REVIEW: Once Upon A Time in Wonderland, Episode 103
Once Upon A Time in Wonderland’s episode 103, “Forget Me Not”, continued two important and major messages from Once Upon A Time. In the flashbacks we meet (or merely see for OUAT fans) Robin Hood and we find out that Will Scarlet was once a member of the Merry Men. In these scenes we could see that Robin was already the thief that steals from the rich to give to the poor. Will convinces him to go to the Forbidden Fortress (Maleficent’s castle) to steal a chest of gold. It is a shame we didn’t get to see Kristin Bauer (The actress who plays Maleficent on the main show), but it is nice we got to hear her voice on the scene where the Merry Man were celebrating the theft. This scene makes Robin aware that Will stole something other than gold, he stole a magic mirror. And here is where he warns Will: “All magic comes with a price”, and unfortunately, Will will have to pay it later in the season.
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Aside from this, we see, also in flashbacks, that “Evil isn’t born, it’s made” (a message that will also be looming over for the next 2 episodes). We meet Anastasia and after the scene that Will talks to her but we don’t see her face, I felt like it wasn’t hard to guess who she was. I don’t think it was exactly obvious, but it wasn’t that difficult to figure it out. Anastasia, and Will’s lost love, is the Red Queen. We see that then she was nice and sweet. In the end of the episode they use the mirror Will stole and open a portal, ready to go to Wonderland. Before I continue, I would like to address this matter. Many people say that the writers made it, at first, super hard to travel between worlds and it became more and easy throughout the seasons. That may be true sometimes, but this isn’t the case, since this mirror (like some other portals we see throughout the show) was made to take people to one specific land (Wonderland in this case). Will and Anastasia could not have used that looking glass to go anywhere else.
Back to the present now, I found in this episode a lot easter eggs to other stories/movies. When the Red Queen is looking for monsters that are fearful enough to force Alice to make a wish, she mentions two that might have been a little overlooked and/or ignored, but not by me. First she mentions the Mome Rath which is taken from the original animated film of Alice in Wonderland, but only the name. She says that it is a very dangerous creature with teeth like needles that cut through almost anything, but in the movie they are harmless flower-like creatures (as you can see in the image below). The Queen also mentions the Sarlacc. This one was taken from Star Wars and in these films, this monster is very alike what Anastasia said: a creature able to digest someone through the course of a thousand years. But the creature that Jafar and the Red Queen pick is the Bandersnatch. This one was featured in Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) and it is also alike the one we meet here, expect for the fact that in the films it looks more like a dog, while in this show it is more like a boar.
Still with other movies mythology, we meet Grendel which can be a reference to the movie Beowulf, although in this show this beast is made more human. Here, Grendel is an ogre-like man who is stuck in the past and can’t move on from his wife’s death. It is explained that he stole the “Forget Me Knot”, a knot that allows people to see into the past, from the Red Queen and she was the one who gave him that horrible appearance. Grendel helps Alice and Will when the Bandersnatch comes after them and together they manage to kill it, since Cyrus had tricked Jafar and the Queen to thinking it would force Alice to make a wish, when he knew she wouldn’t because he had taught her a lot about these creatures.
With the knot in their hands, Alice and Will finally find out that the Rabbit was the one who knew where Cyrus’ bottle was, and that he is working for the Red Queen.
Aside from Wonderland, we also are shown Underland, a place “ruled” by the Caterpillar and filled with thieves and hunters, that is to say, Will’s enemies. Jafar visits this place short after he kills Grendel, to find out more about Alice’s Knave.
This episode was cool and, as I said before, this show is getting better and better. I really don’t know why so many Oncers didn’t watch it, since it is very truthful to the main show. I will give it a 7.8/10.
Stay tuned for my next review of episode 104 “The Serpent”.
REVIEW: Once Upon A Time in Wonderland, Episode 102
After an episode of questions (a pilot episode tends to do that) it is nice having an episode of answers. In “Trust Me” we find out what Jafar and the Red Queen are up to: they want to gather 3 genies in order to change the laws of magic. It also doesn’t take long to know what these laws are because Cyrus explains them to Alice in a flashback. Cyrus says he can’t kill people (this is only a genie rule and not a law of magic), can’t bring back the dead, can’t change the past (this one is not so strict anymore as you might remember from season 3B of “Once Upon A Time”) and can’t make people fall in love. These are the 3 rules these villains want to be free of, each for their own personal reasons, I’m sure, and those reasons won’t probably take long to be revealed to us.
What is interesting in a villain team up is that they are all constantly trying to be the leader and that is why they usually fail. In the beginning of the episode it is clear that Jafar is the most powerful one and that the Red Queen is just a pawn in his game. He is simply using her to find Cyrus’ genie bottle, making her promises along the way he doesn’t intend to keep. After all, as the Red Queen says, “promises were made to be broken”. But Jafar underestimated the Queen of Wonderland and it doesn’t take long for her to make a stand. She sends Jafar on a wild goose chase, while she and the Rabbit (who she has an upper hand on) go to where the bottle is actually buried, making herself now much more than a pawn in the chess game that is starting to take place.
But Jafar is not the only one making planes, because Alice also makes some of her own. She wants to make 3 harmless wishes (since magic, wishes included, always comes with a price) and then Cyrus will be back to his bottle, which she intends to have by then. But most planes are made to be tossed to the trash and this one is no different. First Alice and Will find a very big lake and, needing help to get through it (since Will can’t swim), they call a fairy, Silvermist. But she isn’t very willing to help (given her past with Will, which she is not as “move on” from as she said) and eventually throws them both into the lake. As luck would have it, they landed close to a little island (convenient, right?) where they rested while trying to come up with something that would allow them to continue their journey. But turned out that they hadn’t used all the luck they had for that day, and the island they were in wasn’t really an island and more of a gigantic turtle. Alice not being one of subtlety, demands the turtle to take them to their destination.
But turned out Alice simply wanted to see who they were up against, because the place they go to wasn’t where the bottle was buried. After finding Jafar digging, Alice and Will go to the place the bottle was actually buried but only find a hole in the ground. The bottle had been taken already. And that is when a message from Cyrus arrives. Cyrus asks Alice to leave Wonderland while she still can’t, but he didn’t have to bother because everyone knew (maybe even Cyrus) that she would never do that. Instead Alice sends him another message: “I’m coming for you”.
This episode also introduced two mysterious character: Anastasia (who is “a tale of heartbreak” for Will) and another prisoner that is trapped in the same dungeon as Cyrus. Keep them in mind because they will be important as the story develops.
I feel like in this episode, in contrary to the previous one, the flashbacks were a little pointless and didn’t add much to the story (not only this episode’s story, but the entire season’s). The only thing that could be called “relevant” we learned in the flashbacks were what the laws of magic are, but that could be easily explained in the present. This being said, I’m glad there weren’t a lot of flashback scenes. They are important and very explanatory in some episodes, but not in this one.
But it was still a good episode and I will give a 7.5/10.
Also keep in mind that Alice isn’t the only one “coming for you”. I will too, so don’t forget to check my upcoming review of episode 103, “Forget Me Not”.
REVIEW: Once Upon A Time in Wonderland, Episode 101
I don’t really like to compare shows, since one of them always gets downgraded, but I think it is inevitable to compare a spin-off and its main show. When Once Upon A Time in Wonderland started, Once Upon A Time was in its 3rd season (which is, in my opinion, one of its finest) and so I feel like OUATiW was a bit ignored by the fans. Maybe it would have been smarter to make it into a summer show, but what is done is done. In the end I was a bit sad it was cancelled but ultimately not too surprised.
Like the pilot of the main show, “Down The Rabbit Hole” begins with the words “Once Upon A Time”, which in itself often represents the beginning of a great story. There is also something in the beginning of the episode that reminded me of an amazing quote from OUAT. When Alice gets home, she tells her father what happened to her and how she visited a wonderful land (see what I did there?) and, even though he is at first a bit reluctant whether to believe her or not, he doesn’t in the end, which brought me back to 117 of OUAT when Jefferson said to Emma, who was also a non-believer: “Everyone wants a magical solution for their problem, and everyone refuses to believe in magic”. I think this quote kind of sums up the world we live in today, because even though some of us want to believe in something else other than what we have, there are always the ones that will constantly make sure we go back to believing only in what our eyes can see and that is exactly what cuts off imagination and creativity.
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It was also incredible to see that Alice is not a damsel in distress and that she can take care of herself very well when we see that, on her own, she took care of all the employees of the asylum when Will came to her rescue (which turned out to be the other way around).
After the asylum we finally leave our world (not completely, but at least until the end of this episode) and enter Wonderland. I think they built this new world very well, because we are told in Lewis Carroll’s tale that nothing makes sense there. It is true that the special effects and the scenarios behind the characters are awful and evidently fake in some scenes, but it is still nice to see the Wonderland nonsense: dragonflies that are actually mini-dragons, a marshmallow lake, food that makes you smaller and drinks that make you bigger… and that is only some of the few things we see in this premiere, because more nonsense things will continue to arrive to the screen throughout the season.
While we see Alice talking to Dr. Lydgate (who also makes an appearance in S6 of the main show), we see some flashbacks of this young girl going through some adventures trying to prove to her father she is not crazy. While in this, she accidentally meets a guy who is destined to become her true love: Cyrus, the genie. Even though their love seems impossible (since genies are always changing masters and lands) they start having a lot of adventures and have an almost immediate Happy Beginning.
But of course there cannot be heroes without villains and this spin-off introduces two: The Red Queen (who had to be a regular villain, of course, since she is the trouble bringer on the original story) and Jafar (who shouldn’t belong here, since he is in the wrong story, but somehow fits completely). It is always nice seeing a villain team-up. Heroes join forces all the time, so why shouldn’t villains do the same? In the last scene we see Alice and Cyrus together, these villains go to distance to make Alice think her genie is dead. The Red Queen throes him into the Boiling Sea (right after he proposed), while Jafar catches him with a flying carpet (Alice doesn’t see this last part, of course).
The end of the episode is also something I thought was nice. Alice goes to the Mad Hatter’s looking for Cyrus (who was allegedly seen there) but finds nothing but lots and lots of hats (at least inside the house). About to lose hope and control over her tears, she goes outside and finds a necklace that belongs to Cyrus, making the assumption that if it survived, maybe Cyrus did too, right? And that brings us to the best quote of this episode: “When you really love someone, you don’t need proof. You can feel it”. This quote Alice makes is actually a repetition of what Cyrus says in flashbacks when they first meet, but I thought it had more impact in this last scene then on the previous one, maybe because this times Alice is referring to someone who will always believe in her, no matter how absurd she may sound.
Making now the last comparison between shows, it was cool to see that this pilot didn’t end in a major cliffhanger or plot twist, like most pilot episodes do. Instead (like Once Upon A Time’s pilot) it ends with a bit of hope and belief in something that cannot be seen, only felt. In the end of this episode, Alice knows for sure that Cyrus is alive, not only based on a rumor she heard, but also in the love they share (call her mad, but she is right).
Overall, it was a good episode, but better ones are coming our way. That being said, I will give this episode a 7 out of 10.
Hope you guys stick around for my upcoming review of episode 102 of this show entitled “Trust Me”.
