Once Upon A Time in Wonderland is back with episode 7, “Bad Blood”, which made all blood ties between characters become a burden.

In flashbacks leading to maybe a few weeks before what was seen in 104, we meet Jafar’s parents. There is nothing particularly interesting about the mother, but the father is a totally different story: Jafar’s father is the Sultan, making him a bastard to the throne. Jafar goes to the palace hoping to be welcomed with open arms, but his father says he is lucky enough to become a servant. We also saw a scene in which Jafar called the Sultan father (or almost did) in the middle of a business reunion. This scene didn’t seem very realistic, because it can’t be easy calling someone we have never seen before “Father”, and it’s not like they were very close to each other. But I’ll let this one slide. But the Sultan is definitely not as OK with this as I am, and he did not let it slide, in fact he drowned Jafar for it (of course Jafar didn’t actually die, or we wouldn’t be here).

Flashback stories like this is one of the reasons I love Once Upon A Time. The writers develop both heroes and villains the same way. If heroes had a moment in their lives that made them a hero, then villains should have one too. And that makes us understand what drives them to do whatever it is they are trying to do. In this case, Jafar is trying to break the laws of magic, so that he can make his father love him. Of course this is totally a very desperate attempt for love. “What good is love and respect if it has to be stolen?”. This is something Jafar’s father says, and it couldn’t make more sense, but it looks to Jafar that he ran out of options, and force some love into his father is the only chance he has to be loved.

But Jafar’s father wasn’t the only one who popped up in this episode, Alice’s father, Edwin, did too. Jafar kidnapped him and pretended he was him so that he could tell Alice all those things she wanted to hear, but it didn’t take long for Alice to find out the truth. The only disappointment in all this is how Alice and Will made it obvious they knew what was happening. Alice actually gave a good excuse to leave with Will, but talking to each other and occasionally look at a man who has something to hide is definitely not the way to go.

But Jafar was still not done, and so he went to get Alice’s real father and we were able to see a beautiful scene between this father and daughter. Edwin said he blamed Alice for his wife’s death, that he shouldn’t have needed proof to believe his own daughter and finishes by telling Alice that Cyrus escaped. Finally Edwin served a purpose other than always being the one doubting, and embraced his daughter, her belief and her love. I said before that it would have been very hard for anyone to believe what Alice used to say, but of course that Edwin could have been a little bit more understanding and flexible than sending his daughter almost immediately to an asylum.

Tired of listening to all this sentimentalism, Jafar threw Edwin from the cliff in which he was over, and this forced Alice to make her second wish: she wished her father back home. Two down, one to go. But don’t forget that wishes come with a price and, although her father did in fact return home safely, he thinks all the impossible things he saw were nothing but a dream.

It was just a pity that we didn’t get to see much of Will and Anastasia, but this was still a great episode. Of course that for some characters to shine, others have to be sidelined, since there is no time in one episode for everything. But that is exactly why there are still some episodes to go through, and I am giving this one an 8.1/10.

With 6 more episodes before the story comes to an end, things are definitely starting to get more and more intense, and episode 108, “Home”, was the winter finale, thus I promise that there will totally be a few twists and turns. So don’t forget to stick around.