise his bid to get Bessie and save her from Jim Snapes. When Hop Pop got her, he gave her enough care and affection, and his love for Bessie went so far that he wrote a book entirely dedicated to her. She has accompanied him on most of his trips, even on quite long trips such as to Newtopia. On one of their trips when they got stuck in the snow, Bessie started singing to give Hop Pop strength. Bessie also serves as a comfort to Hop Pop, as when she comforted him when he remembered Sprig as a tadpole in "Sprig Gets Schooled".

In "Bessie & MicroAngelo", he assigns the task of taking care of MicroAngelo to Bessie. when Bessie ended up making a mess on the farm to save MicroAngelo, Hop Pop reluctantly had to punish her, believing that the task was too big for her. Later, seeing the danger everyone on the farm was in, including Hop Pop, because some boomshrooms that were about to explode, Bessie didn't hesitate to save him, even though she was grounded and that he had been hard on her before. Hop Pop later apologizes to her for being so hard on her earlier.

### Sprig and Polly Plantar

As with Hop Pop, Bessie loves Sprig and Polly very much. She has watched them both be born and grow over the years.

In "Bessie & MicroAngelo", when she sees the danger everyone on the farm was in, including Sprig and Polly, because some boomshrooms that were about to explode, Bessie didn't hesitate to save them, even though she was grounded.

### Joe Sparrow

Bessie met Joe Sparrow when he and his owner Marcy went to the farm for Anne and the Plantars so they could go to the First Temple. While waiting to go to the temple, Joe began to flirt with Bessie and she began to blush about it. Later Bessie and Joe became a match and had three snirds, thus forming a family.

### MicroAngelo

Bessie serves as a parental figure for MicroAngelo. When Hop Pop asked her to take care of him during the preparations for the trip to the Third Temple, Bessie had no problem doing so. When the little snail started to get into trouble, Bessie ran to his rescue and tried to be as patient as she could with him, but when it got to the point where the trouble escalated, she had to scold him, but ended up softening after he made sad faces at her. However, when he got away from her again and saw the greater dangers he was going into, she came to his rescue but ended up making messes in the process, which caused Hop Pop to punish her and she became angered with MicroAngelo. When MicroAngelo tried to warn her about the fire spreading to some boomshrooms, she tried to ignore it but seeing the little snail's desperation, she did and noticed it too. Bessie forgot their differences and they worked together to save everyone on the farm. Later, when Hop Pop told her that she would no longer have to take care of MicroAngelo, Bessie opted to continue doing so and returned to her barn with the little snail. That same night, Bessie ended up adding MicroAngelo in her family photo.

### Anne Boonchuy

Although Anne initially thought of Bessie as just a vehicle, after reading her book she realized that Bessie was truly a soul who helped others, so much so that after escaping from the hedgehogs and returning to the farm, Anne finished reading the book to get to know Bessie in more detail. After she read the entire book, Anne was able to lead Bessie without a problem. In "Toad Tax", when Bessie was frightened by the arrival of the toad soldiers, Anne began to reassure her. Later, when the same soldiers were about to take Bessie away as compensation for Hop Pop's apparent lack of taxes, Anne rebelled against them and prevented them from taking her away.

In "Bessie & MicroAngelo", when she sees the danger everyone on the farm was in, including Anne, because some boomshrooms that were about to explode, Bessie didn't hesitate to save them, even though she was grounded.

## Powers and abilities

* **Speeding**: Bessie has the ability to run at high speed, especially when she is told things are "things are getting messy." Her speed can go much higher if she is given a few berries.
* **Eating fast:** Bessie can eat in a fairly quick amount of time, especially if the food is to her liking, as with the mind-controlling mushrooms in "Children of the Spore".
* **Strength**: Bessie can reach uncommon strength, so much so that even in "Bessie & MicroAngelo", when she was chained in her barn and seeing everyone in danger, including her family, she was able to break the chains and free herself in order to save everyone.
* **Immunity to mind-controlling mushrooms**: In "Children of the Spore", it is seen that Bessie is immune to the effects of the parasitic mushrooms, even loving this type of mushroom, so much that she even ripped Apothecary Gary off of Lloyd's head before managing to devour the whole mushroom.

## Behind the scenes

### Voice

Bessie's sounds are provided by Dee Bradley Baker, who also provides the sounds for MicroAngelo, Joe Sparrow, Archie, and several other characters in the show. Baker has also worked on other series produced by Disney Television Animation, such as *Gravity Falls* and *The Owl House*.

### Debut

Initially mentioned in "The Domino Effect", Bessie made her debut in "Anne Theft Auto".

## Gallery

*Click **here** to view the gallery.*

*To view the various designs of **Bessie**, click **here**.*

## Trivia

* In "Anne or Beast?", instead of riding Bessie, Hop Pop rode a different greenish-yellow slug. The reason for this is most likely due to the fact that the episode was developed as a pilot episode before being redeveloped as an episode for the final series. This is supported by other numerous inconsistencies present in the episode. An in-universe explanation could be that Bessie was unable to pull the cart that day and Hop Pop had to borrow or rent the slug for the day.
* In the *The Owl House* episode "Thanks to Them", a snail similar to Bessie appears in the intro montage. Dana Terrace later confirmed on Twitter that it was indeed a reference to Bessie.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Jenava Mie (writer) and Derek Kirk Kim (director) (June 24, 2019). "Anne Theft Auto". *Amphibia*. Season 1. Episode 5A. Disney Channel.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Jenava Mie (writer) and Joe Johnston (director) (April 17, 2021). "Bessie & MicroAngelo". *Amphibia*. Season 2. Episode 18A. Disney Channel.
3. ↑ Michele Cavin (writer) and Derek Kirk Kim (director) (July 2, 2019). "Toad Tax". *Amphibia*. Season 1. Episode 10A. Disney Channel.
4. ↑ Gloria Shen (writer) and Derek Kirk Kim (director) (July 10, 2019). "A Night at the Inn". *Amphibia*. Season 1. Episode 15A. Disney Channel.
5. ↑ Matt Braly, Jack Ferraiolo (writers) and Derek Kirk Kim (director) (July 17, 2019). "Children of the Spore". *Amphibia*. Season 1. Episode 19A. Disney Channel.
6. ↑ Adam Colás (writer) and Kyler Spears (director) (July 11, 2020). "Handy Anne". *Amphibia*. Season 2. Episode 1A. Disney Channel.
7. ↑ Gloria Shen (writer) and Joe Johnston (director) (July 25, 2020). "Truck Stop Polly". *Amphibia*. Season 2. Episode 3A. Disney Channel.
8. ↑ Matt Braly, Adam Colás (writers) and Joe Johnston, Jenn Strickland (directors) (August 15, 2020). "Marcy at the Gates". *Amphibia*. Season 2. Episode 6. Disney Channel.
9. ↑ Gloria Shen (writer) and Joe Johnston (director) (September 19, 2020). "A Day at the Aquarium". *Amphibia*. Season 2. Episode 10B. Disney Channel.
10. ↑ Jenava Mie (writer) and Jenn Strickland (director) (March 6, 2021). "Night Drivers". *Amphibia*. Season 2. Episode 12A. Disney Channel.
11. ↑ Adam Colás (writer) and Kyler Spears (director) (March 6, 2021). "Return to Wartwood". *Amphibia*. Season 2. Episode 12B. Disney Channel.
12. ↑ Adam Colás, Todd McClintock (writers) and Kyler Spears, Jenn Strickland (directors) (March 20, 2021). "The First Temple". *Amphibia*. Season 2. Episode 14A. Disney Channel.
13. ↑ Gloria Shen (writer) and Bert Youn (director) (July 1, 2019). "Plantar's Last Stand". *Amphibia*. Season 1. Episode 9B. Disney Channel.
14. ↑ Michele Cavin, Jenava Mie (writers) and Kyler Spears, Jenn Strickland (directors) (May 24, 2021). "True Colors". *Amphibia*. Season 2. Episode 20. Disney Channel.
15. ↑ Jenava Mie (writer) and Joe Johnston (director) (October 9, 2021). "Turning Point". *Amphibia*. Season 3. Episode 2B. Disney Channel.
16. ↑ Todd McClintock (writer) and Roxann Cole (director) (March 26, 2022). "Commander Anne". *Amphibia*. Season 3. Episode 11A. Disney Channel.
17. ↑ Braly, Matt [@Radrappy] (May 17, 2022). "the first time skip (before the chyron) is about 9 months give or take - thank you for all your reaction vids btw...I worked really hard to get you and many others (@IAmZamber, @EdDaWiz, @HopeMullinax, etc) early screeners of The Hardest Thing but it never worked out" (Tweet). *Twitter*. Archived from the original on 2022-05-17. Retrieved on 2022-05-17.
18. ↑ Gloria Shen, Jenava Mie, Michele Cavin (writers) and Roxann Cole, Joe Johnston, Jenn Strickland (directors) (May 7, 2022). "All In". *Amphibia*. Season 3. Episode 17. Disney Channel.
19. ↑ Adam Colás, Todd McClintock (writers) and Roxann Cole, Joe Johnston (directors) (May 14, 2022). "The Hardest Thing". *Amphibia*. Season 3. Episode 18. Disney Channel.
20. ↑ Terrace, Dana [@DanaTerrace] (October 7, 2022). "🐌" (Tweet). *Twitter*.