OUAT vs. Wonderland Spinoff - Rewatch

[Camera One]

Episode 10 - "Dirty Little Secrets"

It's been a crazy week and I finally got around to watching this one.  

I liked it, though I am easily grossed out and the water guardian looked like something out of a horror film.  I was also not a fan of their desecrating Lizard's body by removing her eyes.  

But the actress who played the Jabberwocky was very effective at oozing evil and creepiness.  She wasn't really a love-to-hate type villain... she was a very effective hate villain.

I didn't think of Hook with Cyrus, though it's true they both were both seeking redemption for their past transgressions.  Though Hook had years to atone for, whereas Cyrus made one huge mistake which was entirely his fault.  I normally don't like it when they take a character who seemed purely good, and make them into a despicable scoundrel in the past, but they must have done a good job because I didn't mind this at all.  Cyrus should feel badly for his brothers suffering for more than a hundred years and it was entirely his fault his mother was hurt in the fire.  I feel if the series had continued, we might have gotten more insight into Cyrus becoming a better person aka genie.  I would also have enjoyed a flashback for each of his brothers.

I sort of find it interesting that Cyrus was so ashamed of Alice finding out the truth about him, though the viewers also did as well.

Ana was right that the 4 of them were not a match for Jafar, though I don't understand why she thinks an army would be effective against such a master magician.  I still feel Jafar is way over-powered.  

I had forgotten but episode really showed how to genuinely redeem a villain.  Anastasia genuinely apologized to Rabbit.  She refused to leave Wonderland and stayed to fight.  She actually wondered why the Tweedle still cared for her instead of taking that for granted.  And at the end, she would rather have the Tweedle warn Alice and Cyrus than save herself.  We got all of that in one episode with Ana, and almost none of that from Regina in 7 years.  Ana was tortured, but we didn't have to see Alice suffer the same tortures (aka Snow having to feel Regina being tortured in 2B).  

I also really liked that the characters were allowed to be smart, like having a riddle for the 2 doors for Alice.  

I still don't buy that Amara became such an evil sorceress who murdered innocents, but the twist in this episode that Amara was Cyrus' mother was really a cool twist.  I think the problem was how they tried to say Jafar was such a normal nice guy at the beginning so Amara was the one who twisted him into the murderer, but I don't think they needed to go that far.  Or maybe they just wanted us to not care that Amara would have to die.  I can see Amara pushing the edges of morality to get her sons back, but I think it could have been less extreme.

[Shanna Marie]

33 minutes ago, Camera One said:

But the actress who played the Jabberwocky was very effective at oozing evil and creepiness.  She wasn't really a love-to-hate type villain... she was a very effective hate villain.

I weirdly kind of like her, mostly because you get the feeling she's as annoyed by Jafar as I am. Not that I would want to hang out with her, but she is compelling. I seem to recall her ending up sort of helping the good guys, but I'm hazy on the details.

35 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I didn't think of Hook with Cyrus, though it's true they both were both seeking redemption for their past transgressions.  Though Hook had years to atone for, whereas Cyrus made one huge mistake which was entirely his fault.

I think a big difference is the circumstances. Cyrus didn't get the chance to make more than that one mistake, so he didn't go as far down as Hook did, but with his personality, I could imagine that if he hadn't saved his mother and been turned into a genie, he might have become driven by revenge. On the other hand, I can imagine Hook making the same choice Cyrus did under the same circumstances. He totally would have taken that water in spite of the warnings to save someone he loved.

And, in a way, he did. Both Hook and Cyrus took magic water to save a family member in spite of being warned about it. The difference is that Cyrus was to blame for what happened to his mother, was warned not to take the water, and was the one to be punished, while Hook wasn't to blame for what happened to his brother and he was told the water would be a cure, with just a vague warning about a price, and then his brother paid the price (though I suppose you could look at it as Hook paying the price, since his brother would have died either way, and he was the one left behind to mourn and seek revenge. Would he have gone as dark as he did if his brother had just died of the poison without the false hope of the cure?).

Since this show seems to have been planned out to start with instead of them making it up as they went along, there's a good chance that this bit of Cyrus's past was developed around the same time that they were writing "Good Form" on the parent show. I wonder if they both independently came up with the magic healing water that backfires or which show borrowed the idea from the other. And they'd already done the magic healing Lake Nostos water, where they had to kill the guardian of the water to take it.

40 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I normally don't like it when they take a character who seemed purely good, and make them into a despicable scoundrel in the past, but they must have done a good job because I didn't mind this at all.

I think what makes it work is that it was a human failing, not something so huge as the eggnapping. He cheated at cards against some nasty guys (who probably weren't being all that honest, either). That's hardly a major sin or crime and doesn't make him a villain. It makes him Han Solo, not Darth Vader. If they'd beat him up outside the tavern and taken back their money, the men he cheated would have been totally justified, but they burned an innocent woman inside her home, which makes him look a bit better in comparison. Then taking the water and coercing his brothers into joining him was done for his mother, so it's somewhat sympathetic. The incident served to show that he was a flawed human, so he's not quite as perfect and too good to be true as he'd seemed, and we got a sense of how he's grown. I think there's the big difference from Hook. When the next bad thing happened to Cyrus (being made a genie), he grew from it without growing bitter, while Hook just kept getting darker and angrier, only turning himself around after about a century. It would have been like if Cyrus had been dark and evil when Alice first freed him from the bottle, and only then did he start changing after a century of being evil. The hundred or so years as a genie changed Cyrus in a way that a hundred or so years stuck in Neverland didn't change Hook.

46 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I still don't buy that Amara became such an evil sorceress who murdered innocents, but the twist in this episode that Amara was Cyrus' mother was really a cool twist.

I don't know if they ever outright stated it or if it's just my interpretation, but I get the sense she was doing the same thing as Ana, planning to use the spell to undo the initial wrong, and therefore that would change history and none of this would happen, so her evil wouldn't count, and that allowed her to be as ruthless as she needed to be to make it all happen. How many did we see her kill? There was the one guy who was the test for Jafar, and the other was the owner of one of the genies. There, she might have been getting retribution for the way that person had treated one of her sons. It does look a little different when you realize that the genie they went to get was her son.

49 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I think the problem was how they tried to say Jafar was such a normal nice guy at the beginning so Amara was the one who twisted him into the murderer, but I don't think they needed to go that far.

Jafar wasn't too nice and normal, considering that when he came to her as a child, his stated goal was to get revenge on his father. I think she did twist him to some extent in order to carry out her plan, but he was twistable.

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

I think a big difference is the circumstances. Cyrus didn't get the chance to make more than that one mistake, so he didn't go as far down as Hook did, but with his personality, I could imagine that if he hadn't saved his mother and been turned into a genie, he might have become driven by revenge.

I feel that Cyrus could very well have become an arrogant and angry Genie and started to lose his moral compass and not care who lived or died, like the person Hook eventually became.  The fact that he didn't - despite being a slave to master after master - showed that he was a bit different in his reaction.  It was clear he recognized from the start that it was his fault and began with the self-punishment right away.

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And, in a way, he did. Both Hook and Cyrus took magic water to save a family member in spite of being warned about it. The difference is that Cyrus was to blame for what happened to his mother, was warned not to take the water, and was the one to be punished, while Hook wasn't to blame for what happened to his brother and he was told the water would be a cure, with just a vague warning about a price, and then his brother paid the price (though I suppose you could look at it as Hook paying the price, since his brother would have died either way, and he was the one left behind to mourn and seek revenge. Would he have gone as dark as he did if his brother had just died of the poison without the false hope of the cure?).

Good point about the magic water!  I didn't even think about that connection.

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I don't know if they ever outright stated it or if it's just my interpretation, but I get the sense she was doing the same thing as Ana, planning to use the spell to undo the initial wrong, and therefore that would change history and none of this would happen, so her evil wouldn't count, and that allowed her to be as ruthless as she needed to be to make it all happen. How many did we see her kill? There was the one guy who was the test for Jafar, and the other was the owner of one of the genies. There, she might have been getting retribution for the way that person had treated one of her sons. It does look a little different when you realize that the genie they went to get was her son.

Jafar wasn't too nice and normal, considering that when he came to her as a child, his stated goal was to get revenge on his father. I think she did twist him to some extent in order to carry out her plan, but he was twistable.

I think we talked about it after the first Jafar episode, but the actress was acting like she was really relishing the evil.  Before killing that guy, Jafar was super friendly with him.  A kid wanting revenge against his father after he tried to drown him doesn't immediately scream "evil" to me.  To me, there's just too huge a difference between targeting one person who sort of deserved it, and just killing random people unnecessarily left right and centre.

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I think what makes it work is that it was a human failing, not something so huge as the eggnapping. He cheated at cards against some nasty guys (who probably weren't being all that honest, either). That's hardly a major sin or crime and doesn't make him a villain. It makes him Han Solo, not Darth Vader.

LOL, that's a good point.  And Han Solo is admired as a cool guy.

Edited May 30, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

Something occurred to me about Amara's relishing evil. This may be yet another case of me putting more thought into this than the writers did, but I wonder if maybe they were going for a "power corrupts" thing. Almost every human character in this series and the parent series who developed or discovered magical powers went bad. The exceptions I can think of are Merlin and his Apprentice, Elsa, and Emma. Merlin and his Apprentice made some really bad decisions that caused great harm, and these decisions could have been caused by their power and immortality causing them to loose touch with humanity (not to mention, Merlin seems to have spent much of that time in a tree, so who knows what might have become of him if he'd been around all that time). Power, and especially power that comes with immortality or extra-long life, seems to generally have the effect of making people cruel and selfish, with the idea that what they want is more important than anyone else's needs or desires.

I'm guessing Jafar's supposed to have been fortysomething, and he seems to have come to Amara when he was about ten, and Cyrus said he'd been a genie for about 100 years, so she'd had powers for about 70 years when Jafar showed up. That might have been enough time to warp her, especially if she'd spent all that time searching for a way she could help her sons and developed a level of ruthlessness and obsession. Look how bad Ana got within a few years. Imagine if she'd had about 70 years before her plan started falling apart and she realized she was wrong.

20 hours ago, Camera One said:

I feel that Cyrus could very well have become an arrogant and angry Genie and started to lose his moral compass and not care who lived or died, like the person Hook eventually became.  The fact that he didn't - despite being a slave to master after master - showed that he was a bit different in his reaction.  It was clear he recognized from the start that it was his fault and began with the self-punishment right away.

Cyrus is about the only character I can think of who became a better person after becoming immortal and getting great power. Being a slave to his various masters instead of being able to use the power for himself might have made the difference. We don't know if he changed immediately or if he was arrogant and angry at first and then changed. I kind of got the impression that he'd already had his "come to Jesus" moment as he watched his brothers turned into genies and knew it was all his fault.

I think the difference with Hook is that he was directing his blame at others. He wasn't responsible for what happened to his brother, but he did share a bit of responsibility for what happened to Milah, and it took him a long time before he accepted that responsibility. The blame was still mostly on Rumple, and Rumple still might have killed Milah even if Hook hadn't been a jerk to him, but it took Hook about a century to accept that he was also in the wrong, so he let anger warp him instead of changing himself.

[Camera One]

8 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Something occurred to me about Amara's relishing evil. This may be yet another case of me putting more thought into this than the writers did, but I wonder if maybe they were going for a "power corrupts" thing.

The other thing I was thinking of was that the spell to break the laws of magic required giving up a bit of your soul.  There had to be some sort of reason why Amara felt the need to give Jafar a "test".  

Though it's A&E, so it's probably nothing more than telling the actress that an evil female villain needs to act as sexy as possible, preferably when some innocent redshirt is about to die.  I'm willing to bet they told her nothing about Amara's actual backstory when they filmed the first Jafar flashback.  I want to think that they already had it worked out, something I would never presume on the parent show.

Edited May 31, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

21 hours ago, Camera One said:

Though it's A&E, so it's probably nothing more than telling the actress that an evil female villain needs to act as sexy as possible, preferably when some innocent redshirt is about to die.

I'm afraid that's probably it. They were going for "sexy," regardless of story. I guess creating the sexual relationship between Jafar and Amara was to make it be a bigger betrayal when he turned on her.

21 hours ago, Camera One said:

The other thing I was thinking of was that the spell to break the laws of magic required giving up a bit of your soul.  There had to be some sort of reason why Amara felt the need to give Jafar a "test".  

It occurred to me that they initially seemed to have been setting up something similar to Rumple and Regina, where in order to do the spell that allowed the mentor to do a major spell, there had to be some kind of sacrifice, and the mentor was actually setting up the mentee as a kind of patsy to be the one to pay the price. But I don't recall there being any kind of price when they actually did the spell. It wasn't the sort of thing that required a test to be sure someone would be willing to do what it takes.

They do love their "tests." See also Regina's pointless test of Hook.

I do think they had to have a lot of it planned in advance because so many little things were set up from the beginning, but I don't know how detailed the plan was. So maybe they knew Amara was Cyrus's mother and the other genies were his brothers, and Amara was Jafar's staff and got her powers from the magic water, etc., but they may not have known the details of what doing the spell would look like.

[KingOfHearts]

I thought the Jabberwocky being a person was a budget-cutting cop-out at first, but I ended up really enjoying the character and the lore behind her. There's a lot of mystery behind her menace that makes her more interesting than the typical "sexy" mind-game-playing villainess. It's always a treat in the OUAT universe when you have evil characters that don't completely side with the Big Bad's goals, at least permanently. I wouldn't call the Jabberwocky gray but they weren't firmly in Jafar's camp either from what I recall. They were basically forced to do his bidding, al a Dark One.

I would've liked to see the Jabberwocky make an appearance on the parent show just to screw with some of the characters' minds.

Nyx wins the prize for being the creepiest character ever in the OUAT universe. I don't even like watching their scenes because of how much they unnerve me.

Edited June 1, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

Next up, "Heart of the Matter." I'm not sure this is a great episode as a whole, but it contains a lot of good parts. I guess my issue with it is that it feels like a lot of good parts put together that don't necessarily gel into a cohesive whole.

I couldn't help but think of how I described Cyrus's level of "badness" before he was a genie as being like Han Solo during the scene in which he swaggered into the Caterpillar's dungeon/bar, appropriated food and drinks, and started a brawl as a diversion for Alice to steal the compass. That seemed a very Han kind of move. I imagine, given what we saw of his past, that he has some experience with tavern brawls.

There's also one of my favorite bits of either series, when Cyrus and Alice visit Storybrooke and marvel over the wonders. We get an appropriate "Curioser and curioser" from Alice, Cyrus utterly fascinated with light switches, and Alice marveling at the icemaker. I think this is more reaction to the modern world than we got in the parent series that took place in the modern world and had at least one regular main character without the modern life memory download and multiple guest characters who were new to the world. I also found it amusing that Alice and Cyrus are in town for seconds before they almost get run over while they're in the road, but on the parent show, the cast could walk side by side down Main Street in the middle of the day without encountering a car.

I don't think we see Granny's during the Storybrooke scenes, so in the "after season 4" timeline, Will could have left in late season 4 and this could possibly have taken place during the Camelot arc, which is why none of the regulars noticed the visitors. All our main characters were off in Camelot.

The scenes between Ana and Will were quite well done, with Ana having dropped her guard entirely and being vulnerable. The contrast with flashback Ana was striking. I liked how in the flashback she had on the full, heavy makeup where you couldn't see her skin, but in the present, it looked like all they did was add the bruises. You could see the texture of her skin, with blotches and I think even some freckles (though there was one bit in one of the later scenes when she suddenly looked all made-up again and the bruise disappeared, so I wonder if they had to pick up some shots later and did her makeup differently).

And I liked Alice and Cyrus's confrontation with Jafar and everyone's reaction when the staff defended Cyrus instead of hurting him.

I think my problem with the episode was that it didn't necessarily add up. As much as I love the trip to Storybrooke, it was yet again one of those things where something's hidden, and when they go to get the thing that's hidden, supposedly to keep it safe, they end up making it easier for the villain to get (see also getting the dagger out of the clock tower and handing it to Cora). Jafar might have forced the Rabbit to take him to Storybrooke, but would he have found the heart if Alice and Cyrus hadn't taken it? Or what about moving it within Storybrooke, so that it's in a place neither Will nor the Rabbit know about? The "we've got to go get this important thing out of the place where it's hidden and bring it near the villain who's trying to get it in order to keep it safe" plot is one of my fiction pet peeves. Gee, I wonder if the villain will swoop in and take it from them.

I also found myself wondering what Cora's deal was. Why was she bothering with Ana? What was she trying to accomplish? It doesn't seem like there was any kind of end game. Maybe she was trying to bring down the Red King by teaching Ana magic, but wouldn't it have been just as bad for him if his bride had skipped out on the eve of his wedding? Or is it just that manipulating girls is Cora's hobby and she missed getting to mess with her daughter? Other than that, I don't see what she got out of this.

This also brings up the question of who has magic, how, and why. So far in both series, it seems that anytime someone with magic tries to teach someone else how to do magic, it works. Rumple might have had reason to think Cora had potential since he had the prophecy that her daughter would cast the curse, and for that reason he also had to think Regina had potential. But Jafar just walked up to Amara and she was able to teach him, and Cora just showed up and started teaching Ana, with no indication as to why Ana had any power. It's not even as though this involved years of study, learning spells, etc. The teaching amounted to "feel your anger." Then suddenly they could do anything with the wave of a hand. Which makes me wonder why so few people used magic. Surely someone must have felt anger so strongly that they set something on fire, or they read in a book that you have to feel your anger, gave it a try, and it worked.

There also seems to be "recipe" style magic, where anyone can do a spell that involves following the directions and using the magical objects. Cyrus could do that even without genie powers, Belle did that, and Hook and David did it. Really, that's what the Dark Curse seemed to be, so maybe the fact that Cora's daughter would cast it didn't mean anything about Cora's magical abilities (and what if Cora's daughter got her abilities from her father? That means that there was no guarantee Cora would have been able to do magic, especially since at that time Rumple seemed to think he'd be the one fathering Cora's daughter). So why didn't more people pull out the spell book and the ingredients they bought at the magic emporium and do magic?

For something so few people in that universe were able to do, it seemed awfully easy to do it, and you didn't have to be born with the power.

 

[Camera One]

I just took a break from work to watch it.  I really enjoyed this episode.  I have positive memories about the back-half of the season and it still holds up.  I actually had problems with either the finale or the next one (don't remember) so I am curious if I will have that issue.

I had some of the exact same reactions as you, so I'll quote a few things.

6 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I couldn't help but think of how I described Cyrus's level of "badness" before he was a genie as being like Han Solo during the scene in which he swaggered into the Caterpillar's dungeon/bar, appropriated food and drinks, and started a brawl as a diversion for Alice to steal the compass. That seemed a very Han kind of move. I imagine, given what we saw of his past, that he has some experience with tavern brawls

Yeah, he had quite the swagger actually.  Not something I would have imagined from him in the first half of the episode.  It does make sense that it's returning now after years in the bottle.  He created the brawl after Alice already had the compass, so I guess he created the diversion to make a quick exit and to delay the Caterpillar realizing the compass was gone.

It's a case of a character losing an object in one episode, and now getting it back pretty easily.  Though I also appreciated that they remembered the compass and it is still coming into play.

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There's also one of my favorite bits of either series, when Cyrus and Alice visit Storybrooke and marvel over the wonders. We get an appropriate "Curioser and curioser" from Alice, Cyrus utterly fascinated with light switches, and Alice marveling at the icemaker. I think this is more reaction to the modern world than we got in the parent series that took place in the modern world and had at least one regular main character without the modern life memory download and multiple guest characters who were new to the world.

I agree that sequence was longer than any other reactions to modernity we saw in the parent series.  It was just perfect.  

I was thinking that this episode revealed what A&E COULD have done with this cool multiverse... between Cora and Storybrooke, it was a perfect crossover with elements of the parent show without contradictions and digger deeper than the lame-o Alice and Robyn visit to Storybrooke in Season 7.  

I do find it interesting how the Rabbit is somehow so up with modern technology.  I'm sure there's a flashback in there somewhere.

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I don't think we see Granny's during the Storybrooke scenes, so in the "after season 4" timeline, Will could have left in late season 4 and this could possibly have taken place during the Camelot arc, which is why none of the regulars noticed the visitors. All our main characters were off in Camelot.

I like that idea.  I really want to believe that this is happening after Season 4.  Was Will digging up a box with the Queen's picture on the beach or something?  I vaguely remember...

Okay, I rewatched part of "Breaking Glass" to see.  Boy, that scene between Mary Margaret and Will was just so badly written.  He was digging for something, and buried the map? The Queen's picture wasn't in this one.  We never found out what he was looking for.  Could he have been testing out different places to hide his heart?

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The "we've got to go get this important thing out of the place where it's hidden and bring it near the villain who's trying to get it in order to keep it safe" plot is one of my fiction pet peeves. Gee, I wonder if the villain will swoop in and take it from them.

For some reason, it didn't bother me too much, but yeah, that pattern is usually annoying.  It was frustrating enough that Jabber was only able to read Alice's mind because she was in the castle and hiding behind the wall.

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I also found myself wondering what Cora's deal was. Why was she bothering with Ana? What was she trying to accomplish? It doesn't seem like there was any kind of end game.

I actually had that exact same question.  Was she trying to take over the King's kingdom and thus trying to undermine him by getting to his wife?  Did she really want a Regina-replacement to groom?   

Cora knew Anastasia' mommy issues... how?

This episode worked well with the premise that not having your heart was a huge deal.  Once again, I wish the parent show didn't completely undermine that later on.  

Anna and Will should have traded notes and realized Cora was manipulating them, but I guess they wanted them to take responsibility.

Did Will borrow Hook or Cyrus's deep V-neck shirt in his flashback scenes?  That was incredibly low-cut and I thought it was so his heart could be removed easily, but Jafar just jammed the heart right through his shirt later.

More in this episode for why Anastasia's redemption worked.  She actually thanked Alice genuinely for coming back to the palace.  She apologized to Will.  She acknowledged she was wrong and shouldn't have learned magic.  She actually had REGRETS.  On top of that, she was being physically punished.

The Jabberwocky actress was doing a great job of making the character animal-like with all the twitching and movement on that table.  It just felt so unnatural and repulsive - perfect for that character.

I agree that Amara protecting Cyrus as the Staff was pretty great.  

Edited June 7, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

14 hours ago, Camera One said:

Yeah, he had quite the swagger actually.  Not something I would have imagined from him in the first half of the episode.  It does make sense that it's returning now after years in the bottle. 

I would imagine that either being trapped in a bottle or being someone's slave would take the swagger right out of you. Now I want to go back and rewatch the scene in which he trades the compass to get the secret hideaway and compare his overall demeanor. Though I don't think we get quite the swagger in other scenes, so is he channeling his old self for this instance or regaining his confidence, overall? The last time we saw him in the previous episode, he was in tears of shame for his past.

14 hours ago, Camera One said:

He created the brawl after Alice already had the compass, so I guess he created the diversion to make a quick exit and to delay the Caterpillar realizing the compass was gone.

The swagger seems to have been the diversion for Alice to get in and get the compass, and then the brawl was the diversion for making an escape and delaying discovery that the compass was missing, possibly even covering up who took it -- did it go missing during the brawl? Cyrus was nowhere near it, so it must have been someone else.

It's interesting to see that they had a plan for getting in and a plan for getting out. I feel like the good guys on the parent series would have just rushed in, then relied on hope for getting out. They so seldom went into anything with an exit strategy. Like Neverland, Camelot, the Underworld ...

14 hours ago, Camera One said:

It's a case of a character losing an object in one episode, and now getting it back pretty easily.  Though I also appreciated that they remembered the compass and it is still coming into play.

I would compare this to Hook and the Jolly Roger. He willingly gave it up for the good of the woman he loved, but then when he needed it (or something on it) for some greater purpose, he took steps to get it back (and both cases involved the shrinking/growing things from Wonderland in the recovery effort). Cyrus and Alice could presumably have pulled off this stunt at any time to get the compass back, but they did it at this point because it was needed to find Amara, which was needed to save Cyrus's brothers and stop Jafar. Hook might have had more of a challenge getting the Jolly Roger back, since he needed an enemy's help, but if he'd needed it, I'm sure there are other things he might have tried.

14 hours ago, Camera One said:

I do find it interesting how the Rabbit is somehow so up with modern technology.  I'm sure there's a flashback in there somewhere.

Yeah, has he been visiting our world all this time? That would support this all happening after season 4 because presumably it was impossible to travel to our world before magic was introduced to Storybrooke after the curse broke (well, aside from all the other times and ways people traveled to our world). If it's the beginning of season 2 timeline they originally talked about, then how would the Rabbit have learned so much about our world? If it's after season 4, then the Rabbit has had a chance to visit, maybe checking up on Will before he was sent to get him.

14 hours ago, Camera One said:

He was digging for something, and buried the map? The Queen's picture wasn't in this one.  We never found out what he was looking for.  Could he have been testing out different places to hide his heart?

I think the queen's picture was in "The Apprentice" when he was found passed out in the library with the Alice in Wonderland book open to a picture of the Red Queen. I thought he was looking for something, not burying something. Maybe he'd originally buried his heart on the beach and moved it to the apartment later?

14 hours ago, Camera One said:

Cora knew Anastasia' mommy issues... how?

I guess well-adjusted people from happy families don't run off to other worlds? But then how did Cora know Anastasia wasn't from Wonderland? Villain omniscience strikes again. She somehow knows everything about Anastasia, with no explanation as to how.

14 hours ago, Camera One said:

This episode worked well with the premise that not having your heart was a huge deal.  Once again, I wish the parent show didn't completely undermine that later on.  

Not much later on. This was airing at the same time as the Zelena arc, so this episode was on about a month before Regina was falling in love with Robin and having a True Love Kiss with Henry without her heart. I looked it up on IMDB, and this episode aired March 20 while the episode of Regina losing her heart but still falling for Robin aired April 20, and then she had the TLK without a heart April 27.

[Camera One]

37 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Yeah, has he been visiting our world all this time? That would support this all happening after season 4 because presumably it was impossible to travel to our world before magic was introduced to Storybrooke after the curse broke (well, aside from all the other times and ways people traveled to our world). If it's the beginning of season 2 timeline they originally talked about, then how would the Rabbit have learned so much about our world? If it's after season 4, then the Rabbit has had a chance to visit, maybe checking up on Will before he was sent to get him.

Yes, I can imagine Will showed him around and explained the electricity stuff.  What if the Rabbit had been to Storybrooke to see the Mad Hatter instead?  

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I think the queen's picture was in "The Apprentice" when he was found passed out in the library with the Alice in Wonderland book open to a picture of the Red Queen. I thought he was looking for something, not burying something. Maybe he'd originally buried his heart on the beach and moved it to the apartment later?

Yes, he was looking for something that he had buried... I didn't describe it very clearly.  I too thought maybe he was digging up his heart, and bringing it back to his apartment.  Though not sure what in 4A would have triggered that decision. 

So "The Apprentice" was one episode before "Breaking Glass", so maybe seeing the Red Queen in the "Alice of Wonderland" book prompted him to find his heart again?  But he clearly gave up on it again after that.  I wish there was an edit of all the Will scenes in Season 4 so we can see if his arc makes sense if it took place before "Wonderland".

I just rewatched that scene in "The Apprentice" and Emma's line "Were you celebrating with your friends - Alice and the White Rabbit" and you can actually see the pain in Will's eyes.  I forgot that we never saw him in the library and Emma was talking to him when he was behind bars, and she held up the book and said the page with the Red Queen was in his pocket.  

Why didn't they just have Emma release him at that point?  Because they already had the waste-of-time Mary Margaret filler subplot ready for "Breaking Glass"?  They had that new plot point where MM was Mayor, and they had nothing better for her to do?  The pinnacle of that episode was David and Elsa realizing that the Snow Queen's fake name wasn't in the town census, so maybe Mary Margaret could have been trying to find the old census or something.

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Not much later on. This was airing at the same time as the Zelena arc, so this episode was on about a month before Regina was falling in love with Robin and having a True Love Kiss with Henry without her heart. I looked it up on IMDB, and this episode aired March 20 while the episode of Regina losing her heart but still falling for Robin aired April 20, and then she had the TLK without a heart April 27.

That is just really galling.  Like they couldn't see the discrepancy despite overseeing both shows.  I mean, Jane was even actively writing both shows.   Why did they even need Regina to remove her heart, anyway.  So we could feel sorry for her?  That was just unnecessary.

Edited June 7, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

Yes, I can imagine Will showed him around and explained the electricity stuff.  What if the Rabbit had been to Storybrooke to see the Mad Hatter instead?  

Come to think of it, when was the last time we saw the Hatter, early season2? Did he get to stay in the Enchanted Forest with his daughter after the curse reversal?

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

I too thought maybe he was digging up his heart, and bringing it back to his apartment.  Though not sure what in 4A would have triggered that decision.

Remember that at the beginning of 4A, it's been maybe a week since they were returned to Storybrooke after the Missing Year. Just being back in Storybrooke (if he'd been in curse 1) or being in Storybrooke (if he was new there) could have triggered anything he was doing in early 4A. If he wasn't in curse 1, I can't think of how/why he'd have had his heart buried on the beach, so it would probably have to be something else. But if he got caught in curse 1, then maybe he'd buried his heart on the beach after the curse broke and he got his memories back, he hadn't had it during the missing year, then went looking for it once he was back in Storybrooke.

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

I wish there was an edit of all the Will scenes in Season 4 so we can see if his arc makes sense if it took place before "Wonderland".

I think it makes more sense if season 4 was before Wonderland because I'd hate to think he was dating Belle after the kiss we saw in this latest episode after he got his heart back and then after there's a TLK with Ana in one of the upcoming episodes. But it does make some sense if he's just left Wonderland after being ditched by Ana, gets caught in a curse that brings him to Storybrooke, he gets drunk and mopes a bit about Ana, has a halfhearted relationship with Belle, then she dumps him to go back to Rumple, and then the Rabbit shows up and he leaves Storybrooke. The one problem is that they show in the spinoff that he's pretty cold and stoic without his heart, so would he be getting all drunk and miserable over Ana? But then even in the spinoff, they show him using a picture of Ana as a dart board. He seems to be able to feel things. He just doesn't love.

Otherwise, we have him reforming himself under Alice's influence, getting his heart back, getting reunited with Ana and her apologizing, she gets killed and revived, they have a TLK that breaks Jafar's spell on her, and they're a couple at Alice and Cyrus's wedding, then somehow they're separated less than a year later and he ends up back in Storybrooke, where he gets drunk and looks at her picture, goes back to petty thievery, starts dating someone else, then he's still in Storybrooke but we never see him again, not even at Robin's funeral or when the other Merry Men leave town.

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

That is just really galling.  Like they couldn't see the discrepancy despite overseeing both shows.  I mean, Jane was even actively writing both shows.   Why did they even need Regina to remove her heart, anyway.  So we could feel sorry for her?  That was just unnecessary.

They were doing the Wizard of Oz Brain, Courage, Heart thing, so they needed a heart, I guess, and it had to be Regina's because Zelena was her sister and they had to make it personal.

They also were doing two parallel shows in which the plot was building toward a supposedly impossible spell that would allow the villain to change the past and make a parent love them. We have Jafar trying to break the laws of magic, which requires two powerful sorcerers plus the power of three genies, and his plan is to make his father love him (and possibly change the past so that his father always loved him? I'm not sure if even he was clear on that). And we have Zelena trying to travel in time so that she can make it so Cora doesn't give her up, so Regina is never born and Zelena gets to cast Rumple's curse for him. To do this unprecedented spell, she has to collect a heart, a symbol of courage and a representation of a brain, plus a newborn baby.  I can imagine that getting three genies could be tricky, which was why no one had done that spell before, but Zelena's spell doesn't seem like it was that big a deal. There was no reason why the spell would have existed without anyone else being able to pull it off. And the spell worked but didn't hurt the baby, so it's not like it required a great sacrifice or meant that someone had to be evil enough to murder a baby to do the spell.

[Camera One]

16 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

But if he got caught in curse 1, then maybe he'd buried his heart on the beach after the curse broke and he got his memories back, he hadn't had it during the missing year, then went looking for it once he was back in Storybrooke.

This would be a good explanation.

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I think it makes more sense if season 4 was before Wonderland because I'd hate to think he was dating Belle after the kiss we saw in this latest episode after he got his heart back and then after there's a TLK with Ana in one of the upcoming episodes. But it does make some sense if he's just left Wonderland after being ditched by Ana, gets caught in a curse that brings him to Storybrooke, he gets drunk and mopes a bit about Ana, has a halfhearted relationship with Belle, then she dumps him to go back to Rumple, and then the Rabbit shows up and he leaves Storybrooke. 

I was wondering when Will would have snuck into Granny's and left with the Rabbit, but the timeline is a bit complicated because Granny's is brought to Camelot in 5A. 

I just rewatched part of the 4B finale, and he couldn't have left right after Belle dumped him, because Robin Hood said that Will was babysitting Roland, so he could spend some quality time with Regina.  Then, at the end of Robin and Robin's evening walk, there was the whole thing with the blackness swirling around Emma, who disappears.  Robin Hood subsequently followed the group to where the Apprentice died.  Then, he went with them to Zelena's prison cell, by which point it was morning.  That means Will was babysitting all night.  Then, the next day, they took Granny's to Camelot.  

So I think Will might have gone to Wonderland with the White Rabbit right after Granny's returned from Camelot.  

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They also were doing two parallel shows in which the plot was building toward a supposedly impossible spell that would allow the villain to change the past and make a parent love them. We have Jafar trying to break the laws of magic, which requires two powerful sorcerers plus the power of three genies, and his plan is to make his father love him (and possibly change the past so that his father always loved him? I'm not sure if even he was clear on that). And we have Zelena trying to travel in time so that she can make it so Cora doesn't give her up, so Regina is never born and Zelena gets to cast Rumple's curse for him. To do this unprecedented spell, she has to collect a heart, a symbol of courage and a representation of a brain, plus a newborn baby.  I can imagine that getting three genies could be tricky, which was why no one had done that spell before, but Zelena's spell doesn't seem like it was that big a deal. There was no reason why the spell would have existed without anyone else being able to pull it off. And the spell worked but didn't hurt the baby, so it's not like it required a great sacrifice or meant that someone had to be evil enough to murder a baby to do the spell.

It is interesting how both shows were trying to break the rules of magic.  I agree that the spell Zelena was working towards was very lame.  It was a pathetic and not very smart way to incorporate brain, heart and courage from "The Wizard of Oz".  I have always felt it was very arbitrary that they needed Regina's real heart but David's courage is a metaphor, and somehow Rumple's brains can just be a bunch of thread.  Oh yeah, and that baby thing.  The whole concept was half-baked.  Needing three Genies to do it was much more epic, which took Jafar literally years to get.  

Edited June 8, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

On 6/7/2020 at 11:58 PM, Camera One said:

I just rewatched part of the 4B finale, and he couldn't have left right after Belle dumped him, because Robin Hood said that Will was babysitting Roland, so he could spend some quality time with Regina.  Then, at the end of Robin and Robin's evening walk, there was the whole thing with the blackness swirling around Emma, who disappears.  Robin Hood subsequently followed the group to where the Apprentice died.  Then, he went with them to Zelena's prison cell, by which point it was morning.  That means Will was babysitting all night.  Then, the next day, they took Granny's to Camelot.  

So I think Will might have gone to Wonderland with the White Rabbit right after Granny's returned from Camelot.  

I'd forgotten about the babysitting thing (or didn't notice). When was the last time we saw Will on screen? I don't recall whether he showed up in the AU. Did he disappear before that? Was the babysitting reference the last reference to Will? It's a disservice to the character and actor that Will was just dropped with no resolution or even a mention.

Given that Will was not exactly Mr. Responsibility, maybe he dropped Roland off with Little John or someone else in the Merry Men soon after Robin and Regina left. My headcanon has been that when the Rabbit had to dodge Emma's car upon arrival, she was rushing to get to the Apprentice, and Will broke into the diner while everyone was distracted by the Darkness. I know they originally meant it to be around the time of the Wraith attack, but it kind of works as happening while they were all dealing with the Apprentice and the Darkness.

It could also work coming during 5A after the 6 weeks. Then maybe that's where all those boxes that "fell off the truck" came in. After he got dumped by Belle, he really went back to his old ways and took advantage of the sheriffs being out of town to do some burglary.

It also makes a bit more sense if Will was only in Curse 2 and not Curse 1. That would explain why Emma had never run into him before, even though he was stealing. He'd only been in Storybrooke for a week or so when Emma first met him. If he'd been there the whole 28 years, you'd think Emma would have had to deal with him as sheriff during season 1 and Snow should have recognized him. So, say, he came back to the Enchanted Forest with his heart after giving up on Wonderland, just in time to get caught up in the curse. He was still angry and hurt about Ana, and was upset about being stuck in Storybrooke. He was lucky that the curse brought his heart and put it in his apartment. Or maybe he was digging to try to find his heart (would a person be able to sense where their heart was?).

[Camera One]

4 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I'd forgotten about the babysitting thing (or didn't notice). When was the last time we saw Will on screen? I don't recall whether he showed up in the AU. Did he disappear before that? Was the babysitting reference the last reference to Will? It's a disservice to the character and actor that Will was just dropped with no resolution or even a mention.

The last episode where Will was featured more was "Lily" (Ep 20), so I made a sacrifice and rewatched part of it (sorry, I didn't rewatch ANY of the Lily scenes).  It was a little more poignant remembering that Will's own heart is gone, since Rumple forces him to get Belle's heart back from Regina.  Then Rumple puts the heart back into Belle while Will watches.  I wonder if Will was wondering if Belle truly did love him all this time since she didn't have her heart.  Yet he too didn't have a heart.   Will reaches out for Belle's hand, as Rumple leaves.  They are still together.

According to Once-pedia, Will appears again (for the last time) in Ep 23, the second half of the finale.  I was looking for him (with no luck), and then I read that he only appeared in the Alternate reality as Robin Hood's friend.  

In the present-day, Will doesn't appear at all, except referred to as babysitting by Robin.  Belle finds a collapsed Rumple, and she tells him that she didn't love Will (so they broke up offscreen? not sure before or after this).  

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Given that Will was not exactly Mr. Responsibility, maybe he dropped Roland off with Little John or someone else in the Merry Men soon after Robin and Regina left. My headcanon has been that when the Rabbit had to dodge Emma's car upon arrival, she was rushing to get to the Apprentice, and Will broke into the diner while everyone was distracted by the Darkness. I know they originally meant it to be around the time of the Wraith attack, but it kind of works as happening while they were all dealing with the Apprentice and the Darkness.

Unfortunately, I don't think Emma would have driven her car that night.  I think they all walked between a very full Granny's (where Belle burst in with "Rumple is dying!" (heck, everyone should have shrugged and continued eating their lasagna) to Gold's Shop.  Then, we literally see Emma and Hook running down the middle of Main Street to Regina/MM/David.  This was the site where she absorbed the darkness and disappeared.  

I didn't remember this, but watching the finale, the Darkness didn't really disrupt the town very much.  

I too was wondering if maybe Will dropped Roland off at the Merry Men camp for bed, and then later that night, he went to Granny's that very night.  But who was driving the yellow bug after Emma disappeared?  I guess David or Mary Margaret could have been driving it for safe keeping?

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It could also work coming during 5A after the 6 weeks. Then maybe that's where all those boxes that "fell off the truck" came in. After he got dumped by Belle, he really went back to his old ways and took advantage of the sheriffs being out of town to do some burglary.

I think this might have to be the explanation.  Those 6 weeks after being dumped by Belle would have brought Will down emotionally and maybe make him act out.  Good point about the boxes that "fell off the truck".

Edited June 10, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

On 6/9/2020 at 10:16 PM, Camera One said:

I wonder if Will was wondering if Belle truly did love him all this time since she didn't have her heart. 

I didn't think her heart was gone all that long. It was just gone for an episode or so. We saw Regina approach her (presumably to get her heart), then we saw Belle talking sense to Rumple, then we saw that it was Regina speaking through her via her heart (we should have known, since Belle was reacting realistically to Rumple), and then Will got her heart back. She had her heart when she started dating Will offscreen during the 6-week lull. And, yeah, the start of Belle's first relationship other than Rumple after she kicked her husband out of town Happened Offscreen. The only reason for Belle and Will to be dating was that they wanted there to be someone else to make Rumple upset, Will was the only unattached regular male character, and they didn't know what else to do with Will and didn't want to devote the screen time to actually giving him a story.

On 6/9/2020 at 10:16 PM, Camera One said:

Good point about the boxes that "fell off the truck".

You know, the whole setup with Will's apartment doesn't work at all if we go by what the writers said about this happening at the same time as the wraith attack at the beginning of season two. If that's the case, Will has had his identity and memories back for just a few hours. In those few hours, would he have drawn a picture of Ana and thrown darts at it? And was his cursed identity also a thief? On Wonderland, the Rabbit, Alice, and Cyrus talk about how Will's apartment is a reflection of someone who wasn't really settled in, who wasn't really at home and happy there, in spite of all the marvelous technological wonders like an icemaker and light switches. But if this happened when the writers said it did, the apartment would have reflected Will's cursed identity, not who he really was. Of course, the Rabbit, Alice, and Cyrus wouldn't have known about the curse identities, but the show presented what they were saying as some insight into Will, not an amusing irony about them not realizing they were analyzing Will's curse identity.

In a way, them putting Will on the parent show and showing something that actually works as a prequel to the spinoff (even if they've never presented it as such) kind of saves them from goofing up and forgetting their own timeline. It doesn't work at all to have had Will leaving the night after the Wraith attack because the Rabbit wouldn't have had time to visit Storybrooke enough to understand technology (even if he's not bound by the same travel between worlds rules as everyone else, he'd have had no reason to visit Storybrooke while Will had a cursed identity, unless maybe he was visiting Jefferson, but in visiting Jefferson would he have learned about things that "fell off a truck"?) and because Will's apartment shouldn't have reflected his personality so soon after the curse.

If we put it soon after the return from Camelot, then Will has had time to settle into his apartment, since it's been maybe five months since the curse reverse. He's had six weeks since Belle dumped him to get bitter about love, throw darts at a drawing of Ana (he seemed to be missing her and sad early in season 4), and pick up some stolen merchandise, and there's been time for the Rabbit to pop by and learn exactly where Will lives. If Dark Swan Emma was the one driving the Bug, then that would explain the somewhat more aggressive driving that almost runs over the Rabbit. The streets were fairly empty that night -- could it have been the night the reaper fury thing came for Robin? And was Emma coming back from the Jolly Roger with Hook's sword? Yeah, she poofed away, but she did seem to also still use her car. Supposedly, that date took place out at sea (even if they didn't have the budget to show that), so maybe she poofed to her car and then drove home.

I think it works best if Will wasn't in curse one, if he was still in Wonderland during that time, then when he left Wonderland, he came back to the Enchanted Forest during the Missing Year, got caught up in the curse, and found himself in Storybrooke. That would explain the drinking and woe early in season 4 soon after he arrived. He didn't seem to have had a cursed identity (not that it made much difference for anyone else). Though, come to think of it, wasn't he the one who noticed that the ice cream was still frozen during the power outage? He'd have only had a week or so in Storybrooke to figure that out, but maybe someone had walked him through how things work. If he was in curse 1, you'd think that the sheriffs would have had some interaction with him during season 2, given his early season 4 behavior, and you'd think a thief would have been aware that there were two sheriffs, but he was surprised by that.

Could the digging on the beach have been him trying to find one of the Rabbit's tunnels to get out of there?

[Shanna Marie]

Now for the next to last episode, "To Catch a Thief."

I had some major parent series deja vu when we had the queen's men looking for a murderous monster who turned out to be a young woman who'd committed a minor offense, and then we had that net trap (they really love that). If this flashback had come at the beginning of the series instead of the end, I'd have been sure they were setting up a romance. It had all the ingredients of a Once Upon a Time romance, with the characters sassily threatening each other with physical violence.

And that's something I like about this series, that they didn't go in any of the expected directions with the relationships. With an existing significant other kept out of the way for half the series and the partially shady "bad boy" type working with our heroine, we had all the ingredients for the standard issue love triangle. You could just about bet that the boyfriend would end up being villainized in some way, making the bad boy look like a better option so that we'd cheer for her dumping the original guy and going with the bad boy. In fact, about 10-15 or so years ago there was a SyFy Alice miniseries in which Alice went to Wonderland to rescue her boyfriend after he got kidnapped, got helped along the way by a shady guy (only he was the Hatter in that version), and sure enough, we find out that the boyfriend is the son of one of the queens and working with her. I believe he did end up redeeming himself, but Alice still ended up with the Hatter. I wonder if that series was any kind of inspiration for this one. But here they skipped the triangle, let Cyrus be a good guy with a complicated past, and Will had his own love interest and had a sibling-like relationship with Alice.

Again, I like that the characters were allowed to be smart. I love that Alice was able to outsmart Will and Cora in the flashbacks, and then she's able to make conversation while keeping a mental running count in the present. I was a little frustrated by Will trying to act like Alice wanting him to help her save her boyfriend from captivity was exactly the same as him wanting Alice to help him give a psychopath unlimited power so he could bring his girlfriend back from the dead (not to mention his girlfriend was responsible for Alice's boyfriend being a prisoner, and she was working against them all until very recently). But just as I was shouting this at the TV, Alice did gently tell him. They maybe could have made that point stronger earlier, but at least it did get brought up, and I'm not sure he would have been ready to listen earlier. I'm afraid on the parent show they'd have actually treated it like exactly the same thing and would have seriously wanted us to believe that Alice was being selfish for not just handing the staff over to Will. She'd have given it up with a speech about having hope that it would all work out and it being the right thing to help her friend.

I'm not sure how smart it was to bring everything Jafar needed for the spell to Jafar, and they all seem to have forgotten how ruthless he is. He just killed Ana in order to convince Will to cooperate, so why didn't it seem to cross their minds that he'd hurt Cyrus to make Amara cooperate? I guess they didn't think he'd put two and two together and figure out that Cyrus was her son, but that was pretty obvious once she saved him even while in the staff, especially when you factor in her wanting to get all the genies.

But it's mostly all setup for that cliffhanger. I remember that at this point in the original airing, I'd really fallen in love with the series and was quite involved, so I was excited for the next episode -- and then we had bad storms and they pre-empted all the programming that night for tornado tracking, so I didn't get to see how the cliffhanger resolved until the episode was available on demand.

[Shanna Marie]

We kind of got off-track with this project, but I couldn't leave it hanging much longer, so I watched the finale last night. The coda, with Alice telling her daughter (who looked in the 6-8 year old range) about Will and Ana as the White King and Queen fixing the problems in Wonderland, really doesn't fit with Will's supposedly later appearance in the parent series. It's hard to imagine how he could have gone from the way they were at the wedding to dating Belle in Storybrooke, and then I guess going back to Wonderland, getting back with Ana, and then ruling Wonderland. I know it wasn't what they intended during the parent series' season 4, but the only way it works is that Will in Storybrooke is a prequel to Wonderland. Really, bringing Will on to the parent series was a bad decision. I like the character, but he never worked all that well in Storybrooke and they had no clue what to do with him. What little they did with him messed up his character development.

I also feel like the parent series undermined the ending of this one with having Jafar freed so quickly and easily. Yeah, he was also defeated again pretty quickly, but him getting turned into a genie because he stole the water was such a neat and appropriate ending for him. I love it when villains defeat themselves. He made the same mistake Cyrus once made, but for more selfish reasons -- and in a wasteful way. He wasn't trying to use the water. He just wanted to keep it from being returned so he wouldn't lose his powers. And then to have him be freed quickly and easily and with his full powers not too long afterward ruins it. This is one area where the "season 4 was a prequel" timing hurts, since he'd have only been a genie for maybe six months, but then if season 4 comes after this series, it only adds maybe a year or so. It's not like with Cyrus and his brothers, where they were enslaved for more than a century.

Shallow moment: Cyrus looked far better in his genie clothes than he did as a respectable English gentleman. I guess the clothes weren't so bad, but trying to slick down his hair was criminal. That look didn't work on him.

I recall there being some debate about whether Cyrus was actually dead or only mostly dead or near death, and did Amara use her new powers to bring him back from the dead, and if so, why didn't he die once the spell was broken, the way Ana did. I'm voting for mostly dead/near death. Mrs. Whoopi Rabbit was talking about getting her healing supplies together, which implied that she would have healed him the way she did Alice, and Amara didn't show the same kind of signs of power when she healed Cyrus. What she did looked different from the way Jafar used his new superpowers. She didn't seem to do anything she couldn't have done without the spell. I think maybe she cooperated with him to do the spell not because she'd need the extra power to bring Cyrus back from the dead, but because she knew Jafar wouldn't let up and allow her to heal Cyrus. Her only hope was to shut up Jafar (and distract him) by letting him win, and then she'd have a chance to heal Cyrus. If she kept fighting, Cyrus would have died before she had a chance to heal him.

I noticed that A&E had writing credit, along with a writer who seems to have been only on this show and not the parent show. It doesn't really "feel" like an A&E episode, so I wonder if the other guy actually did most of the writing and A&E did enough of an edit pass to get credit, or possibly contributed to the outline. My guess is that they added the "worry not" line when Jafar was talking to his zombie army. That's very much their thing.

All in all, I still really love this show. I wish I could get it on DVD because I'm afraid it'll disappear from the ABC site someday, and I'm not sure that even buying it on Amazon would do much good because things you've bought can disappear if they lose rights to it. It's definitely good for a feel-good watch, so it was perfect to rewatch during pandemic isolation. There was a good blend of action and romance, with strong friendships, as well, some good redemption arcs, villains you got to see either fully redeemed or fully defeated, and some quite good acting.

The scene between Jafar and his father was particularly good, and both actors sold it. Both of them were right and both were wrong. The sultan had been a terrible father and had tried to kill his son. On the other hand, Jafar sucked and the older Sultan had been kind with Cyrus.

[Camera One]

It's going to take awhile for me to catch up, but I'll get there eventually.  The friend I watch with is visiting and she asked if there are more episodes to watch.  The last one we watched was the musical episode.  I'm thinking whether I want to see the Season 6 finale and Season 7 with her.

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

We kind of got off-track with this project, but I couldn't leave it hanging much longer, so I watched the finale last night. The coda, with Alice telling her daughter (who looked in the 6-8 year old range) about Will and Ana as the White King and Queen fixing the problems in Wonderland, really doesn't fit with Will's supposedly later appearance in the parent series. It's hard to imagine how he could have gone from the way they were at the wedding to dating Belle in Storybrooke, and then I guess going back to Wonderland, getting back with Ana, and then ruling Wonderland.

I was thinking that because we saw a flashforward with Alice's daughter already 6-8 years old, A&E must have intended more drama for Will and Anna.  But I really don't see what else they could have done to add to their story without retread or feeling like merry-go-around #2 (though it's A&E and we had about 10 rides on the Rumbelle merry-go-around, so they wouldn't have seen this as a problem).  

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I also feel like the parent series undermined the ending of this one with having Jafar freed so quickly and easily. Yeah, he was also defeated again pretty quickly, but him getting turned into a genie because he stole the water was such a neat and appropriate ending for him. I love it when villains defeat themselves.

That was just perfect comeuppance for Jafar, and they haven't done that too successfully on the parent show.  I'm going to stick to the idea we discussed that one of them was Disenchanted Jafar, so this Wonderland spinoff Jafar was still trapped in his bottle.  

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I wish I could get it on DVD because I'm afraid it'll disappear from the ABC site someday, and I'm not sure that even buying it on Amazon would do much good because things you've bought can disappear if they lose rights to it. 

I'm thinking it will eventually end up on Disney+?

[KingOfHearts]

17 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I also feel like the parent series undermined the ending of this one with having Jafar freed so quickly and easily. Yeah, he was also defeated again pretty quickly, but him getting turned into a genie because he stole the water was such a neat and appropriate ending for him. I love it when villains defeat themselves.

I love how great it was of an homage to the Aladdin movie. I never thought of being thrown into the bottle as his demise, but when it happened, it fit really well. Unlike S6 of OUAT, it seemed like the writers actually took the time out to watch the movie or at least read the plot on Wikipedia.

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I was thinking that because we saw a flashforward with Alice's daughter already 6-8 years old, A&E must have intended more drama for Will and Anna.  But I really don't see what else they could have done to add to their story without retread or feeling like merry-go-around #2 (though it's A&E and we had about 10 rides on the Rumbelle merry-go-around, so they wouldn't have seen this as a problem).  

The writers probably intended to give them another separation/reunion before the flashforward. That's something they would do. 

Edited July 20, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

On 7/19/2020 at 9:13 PM, Camera One said:

I was thinking that because we saw a flashforward with Alice's daughter already 6-8 years old, A&E must have intended more drama for Will and Anna.  But I really don't see what else they could have done to add to their story without retread or feeling like merry-go-around #2 (though it's A&E and we had about 10 rides on the Rumbelle merry-go-around, so they wouldn't have seen this as a problem).  

Alice's daughter already being that old may have just been for her to be old enough to be reading Alice's book. I suppose Alice wouldn't have included all the break up and get back together again stuff in a book she wrote for her daughter, but what she described about them whipping Wonderland into shape would have been more along the lines of busting up the Caterpillar's crime syndicate and doing something to provide for the people, not drama that had Will leaving Wonderland and dating someone else. They wouldn't have got much accomplished in getting Wonderland to be a better place if they were sidetracked by a bunch of relationship issues.

I've decided that post-season 4 is my headcanon because it doesn't leave any big unanswered questions. If we go with what the showrunners said, then we don't know why/how Will got caught in curse 2 and ended up in Storybrooke, we don't know what went on with Ana that he was obviously missing her but then started dating someone else even after having had magically verified True Love and having actually lost her only to miraculously get her back, we don't know why he backslid on all his character development and became a petty thief again, and we don't know how/why/when he left Storybrooke and what he did next, other than that he must have ended up back with Ana because that's what's in the book Alice wrote years later. It's a lot more satisfying to imagine that after Will got his heart back and spent some time running around Wonderland, trying to move on with people like the Fairy and bumming around with Lizard, he ended up back in the Enchanted Forest and got caught up in one or both curses, which landed him in Storybrooke, where he tried to move on by dating Belle, only to have her reject him so that he became even more cynical about relationships, but then the Rabbit showed up and took him away to rescue Alice, so he then went through all that character growth and reconciled with Ana, then lived happily ever after.

But speaking of happily ever after, I found myself wondering why Alice and Cyrus settled in England. Wonderland had apparently been turned around. Once Ana was good and Jafar was gone, it doesn't seem like it would have been such a bad place. When you look at their wedding, everyone but Alice's family was from Wonderland. Of course, they couldn't have had regular British people there when their other guests included the rabbits and people like the Tweedles, but it says something about who their friends were that the people they wanted at their wedding were all from Wonderland. Did Cyrus's brothers stay in Victorian Literature World, stay in Wonderland, or go back to Agrabah? Alice was really sad to say goodbye to Will. I can't imagine her being happy settling down to become a proper Victorian housewife. They'd have had to fit into a very stilted society. After all that time running around with a sword and having adventures, I'd think she'd feel stifled having to sit around at tea parties and church socials. It seems like it would have made more sense for them to live in Wonderland and maybe pop over to visit Alice's family occasionally, and that would be easier to do from Wonderland, where they could find the Rabbit when they wanted to visit. They must have kept in touch with Wonderland if Alice knew what Will and Ana had done, and the Rabbit was there at the end, but they'd have had to wait on the Rabbit to show up. I imagine the point of that coda was to imply that the Rabbit was going to take Alice's daughter on an adventure. And they couldn't have had all the tearful farewells if Alice and Cyrus were going to stay in Wonderland to help Will and Ana.

I think it would have been more interesting to have the wedding in Wonderland and bring over Alice's family. Then we could have seen all their reactions. Going by the stepmother's reaction to the Wonderland people, what would she have thought of Wonderland itself? The sister would likely have loved it and the stepmother would have hated that.

 

[Camera One]

33 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

But speaking of happily ever after, I found myself wondering why Alice and Cyrus settled in England. Wonderland had apparently been turned around. Once Ana was good and Jafar was gone, it doesn't seem like it would have been such a bad place. When you look at their wedding, everyone but Alice's family was from Wonderland

I think it would have been more interesting to have the wedding in Wonderland and bring over Alice's family. Then we could have seen all their reactions.

Yes, I remember it was strange to me that they had Alice "retire" completely and just become a Victorian wife in Fictional Victorian England.  

I suppose maybe there were many dangers we were unaware of in Wonderland, and she didn't want to put her child at risk or something, but I seriously doubt there was anything Alice and Cyrus couldn't have handled.

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Going by the stepmother's reaction to the Wonderland people, what would she have thought of Wonderland itself? The sister would likely have loved it and the stepmother would have hated that.

That could have been the other explanation.  Alice wanted to be close to her father, but the stepmother would have refused to move to Wonderland.

Still, there was something a little unsatisfying with having a kickass female (who wasn't abrasive as hell) just becoming a boring person.  Makes you think of Snow and Charming and their boring life on a farm, eh?

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

That could have been the other explanation.  Alice wanted to be close to her father, but the stepmother would have refused to move to Wonderland.

Her family wouldn't have had to move to Wonderland for them to have stayed in touch. With the Rabbit around to open portals, she could have visited just as often (or even more often) than if she'd lived in a different part of England. It's just hard to imagine how happy they could have been in England. Cyrus was more than a hundred years old, from another world, was a former genie, and was a different race in a place/time that was really racist (unless the negative stuff didn't exist in Victorian Literature World, but there was some pretty nasty casual racism in Victorian literature). Alice wanted to go to Wonderland in the first place because she was unhappy at home, and she didn't fit in there. She was used to having adventures and being in a strange and wonderful place. Even if she and her father had patched things up, there was a lot of water under that bridge, and they didn't have the foundation of a close relationship to build on. Her best hope would have been to have a cordial Sunday dinners and holidays kind of relationship. If they're in Wonderland, they're with their friends, and the Rabbit can open a portal whenever they want to visit Alice's family or Cyrus's brothers, if they went back to Agrabah. If they're in England, they aren't going to fit in and probably won't have close friends. Cyrus would hate the climate. They'd have to wait for the Rabbit to show up to get a portal to visit their friends, unless they developed some way to send signals.

Speaking of climate, I was amused by the fact that they took advantage of the changed setting of the coda to allow the actors to be all bundled up in winter clothes after it was apparently really cold while they were filming the last few episodes -- judging by the breath fog when they breathed or spoke -- but they were stuck wearing their Wonderland costumes. They must have been freezing, especially Cyrus with his shirt open halfway down his chest.

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

Makes you think of Snow and Charming and their boring life on a farm, eh?

I'm not sure why, but this bothers me more than Snow and Charming. At least Charming grew up on a farm and seemed to like it. He wasn't ever desperately trying to escape from the farm. Snow was forced into having adventures. It wasn't a life she chose. She had to fend for herself after getting kicked out of her home, then had to learn to defend herself when she was under constant attack. I do have a problem with her apparently not caring about the position that was rightfully hers, but I can see seasons 4-6 Snow being okay on a farm. Alice chose a life of adventure. She deliberately went back to Wonderland and chose to stay to have adventures with Cyrus. She was terribly unhappy in England. True, part of that was because of her bad relationship with her father and the fact that her father and stepmother refused to believe her about Wonderland, plus her grief over Cyrus, but it's hard to imagine England being a place she wanted to stay. It's harder to say what Cyrus would have wanted. He'd probably be okay anywhere if he was with Alice and wasn't in a bottle, but I can't think that he'd have had many friends in England or would have fit into that rigid social structure at all.

I suspect that coda was all about wanting to show that Alice wrote the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland book for her daughter, even though it was nothing like the real book, which was written by a different person, but then this must be the version in Victorian Literature World. But I think the ending would have been more satisfying if they'd had the wedding in England, and then after the wedding they'd gone off to have more adventures and actually explore Wonderland without having to fight for their lives.

[Camera One]

19 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Her family wouldn't have had to move to Wonderland for them to have stayed in touch. With the Rabbit around to open portals, she could have visited just as often (or even more often) than if she'd lived in a different part of England.

Was there a Price to the Rabbit constantly creating portals?  Maybe she didn't want to trouble Rabbit?

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It's just hard to imagine how happy they could have been in England. Cyrus was more than a hundred years old, from another world, was a former genie, and was a different race in a place/time that was really racist (unless the negative stuff didn't exist in Victorian Literature World, but there was some pretty nasty casual racism in Victorian literature).

I too doubt that they would have been happy in England, especially for Cyrus.  Fictional Victorian England was all about class decorum, and if Oliver Twist came from this world, there would have huge social inequity.  

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Alice wanted to go to Wonderland in the first place because she was unhappy at home, and she didn't fit in there. She was used to having adventures and being in a strange and wonderful place.

I don't agree with it, but I think they were focusing on Alice's desire for Home.  They were implying Alice had her fill of adventure.  The first time she went to Wonderland, it was an accident, and the second time, she only went to get proof.  And then the third time, she only went back to save Cyrus.  

This was what Alice said in the winter finale "Home", and maybe this was what the Writers considered to be her "happy ending".

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White Rabbit: Then... then why are you here?
Alice: Because I need your help one last time.
White Rabbit: Oh, Alice.
Alice: Cyrus is free. We're going to be reunited. And when we are, I need you to be there so we can go home. And leave this behind for good.

This next exchange from a flashback in that episode suggests Cyrus would not have been happy in Victorian England.... he would have been there for Alice's sake.

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White Rabbit: It means it's a damn good thing we were here to help, but what if we hadn't been home? What about next time?
Cyrus: Next time I'll be more careful.
White Rabbit: And the time after that? What kind of life is this for Alice? Always hunted and sleeping under trees?
Cyrus: It's a life we chose. Together.
White Rabbit: Just because you chose it doesn't make it right for you or her. I've known Alice since she was a little girl. She always wanted a place to call home.
Cyrus: I'm her home now. As she is mine.
White Rabbit: Must you always speak in metaphors?
Cyrus: It's the truth. You know we may not have a warm hearth, or a roof to sleep under, but our life together is better than we could have ever imagined.
White Rabbit: As I said, for now. But we both know this can't go on forever.

Why wouldn't Alice have taken her daughter to Wonderland for visits?  I guess she wouldn't want to confuse her daughter and get her ostracized, but why would she want to live in a world where they would be forbidden to discuss how she and Cyrus met?  That always bothered me, too.

Edited July 23, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

18 hours ago, Camera One said:

Was there a Price to the Rabbit constantly creating portals?  Maybe she didn't want to trouble Rabbit?

It sounds like he must have been making portals because she knew what happened in Wonderland after she left, and Rabbit was there, watching her with her daughter. Maybe it would have been a bit much to ask for a weekly portal to England for Sunday dinner, but there was clearly some communication, so visiting would have been an option.

18 hours ago, Camera One said:

I think they were focusing on Alice's desire for Home.  They were implying Alice had her fill of adventure.  The first time she went to Wonderland, it was an accident, and the second time, she only went to get proof.  And then the third time, she only went back to save Cyrus. 

On the other hand, she only went back to England the second time because she believed Cyrus was dead and she was in danger from Ana. If they hadn't been attacked and if she hadn't lost Cyrus, it sounds like she'd planned to stay there with him forever. She wanted the Rabbit on hand to get her and Cyrus back to England after he was free because he was in danger from Jafar. It was the constant danger in Wonderland that she wanted to get away from, but that danger was gone when Cyrus was no longer a genie and she no longer had his wishes, which made both of them targets, and when Ana turned good and Jafar was neutralized. There might still have been bandits and criminals, but those existed in England, too, and that seems to have been part of what Will and Ana cleaned up in Wonderland.

This may just be my Army brat background speaking, where I don't have strong ties to any particular place and associate "home" with people, but it seems to me like what Alice wanted in "home" was love, safety, and security. She'd have Cyrus wherever she went, and therefore also any children they had. In England, she had a father she was rebuilding a relationship with, a stepmother who didn't seem to be entirely on board (judging by her reactions at the wedding), and a half sister who liked her (but whose mother likely would have disapproved of Alice and Cyrus getting too close to her). Very likely, the reconciliation with her father was the strongest motivation behind her staying in England initially. Whether he would have truly unbent or been swayed by his wife is a question. On the other hand, in Wonderland, she'd have been near a friend who was like a brother and another person who was becoming a friend, along with the Rabbit family, possibly Cyrus's brothers (depending on where they ended up).

I also wonder how they made a living in England. It didn't seem like Alice's father was super wealthy, not enough to support Alice's family on top of his own. What kind of job could Cyrus have had? Any education or training he had wouldn't have applied in England. Alice wouldn't have been able to have a career there. In Wonderland, they'd have been able to help Will and Ana take care of things. They could have had a house, or possibly a suite in the castle, so no more sleeping under the stars or camping in their lovenest, and they'd have had something useful to do that they were qualified for.

The most likely way I could see things going is Alice initially wanting to stay in England for her father's sake, and it being her father who notices how bored and unhappy they are in England and suggesting they go back to Wonderland when the Rabbit comes for a visit, as long as the Rabbit promises to bring them back for the occasional visit.

19 hours ago, Camera One said:

why would she want to live in a world where they would be forbidden to discuss how she and Cyrus met?

They couldn't even talk about who Cyrus is or where he was from. They'd have had to make up some vague background for him, like he's from some small kingdom in the Middle East no one has heard of and educated in England, or something like that.

[Writing Wrongs]

Vudu has this show for 9.99 HD.

[Camera One]

I am rewatching "Return to Oz", and even moreso than before, I'm struck by how similar the beginning is to the beginning of this spinoff, with Alice/Dorothy being accused of having delusions and being sent to a psychiatric institution where they would be the subject of a horrific "fix", and then getting help to escape and ending back in Wonderland/Oz.

"Return to Oz" looks so low budget but they did a great job incorporating elements from various books in the Oz series.  I wish 4B were more like that.  This it the best Oz-inspired follow-up since it takes more from the books than names.  I think a remake might work well with better visuals and more of a fantastical feel (instead of a creepy feel).

Edited January 24, 2021 by Camera One

[Camera One]

Episode 12

I felt like watching something tonight, and finally settled on finishing off this rewatch!  Well, I still have one episode left after this one.

This was a nice penultimate episode setting up for the big climax, with all the characters coming together in one place and some good momentum.

It was a little disappointing to see Will being tempted to betray Alice and Cyrus by stealing the staff, though of course it was understandable.  Still, it was a frustrating 10 minute diversion before he came to his senses (which required Alice accidentally almost falling off a cliff).  

Again, it is really refreshing on this show to see actual intelligence.  Alice counting carefully to get past the guards to get Will's heart in the flashback, figuring out which box in the vault held Will's heart, their whole coordinated plan in the palace (though was their plan simply relying on Amara getting the upper hand on Jafar?).    

The flashback in this second last episode was a nice circle back to how we got to Alice and Cyrus meeting in Episode 2.  It seems like 13 episodes is enough to pretty much use this flashback device to fill in enough of the backstory.  Another season, and it might end up retreading territory like with the parent show.

It was also great to see the villain's sidekick turn against the villain, which often happens in fantasy, but seems to rarely happen on "Once".  Though the "Nobody's born a monster" thing is getting old by now.

It looks like Old Ye Tavern has a location in Wonderland too.

Edited February 15, 2021 by Camera One

[Camera One]

On 6/15/2020 at 3:28 PM, Shanna Marie said:

I had some major parent series deja vu when we had the queen's men looking for a murderous monster who turned out to be a young woman who'd committed a minor offense, and then we had that net trap (they really love that). If this flashback had come at the beginning of the series instead of the end, I'd have been sure they were setting up a romance. It had all the ingredients of a Once Upon a Time romance, with the characters sassily threatening each other with physical violence.

Seriously, and now that we've seen Season 7 and Henry gets caught in a net with Murderella, it's another sign that A&E's well has dried, and then some.

Quote

With an existing significant other kept out of the way for half the series and the partially shady "bad boy" type working with our heroine, we had all the ingredients for the standard issue love triangle. You could just about bet that the boyfriend would end up being villainized in some way, making the bad boy look like a better option so that we'd cheer for her dumping the original guy and going with the bad boy.

Yes, it is refreshing, since the "bad boy" is always the way to go.  I guess they already did this already with the swoonable Captain Hook while boring old Baelfire was turned into a sleaze.

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I'm afraid on the parent show they'd have actually treated it like exactly the same thing and would have seriously wanted us to believe that Alice was being selfish for not just handing the staff over to Will. She'd have given it up with a speech about having hope that it would all work out and it being the right thing to help her friend.

That is so right.  It would be an interesting exercise to re-write this episode except with the parent show characters.

First of all, Snow would apologetically admit to Willgina that they were wrong and they should help.  It's the least they can do.  Willgina will say something sarcastic and unappreciative because Willgina is so sassy.  Meanwhile, Jabberwocky's true love, named Smelle, will pop up, begging the heroes to save Jabber (or should we say Wabber), who's a good person deep deep deep deep deep deep inside.  

Everyone hikes to the palace where Jafar is, but they will have no plan.  They will all tell each other that everything will turn out for the best.  "I'm not going to let ANYONE hurt you," someone will say.   Someone else will stand on a rock and say, "We WON'T let Jafar win!"   Not only that, they will bring Baby Neal to Jafar's castle too, because why not.  They will all try to sneak in, and Jafar will apparate behind them, because he would know all along that they were coming, and they fell right into his trap!   

Edited February 15, 2021 by Camera One

[tennisgurl]

10 hours ago, Camera One said:

That is so right.  It would be an interesting exercise to re-write this episode except with the parent show characters.

 

Don't forget the hope speech! They need to ramble on nonsensically about Hope instead of coming up with an actual plan! Then things should be resolved with two people waving their hands at each other while special effects happens in post production as the actors desperately try to make this look like something actually happening and not bothering to actually explain what is going on, followed by another hope speech. 

Edited February 15, 2021 by tennisgurl

[Inquirer]

I believe the last time on the parent show where the heroes were allowed to be consistently smart and proactive and make plans was the Neverland arc. There was a lot of "heroes make/attempt plan" and "Pan goes 'Oh yeah? Here's my counter-plan to that'" and "heroes go 'Oh rly? Then we'll do this counter-plan of our own'" and so on and so forth, and it actually felt like there was an actual struggle and battle of wills / wits going on. It was to the point where literally the only thing stopping the heroes from flat-out triumphing over Pan in 3x08 was Henry being the Truest Idiot, and where the only reason things didn't go without a hitch for them in 3x11 was because Rumple forgot one small detail (that Pan made the magic suppressing cuff, so it wouldn't work on him). 

Afterward, it was always the heroes triumphing at the last possible minute because they were so incompetent at stopping the villains from getting to the point of near-victory, sometimes outright letting them get to that point under the excuse of "we have hope that we can stop them even when they're 99% close to winning" (ex: allowing the Black Fairy to cast her perfected Dark Curse.)

Edited February 15, 2021 by Inquirer

[Camera One]

Episode 13 

Yay, I'm finally done this rewatch.  I was only 8 months late!  

I remember disliking this finale, and I still have mixed feelings.  It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great.

There were too many "meaningful" speeches in this one that didn't mean much.  The whole conclusion of Jafar and his father felt like it was trying to be complex but wasn't, with all the "true power is mercy", "you have to earn love", etc.   I guess we're supposed to believe that Jafar now had everything he thought he wanted, but he still couldn't have true love, but it fell flat, since I was never convinced he wanted true love.  So all that instant-love stuff with Anastasia didn't work for me.

I also didn't like the whole battle speech with Alice and "We fight for Wonderland!".  There was better worldbuilding in this show than the parent show, but they never really explored or explained the population of Wonderland.  A bunch of redshirts probably died, but I'm not sure if we were supposed to care, or what.

The exchange with Alice and Jafar about him turning back time to erase her meeting Cyrus was a tad heavy-handed, and it was just by random luck that the guards happened to enter at that moment with the information Jafar needed so he didn't have to get it from Alice.  Otherwise, she would have lost everything with no back-up plan.  Wasn't Jafar afraid of repercussions to himself if he changed the past?

The zombie army gave me serious flashbacks to Season 2.   The chess pieces tombstones were a nice touch, though.  Too bad they didn't battle on a chess board.

I was hoping we would get to hear a meaningful conversation between Cyrus and his mother during their trek.

Jafar's defeat was satisfying.  I love villains who fail because of their own greed.  Plus it was clever of Alice to lead Jafar to steal the water, so the heroes stayed intelligent to the end.

The resurrection of Anastasia felt too convenient to me, just like on the initial watch.  The Red Queen was meant to die, but not Anastasia.  Was this the birth of the idea of The Evil Queen vs Regina as two entities?  Though of course in that case, Regina had to accept they were one.

Cyrus's brother when he found out their mother died said, "All this was for nothing!" and Cyrus went, "No, it was for everything".  Well, from the perspective of the two brothers, it really was for nothing, and they suffered because of Cyrus for a very long time.  Cyrus said they would live their lives together, but did they both just happily agree to move to England?

I also didn't like the ending with Alice's daughter.  I know they wanted it to go "full circle" with the rabbit taking the girl to Wonderland, and it was to explain the origins of the "Alice in Wonderland" book, but I would have preferred to find out that Alice and Cyrus and their daughter went to visit their friends in Wonderland all the time, instead of ending with Alice's daughter being lied to all these years.

Just went back up and read your post, and I thought some of the same things!

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The coda, with Alice telling her daughter (who looked in the 6-8 year old range) about Will and Ana as the White King and Queen fixing the problems in Wonderland, really doesn't fit with Will's supposedly later appearance in the parent series. It's hard to imagine how he could have gone from the way they were at the wedding to dating Belle in Storybrooke, and then I guess going back to Wonderland, getting back with Ana, and then ruling Wonderland. I know it wasn't what they intended during the parent series' season 4, but the only way it works is that Will in Storybrooke is a prequel to Wonderland.

After rewatching this, I'm really doubling down and sticking with the head canon that the Season 4 in Storybrooke preceded the Rabbit getting Will to break Alice out of the asylum. 

It actually makes this spinoff a fun thing to watch AFTER the original series, for new fans who might see it on Disney+.  What happened to Will after?  Find out in this spinoff.

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Shallow moment: Cyrus looked far better in his genie clothes than he did as a respectable English gentleman. I guess the clothes weren't so bad, but trying to slick down his hair was criminal. That look didn't work on him.

I thought with that hair, he fit in really well with the Jane Austen look.  Will and Ana's costumes looked too colourful, though I guess that was intentional?

Quote

I recall there being some debate about whether Cyrus was actually dead or only mostly dead or near death, and did Amara use her new powers to bring him back from the dead, and if so, why didn't he die once the spell was broken, the way Ana did. I'm voting for mostly dead/near death.

Good point.  I didn't think about that since he was still breathing.

Quote

I noticed that A&E had writing credit, along with a writer who seems to have been only on this show and not the parent show. It doesn't really "feel" like an A&E episode, so I wonder if the other guy actually did most of the writing and A&E did enough of an edit pass to get credit, or possibly contributed to the outline. My guess is that they added the "worry not" line when Jafar was talking to his zombie army. That's very much their thing.

It's sort of a pattern with them that I've enjoyed penultimate episodes more than their actual finales, so in that sense, it did fit with their style.  I'm guessing they would have had a big role in plotting out the generalities of the season with their "Wouldn't it be cool if..."  They tend to sometimes decide on the outcome and leave the details in between to other writers.

Well, overall, this spinoff definitely holds up and was better than several arcs in the parent series (rises above 2B, 3B, 4B, 6, 7 for sure)

Edited February 17, 2021 by Camera One

[Camera One]

I was watching this promo for "Wonderland" on the ABC Youtube channel, and how it tries to tie it to the Wraith incident in 2A.

They must have changed their minds because the scene with Grumpy and Will at the entrance to Granny ("Storybrooke's under attack; you've got to help us!") is different from what they actually put in Episode 1 of "Wonderland".

The actual episode is much more ambiguous with the "storm".  So the "Wonderland" series could have occurred after Season 4.  

I rewatched some of his scenes on the parent show, and most of his scenes are inconsequential to time, but his behavior is definitely the Will that the Rabbit plucked from Storybrooke in the pilot.  Maybe Will buried his heart, thinking that would make him forget Anastasia, eventually, he dug it back up and put it behind the wall in his apartment and became angry at Anastasia all over again after his break-up with Belle.

If the entirety of the "Wonderland" series (up to the wedding) did occur in Season 2, that's not a lot of time for a messy breakup with Anastasia before Will's appearance in Season 4.  Though I suppose there was that missing year between 3A and 3B.  Unless Anastasia "died" again?   If that had been the case, why would Will come back to Storybrooke? 

I'm just going to ignore what Eddy said in an interview promoting Season 4:

Quote

Kitsis: Obviously for people who watched [Once Upon a Time in] Wonderland, they are like, "Wait, he had his happy ending. He went off with the Red Queen." We are going to tell that story, what happened and what brought him back to Storybrooke. And that will probably be in the later half in the season, and it will be done in a way that if you’ve never seen Wonderland, we’re going to fill in the blanks. We’re also going to find out that he has an interesting connection to another character from the past, from season one of Storybrooke.

Horowitz: For those who never saw Wonderland, he gets his own introduction this season, and you’ll see how he’s folded into [the universe] …

Kitsis: But he’s at his core a thief and the sheriff, so they’ll meet in an interesting way.

I'm curious what "story" they had but I seriously doubt it would have been satisfying or justified the total regression of his character on the parent show.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

On 2/15/2021 at 1:13 AM, Camera One said:

their whole coordinated plan in the palace (though was their plan simply relying on Amara getting the upper hand on Jafar?).

It's always hard to tell with these shows whether a plan is vague and stupid or if they just run into unexpected things because they generally leave us out of the planning process for fear of spoiling the surprise. They almost always cut from "I have an idea" to the plan implementation. In a way, that makes sense because watching people talk about doing things is less interesting than watching them do things, and it's especially dull to watch them talk about it, then doing exactly what they talk about. You generally only see the planning scene on TV if something's going to go horribly wrong with the plan, and you need to know what the plan is to be able to realize just how horribly wrong it's going. And then there are shows like Leverage, where they skip the scene where they add the wrinkle to the plan that means the thing going horribly wrong is actually part of the plan. But with this show, I always got the feeling that the writers didn't know what the plan was. They just threw the characters at the situation as though there was a plan and had the plan go wrong. On the parent show, that was because there was seldom an actual plan, just something vague like "Hope!" or something stupid that never should have been taken seriously, like "Find the Author and make him write me a happy ending" or "We can split my heart in two and put half in Hook's Underworld spirit body and that will somehow make his mortally damaged and rotting corpse in the real world come back to life. Maybe. Or his spirit body could come back to the real world with us. Or something. Let's go!" On the spinoff, they might actually have had a plan. But probably that part involved Amara saying something like, "Leave him to me!"

On 2/15/2021 at 1:13 AM, Camera One said:

The flashback in this second last episode was a nice circle back to how we got to Alice and Cyrus meeting in Episode 2.  It seems like 13 episodes is enough to pretty much use this flashback device to fill in enough of the backstory.  Another season, and it might end up retreading territory like with the parent show.

Yeah, there doesn't seem to be a lot more to fill in. I guess they could always have come up with additional adventures that Alice and Cyrus had together before he was "killed." They could have run into a lot of future episode villains or victims, etc., along the way. I just really can't imagine another season with these characters, though. Everything was wrapped up pretty well, aside from whatever it was they thought happened to Will later to get him on the parent show.

On 2/15/2021 at 1:29 AM, Camera One said:

Yes, it is refreshing, since the "bad boy" is always the way to go.  I guess they already did this already with the swoonable Captain Hook while boring old Baelfire was turned into a sleaze.

Even that didn't really fit the usual TV triangle dynamic, so I guess I have to give them credit for that much. There was no real bad boy or good boy with Hook and Neal. Both of them had their shady sides and their good sides, unless you consider that they always planned for Emma's babydaddy to be Bae and think he only got turned into sleaze to prop up Hook. But whoever Henry's father was would have always had a touch of sleaze to him unless something horrible had happened to him so that there was no way he could have kept in touch with Emma enough to know she was pregnant, while I don't think Hook ever got truly turned into a saint, even when he was risen from the dead. There were always people who weren't totally keen on him, and he suffered for all his transgressions. In this show, it turned out that both Will and Cyrus had their good and bad sides. Cyrus wasn't a pure, noble good boy. He had a shady past.

On 2/17/2021 at 1:07 AM, Camera One said:

I guess we're supposed to believe that Jafar now had everything he thought he wanted, but he still couldn't have true love, but it fell flat, since I was never convinced he wanted true love.  So all that instant-love stuff with Anastasia didn't work for me.

I don't think it was so much that he wanted true love as that Jafar wanted to be the one chosen. I guess it's Zelena round 2 (which is amusing because this was running during the Zelena arc, which also involved pulling together the elements needed to break the rules of magic and change the past). His father chose his half brother over him and rejected him, so he always felt rejected, and so when he had power, he was forcing his father to love him, and since Ana was there and she was beautiful and powerful and had opposed him, he made her into his love puppet as well, because he could. But forcing them didn't make it real, so he still hadn't really won. I think that was the point they were trying to make, not that he really wanted True Love, but that the love he was forcing on them didn't count and wouldn't really satisfy his emptiness.

On 2/17/2021 at 1:07 AM, Camera One said:

I was hoping we would get to hear a meaningful conversation between Cyrus and his mother during their trek.

Yeah, that was a bad omission, given that it was their relationship that set all this off. What did she think about what he did, what he'd become? What did he think about the consequences of his actions for her?

On 2/17/2021 at 1:07 AM, Camera One said:

It actually makes this spinoff a fun thing to watch AFTER the original series, for new fans who might see it on Disney+.  What happened to Will after?  Find out in this spinoff.

That's the only way to have any closure for Will. This way, we know that after his time in Storybrooke, things work out for him and he finds true love, and we know why he disappears. Their way, his happy ending and character growth are ruined with no explanation and he disappears for no reason.

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We are going to tell that story, what happened and what brought him back to Storybrooke. And that will probably be in the later half in the season, and it will be done in a way that if you’ve never seen Wonderland, we’re going to fill in the blanks. We’re also going to find out that he has an interesting connection to another character from the past, from season one of Storybrooke.

Gee, sounds like an interesting story, way better than 4B. It's hard to imagine them thinking that the ideas they came up with for 4B were so great that they dropped all their plans, including the ones that involved hiring an actor as a series regular. I wonder which season one Storybrooke character he had a connection to. Their treatment of Will is one of the most bizarre things I've seen on a TV series -- bring a character from a spinoff to the mother series in a way that seems to negate what we saw happen to him on the spinoff, then seemingly forget he's even in the show and drop him with no explanation after keeping him as a regular for a year.

[Camera One]

49 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Gee, sounds like an interesting story, way better than 4B. It's hard to imagine them thinking that the ideas they came up with for 4B were so great that they dropped all their plans, including the ones that involved hiring an actor as a series regular. I wonder which season one Storybrooke character he had a connection to.

Probably August, since he got a few episodes in 4B.  Will and August would have been so fun together.  Not.

What do you think the show could have done with Will and August?

Edited February 19, 2021 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

13 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Probably August, since he got a few episodes in 4B.  Will and August would have been so fun together.  Not.

But August didn't show up until late. I would have thought it would have been someone who'd been in Storybrooke during the curse. Their connection would have had to be during the very short time after August arrived and before Will left, and it's really unlikely that Will knew Pinocchio in the Enchanted Forest. But if Will had some kind of relationship built during the curse, it comes back to how the time thing worked in the curse, a Groundhog Day or a blur. Were they able to make new friends that weren't part of their fake history?

I wonder if it could have been Ashley, since they were hinting hard during the spinoff that Ana was one of Cinderella's stepsisters, but they probably thought that revealing that would be a Shocking!Twist. That would at least have tied into whatever happened to Ana and maybe getting him back to her. I don't think they'd said or done anything that negated the idea of Ana being a stepsister until season 6, so it might have still been a possibility in season 4. They did bring Ashley back early in season 4 after having forgotten her since season 1 (and so forgot her that they forgot the age and gender of her child), so that might have been meant as a reminder of who she was before they brought her in for the story, like that dream Regina had about Robin to remind us who he was before they brought him back.

[Camera One]

9 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I wonder if it could have been Ashley, since they were hinting hard during the spinoff that Ana was one of Cinderella's stepsisters, but they probably thought that revealing that would be a Shocking!Twist. That would at least have tied into whatever happened to Ana and maybe getting him back to her. I don't think they'd said or done anything that negated the idea of Ana being a stepsister until season 6, so it might have still been a possibility in season 4. They did bring Ashley back early in season 4 after having forgotten her since season 1 (and so forgot her that they forgot the age and gender of her child), so that might have been meant as a reminder of who she was before they brought her in for the story, like that dream Regina had about Robin to remind us who he was before they brought him back.

I kept thinking Eddy was inferring Will would have a continuing storyline with the Season 1 character, and August was back for multiple episodes.  I can't see them bringing back Ashley for more than one episode (since princesses are soooooo boring - cue Aurora's one scene cameo in 4B).  

But reading his quote again, he only said "an interesting connection with a character from the past", so you might be right, and it is just revealing that Ashley was Anastasia's stepsister, since that could be a one-episode thing.  Ashley would give Will something that will help Will get Anastasia back, or other such nonsense.

Maybe Will knew The Author from the past, so he would play a part in that plotline.

[Shanna Marie]

15 hours ago, Camera One said:

But reading his quote again, he only said "an interesting connection with a character from the past", so you might be right, and it is just revealing that Ashley was Anastasia's stepsister, since that could be a one-episode thing.  Ashley would give Will something that will help Will get Anastasia back, or other such nonsense.

I can see how the episode would go: Ashley and Will would run into each other in Storybrooke, and one or both of them would have the "You!" reaction (never mind that he was supposedly there during the whole curse, so you'd think they'd have run into each other before). Cue flashback showing him meeting Ana (probably involving a net trap and some verbal abuse), not yet showing the connection with Ashley. In the present, he's trying to get Ashley to talk to him. Eventually, we see that Ana was Ashley's stepsister (though it's really Ashley's fault for not being nicer to Ana, since the stepmother was mean to all of them -- that's how this show rolls) and didn't help Ana and Will when they first ran away from the stepmother. In the present, she has some bit of info that helps him, and we don't see her again on the show.

15 hours ago, Camera One said:

Maybe Will knew The Author from the past, so he would play a part in that plotline.

That would have actually made sense, given Will's history of realm hopping. They might have met in Wonderland. But since they did the Author story, why not include him in it? It sounds like they had a story planned around Will, then had a sudden moment of "wouldn't it be cool?" and came up with an entirely different plot where they had no use for Will. They put him in the relationship with Belle just to give him something to do (even though it made no sense for his character and there was no transition from him getting drunk and crying over a picture of the Red Queen to dating someone else), and then forgot even that. If the plan all along was for him to play a role in the Author plot, you'd thing he'd have had more than 2-3 minutes of screentime during that arc.

You know, the Red Queen thing is another bit of evidence we could use for Wonderland taking place after season 4. Season 4 happened after Wonderland, which ended with Will and Ana becoming the White King and Queen, wouldn't he have been crying over the pages of the Alice in Wonderland book with the White Queen, not the Red Queen? Him looking at the Red Queen makes more sense if it comes in between her dumping him to become the Red Queen and their reconciliation.

Unless, I guess, she turned evil again and reverted to being the Red Queen and that's why he's sad. But you'd think if he's getting melancholy, he'd be gazing at the picture that reminded him of happier times.

[Camera One]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I can see how the episode would go: Ashley and Will would run into each other in Storybrooke, and one or both of them would have the "You!" reaction (never mind that he was supposedly there during the whole curse, so you'd think they'd have run into each other before).

I had forgotten that Ashley was actually in the very beginning of Episode 1 of "Wonderland" in front of the diner, when Will steals her keys.

I just rewatched, and it's interesting how they filmed it, almost deliberately not having Ashley see Will's face.  Ashley is facing the other way, when Will walks past and bumps her.  Ashley calls out to him that a storm is coming and he should find a place to keep dry, and Will does not turn around until they walk away.  

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Unless, I guess, she turned evil again and reverted to being the Red Queen

That would be *such* retread.  But it is A&E, so yeah.  What could possibly have made her go evil and dump Will again this time?  I can't figure out a scenario that I would enjoy watching.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

29 minutes ago, Camera One said:

That would be *such* retread.  But it is A&E, so yeah.  What could possibly have made her go evil and dump Will again this time?  I can't figure out a scenario that I would enjoy watching.

It would also be a bit silly if she had to turn back into the Red Queen just because she was evil. Then again, Hook changed into a different all-black outfit when he went full Dark One, so that is kind of their thing, you have to change clothes when your degree of evil changes. She couldn't be evil while wearing white.

But without anything onscreen to contradict it, I'm going with our headcanon that Wonderland happens after season 4. It makes so much more sense if Will in season 4 is a mess because Ana dumped him to become a queen, he attempts to get over her by dating Belle, then Belle dumps him to go back to Rumple, and soon after that, the Rabbit shows up to get Will to help Alice, so Will is extra bitter at the beginning and discouraging her from trying to find Cyrus.

And now I kind of want to rewatch this series, but I think it's only on Disney+ now. Since they just added the original Muppet Show, I may break down and subscribe. After the week I've had (in Texas, so I spent the first half of the week in record low temperatures but with no power most of the time, so no heat. It was fun.), I need something mindless and fun. I really need this series on DVD so I'm not subject to the whims of streaming service availability.

[Camera One]

8 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

And now I kind of want to rewatch this series, but I think it's only on Disney+ now. 

How about rewatching all the episodes Will was in from the parent show first, LOL.

It seems to be more than I remember...

"Rocky Road"
"The Apprentice"
"Breaking Glass"
"The Snow Queen"
"Smash the Mirror"
"Fall"
"Shattered Sight"
"Heroes and Villains"
"Unforgiven"
"Enter the Dragon"
"Poor Unfortunate Soul"
"Heart of Gold"
"Lily"
"Operation Mongoose Part 2"

[Shanna Marie]

6 minutes ago, Camera One said:

How about rewatching all the episodes Will was in from the parent show first, LOL.

It seems to be more than I remember...

He was in most of the episodes, since he was technically a regular. The issue was that he usually had about 30 seconds of screen time in each episode. That's why the actor was apparently very unhappy. They tied him up so he couldn't get other work and kept him around to make a cameo appearance in almost every episode, so he had nothing to do but couldn't do anything else or go back home to England. If they weren't going to use him, they could have at least cut him loose, or cut his episode commitment, letting him know when they'd need him and letting him be free otherwise. Really, they could have cut him after 4A without changing much. They could have used different magic to unshrink the Jolly Roger, and Belle hanging out with Hook as a friend was enough to trigger Rumple's jealousy. She didn't need a boyfriend.

He had a decent-sized role in "Rocky Road," since that was when Emma discovered him and he clued them in about Ingrid. Then he had his clashes with Hook in "The Apprentice." Was it in "Broken Glass" that Snow thought David let him go for her to track down? The next more substantial role I can recall was during "Shattered Sight" when he ran into Hook. And after that he barely appeared, aside from a couple of moments to spur Rumple's jealousy and the scene when Rumple pretended to be Hook and was needling him ("Unforgiven"?). He was around to give Hook the mushroom in "Poor Unfortunate Soul" and stole Belle's heart back toward the end of the season. Otherwise, he generally got one scene per episode to stand in the background.

[Camera One]

1 minute ago, Shanna Marie said:

Otherwise, he generally got one scene per episode to stand in the background.

You forgot the awesome conversations he had with Robin Hood, even playing a major role in one of his flashbacks.

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

You forgot the awesome conversations he had with Robin Hood, even playing a major role in one of his flashbacks.

I must have blocked everything to do with Robin because I can only handle so much trauma this week, and season 4 Robin would just be one thing too much for me.

[Camera One]

They would have had Anastasia guest-star on the parent-show if Will had his storyline, I would expect?  I wonder if it would have been a multi-story arc resolution?  That would sort of take the focus off the main characters.

And whether this was before or after they came up with the Queens of Darkness.  Maybe she was corrupted by Maleficent or the other Queens?

Edited February 20, 2021 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

13 hours ago, Camera One said:

They would have had Anastasia guest-star on the parent-show if Will had his storyline, I would expect?  I wonder if it would have been a multi-story arc resolution?  That would sort of take the focus off the main characters.

The main characters might have helped him or been affected by whatever had happened. There was a potential setup for Regina to not be a self-pitying whiner for once and step up to help someone else get back with their true love, whether or not she could be with hers.

13 hours ago, Camera One said:

And whether this was before or after they came up with the Queens of Darkness.  Maybe she was corrupted by Maleficent or the other Queens?

I wonder if there was a rabbit hole here -- Will has a past with Maleficent, since he stole her mirror, and didn't she vow to get him back for that? So I can imagine the brainstorming session starting with bringing up Maleficent as part of Will's story and how that would fit in with other characters, and next thing you know they're throwing in other villains and being all "wouldn't it be cool if" to the point they've got the Queens of Darkness and have forgotten Will's part in all this. Did they already have the Author in mind for all this, or did that come out of the Queens of Darkness, to give them a reason to all be in Storybrooke?

[Camera One]

I'm finding it hard to visualize A&E building an entire narrative around Will, even if everyone was trying to help him.

54 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I wonder if there was a rabbit hole here -- Will has a past with Maleficent, since he stole her mirror, and didn't she vow to get him back for that?

Good point.  That does remind me Maleficent's weird sense of revenge.  Regina and Rumple wronged her the most, but she hardly cares anymore.

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Did they already have the Author in mind for all this, or did that come out of the Queens of Darkness, to give them a reason to all be in Storybrooke?

I think they did have the Author in mind, since he was mentioned right from Episode 1 of Season 4, and again in Episode 3 and Episode 4.  It was basically Regina's side-arc while the other characters were occupied with Frozen (except for Rumple who got his own Hat Box side-arc).  Yet they didn't have Regina interact with Will at all.  Interesting since Will knew Cora, so they did have a connection there.

Presumably, Will would also ask The Author to rewrite the story?  Maybe Isaac wrote Anastasia to turn evil again, but he couldn't have, since he was trapped in the Book?  

Ultimately, Isaac couldn't give anyone a happy ending, even if he wanted to?  Or could he?

The Author stuff made no sense, so it's very hard to come up with a storyline based on that.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Camera One

[Inquirer]

On 2/19/2021 at 2:20 PM, Shanna Marie said:

You know, the Red Queen thing is another bit of evidence we could use for Wonderland taking place after season 4. Season 4 happened after Wonderland, which ended with Will and Ana becoming the White King and Queen, wouldn't he have been crying over the pages of the Alice in Wonderland book with the White Queen, not the Red Queen? Him looking at the Red Queen makes more sense if it comes in between her dumping him to become the Red Queen and their reconciliation.

Unless, I guess, she turned evil again and reverted to being the Red Queen and that's why he's sad. But you'd think if he's getting melancholy, he'd be gazing at the picture that reminded him of happier times.

Actually, the only time it says they're the "White King and Queen" is in the epilogue (years after both Wonderland and the parent show); in the direct aftermath of Wonderland Ana would still be the Red Queen. And there isn't such thing as "reverting to being the Red Queen" because the Red Queen isn't an inherently evil title; after all, the guy she married to become that was called the Red King and, while not a good person, he wasn't evil.

From what I can gather from the dialogue they had him say, the plot they were building up in Season 4 is that Will ditched Ana this time around due to self-worth issues about marrying her and becoming a king, like for some reason he thinks he isn't good enough for her and that a lowly thief is all he'll ever be. Which is just as nonsensical as a plot where Ana regresses, honestly, since there is absolutely nothing in Will's development, his speech to Ana about True Love, or how he was acting at the end of Wonderland that suggests he'd have those kinds of issues.

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I don't think they'd said or done anything that negated the idea of Ana being a stepsister until season 6

Even their attempt at negating it in Season 6 was laughable: Ana not being one of the two stepsisters in that episode meant nothing given that in the "Heart of Stone" episode, Ana's mother says "at least I still have your sisters" (plural; and Cinderella obviously wouldn't be counted among that since Lady Tremaine was never thankful to have her), so it could just be that there were three stepsisters for Cinderella / Ashley instead of two. Ana's mother being played by a different actress than Lady Tremaine's in Season 6 also meant nothing, since Jafar in that very season was also being played by a different actor and he was clearly the same character.

Edited February 21, 2021 by Inquirer

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, Inquirer said:

Actually, the only time it says they're the "White King and Queen" is in the epilogue (years after both Wonderland and the parent show); in the direct aftermath of Wonderland Ana would still be the Red Queen. And there isn't such thing as "reverting to being the Red Queen" because the Red Queen isn't an inherently evil title; after all, the guy she married to become that was called the Red King and, while not a good person, he wasn't evil.

I was thinking about that too.  I wish there was more chess-related stuff in "Wonderland".  They never explored the politics of the world with the Red Queen/King vs. the White Queen/King vs. the Queen of Hearts.  Not that I expected anything like that to be explored on an A&E show.

Quote

From what I can gather from the dialogue they had him say, the plot they were building up in Season 4 is that Will ditched Ana this time around due to self-worth issues about marrying her and becoming a king, like for some reason he thinks he isn't good enough for her and that a lowly thief is all he'll ever be. Which is just as nonsensical as a plot where Ana regresses, honestly, since there is absolutely nothing in Will's development, his speech to Ana about True Love, or how he was acting at the end of Wonderland that suggests he'd have those kinds of issues.

That would have been irritating to watch.  So Will becomes King and then he feels unworthy because Ana rules so much better than him?  Because he doesn't have the Love Of The People™?   I am guessing his past comes back to haunt him (hmm, where have seen this before?), and Will becoming King results in attacks on the Palace, and that puts Ana into danger, so he runs away for her own safety.

Quote

Ana's mother says "at least I still have your sisters" (plural; and Cinderella obviously wouldn't be counted among that since Lady Tremaine was never thankful to have her), so it could just be that there were three stepsisters for Cinderella / Ashley instead of two. 

It's too bad.  We could have seen so many great episodes with Clorinda and Anastasia together.

[Shanna Marie]

On 2/20/2021 at 7:15 PM, Inquirer said:

Actually, the only time it says they're the "White King and Queen" is in the epilogue (years after both Wonderland and the parent show); in the direct aftermath of Wonderland Ana would still be the Red Queen. 

They may not have stated it explicitly at the wedding, but Will and Ana showed up at the wedding dressed all in white, which was very different from the way they'd been presented earlier, so I think it was implied, and I don't think the wedding was years later. Months, maybe. It had to have happened before Will ended up back in Storybrooke (if you're going by the timeline of Wonderland taking place right after season 1 timeline). Will wasn't really around Ana much when she was the Red Queen, so the happiest times he had with her would likely have come while she was in white, not red.

On 2/20/2021 at 7:15 PM, Inquirer said:

And there isn't such thing as "reverting to being the Red Queen" because the Red Queen isn't an inherently evil title; after all, the guy she married to become that was called the Red King and, while not a good person, he wasn't evil.

I was being snarky. The parent show has had some wacky things about how clothing works, like Emma suddenly being dressed entirely differently because she used her Dark One powers, or Hook changing into an entirely different all-black outfit because he remembered that he was a Dark One. Or there's Hook's vest changing color when the curse reversed, even though he wasn't part of the first curse and so was never transformed by it and was already wearing Enchanted Forest clothing. So I could kind of imagine these writers remembering that Ana was evil when she wore red and figuring that meant if she became evil again, she had to wear red.

On 2/20/2021 at 8:33 PM, Camera One said:

They never explored the politics of the world with the Red Queen/King vs. the White Queen/King vs. the Queen of Hearts. 

Did we even see a White Queen/King before Will and Ana? I wonder if one existed or if it was something they created to fill the vacuum created with there being no Red Queen and no Queen of Hearts -- like her continuing her role and him joining in, but making a clean slate as the White Queen and King to move past all the negative associations from when she was the Red Queen.