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Previously on Wonderland, Alice was fooled, if only a little bit, by the Red Queen who proved she still has a heart and it still beats, however faintly, for our beloved Knave of Hearts. Also Cyrus escaped and Jafar coerced the Rabbit into digging to London. But most importantly, Will was revived from his stony sleep. Hooray!
Tonight opens on an Englishman painting in the countryside. He’s suddenly showered with dirt when Jafar and the White Rabbit burst from a hole in the ground. Quite the entrance, I must say. The Englishman, to his credit, is unfazed but curious as to whom the sorcerer and the animated rabbit are. He gives them directions to the Asylum and in return, Jafar takes his suit.
In the Asylum we get the return of Bald Doctor! He’s taking some laudanum when a dapper Jafar, posing as a doctor himself, pops in to have a chat about a certain blond hair, blue-eyed patient. Bald Doctor tries to play dumb but Jafar knows all about him seeing the Rabbit. A quick glimpse of the bunny makes the doc ready to spill all he knows about Alice.
Queenie pays a visit to Cyrus’ empty cage. She’s curious about the genie having fled and Jafar being missing as well. Luckily, or not, the Old Man is still present in his cage to explain that Jafar is gone and Cyrus is on the run. Queenie will never catch him though because the genie has the most powerful magic of all: True Love. Only 5 minutes in and already this show is covered in sap.
As for Mr. Genie himself, he’s scaling down a mountain while guards pursue him. He does some True Love meditation to figure out where Alice is (a light from the necklace she’s wearing shows him the right direction). At the same time, she’s still staring at Jafar’s tower, which is where we left her at the end of last episode. This girl does like to stand around a lot. She finally gets moving and is intercepted by some vagabonds who warn her about heading into the Black Forest. They’re just helpful chaps who are worried about her! Also they want her to pay the toll for passing through. When they ask for her True Love’s necklace as payment Alice remembers her badass roots and takes them down with her trusty sword.
Flashback to one year ago in Victorian London. A far less badass Alice emerges from the rabbit hole, crying for Cyrus. A little girl comes along to help by bringing her parents, including Alice’s father. Daddy and daughter embrace and she tearfully tells him that the man she was going to marry was killed. He’s hushes her up so as not to scare off his new wife and child, Sarah and Millie, whom he conveniently never mentioned Alice to. Whoops.
Back in Wonderland, Alice comes to the Black Forest, finding it truly lives up to its name. Meanwhile Will, still recovering from having been a statue, comes across a man wheeling a cart and we get this awesome exchange:
Will: Have you ever been stoned? Feels like death when you come out of it.
Man: Maybe you’ve been messing with the wrong stuff.
Will: No I mean stoned as in turned to stone.
Man: Sure, sure.
Next come the Toll Bridge Vagabonds (also the name of my Wonderland cover band, by the way) who give Will a clue about where to find Alice. He heads off to meet her in the Black Forest, which is a good idea since her torch is about to flicker out. Before it does, a blinding light fills the forest, leading Alice out and into the Grove. There she meets the Carpenter whose relaxing voice combined with the perfumed flowers makes Alice forget her mission entirely.
Flashback. Daddy wants to know how long Alice plans to stay this time so he can get her a proper room and clothes. Forever, she says. He’s cool with it as long as she never mentions Wonderland, Cyrus or anything out of the ordinary. “So I should just sweep them under the rug like you did with mother and with me?” Oooohh burn! Careful Alice, that kind of backtalk will get you tossed in an asylum…
To be fair Dad did grieve for his first wife and his daughter but he’s moved on. If Alice wants to stay with him, he insists she do the same.
In Wonderland, the Red Queen is tracking Cyrus. She doesn’t want Jafar to recapture the genie because if she has the bottle and Cyrus, she’ll hold all the cards. Her Tweedle helper expresses some doubts about this plan. In response, Emma Rigby, perhaps speaking straight at doubting viewers, smacks him and says, “Everyone keeps underestimating me. I was not always Queen. I know how to get my hands dirty.”
Back from commercial, Will has found his way into the Grove where a giddy Alice greets him with a hug that is sure to launch a thousand fanfictions. “What the bloody hell is going on here?” Will wonders wryly. Alice is too engrossed in her flower arrangements, even brushing off Will’s questions about Cyrus because the flowers make her happy. Ah now we see the purpose of the flashbacks because…
Alice is adjusting to life in London, high collared dress, forced happiness and all, “now that [she’s] back from the dirt” as her stepmother puts it. This also means talking about potential suitors, like Mrs. Darcy’s son who is wealthy and “not awful to look at.” At this point I will say, Wonderland don’t you even dare try touching Ms. Austen’s masterpiece. You stay away!
But back to Alice. The prospect of meeting any young men makes her so anxious she breaks her glass.
That’s because her man is the dashing and surprisingly smart Cyrus. In Wonderland present, he’s running from the guards and walking in his own footsteps to fool them. This is while his flighty love is still mooning over flowers and bark with Will. The Knave tries to intimidate the Carpenter into helping but discovers the guy is slowly turning into a part of the forest. That’s when Will makes the horrifying discovery that the entire grove is made of people who became plants and trees. He runs to grab Alice and high tail it out of there but Alice no longer knows who she is. Commercial.
Past Alice has nightmares about Cyrus and when her stepsister wakes her, they have a girls gab session. It’s all going very well until the parents break it up and cruelly tells Alice to be happy and normal or to get out. Sheesh!
In the Grove, Alice attacks Will for trying to get her to leave the place where she’s finally happy again. Even his heartfelt, if a bit manipulative, confession about finally learning to use his heart properly doesn’t sway her. She starts to become a tree, refusing to budge from her “home.”
Queenie has tracked Cyrus to waters edge too but she uses magic to see his backtracking. She follows his new route. Commercial.
In London, Alice storms out during breakfast when Dad and stepmom reveal Mrs. Darcy’s son, whom they’ve invited to join them. Her father stops her by reminding her she as nowhere to go. She should go back in apologize to the boy. “Just because you married someone you don’t love doesn’t mean I have to,” she spits back. I like this old no-holds-barred Alice! Can we get her to come back? Father’s real problem is that he thinks Wonderland is still Alice’s fantasy and he’s prepared to let her go to the madhouse rather than let her continue to believe in it.
Treeish Alice is using her branches to keep away Will and his logic. He finally gets through to her by getting the Necklace of Love into her hands again. Her memories and gushy romantic dialogue firmly back in place, Alice cuts away the branches.
Cyrus skids to a halt at the top of a cliff and the Red Queen sidles up behind him. Hmmm, this looks familiar…The camera pans out to show they’re still floating on Jafar’s magic island. Commercial.
London. Alice is packed and waiting for the carriage to the asylum. Bald Doctor arrives to take her away and she glances back just in time to see her father, stepmother and stepsister looking like the picture perfect family. Ouch.
Recovering from her time in the Grove, Alice tells Will she wasn’t the one who saved him from his stone situation. It must’ve been the Red Queen. Will isn’t over the moon about his ex-lover coming to his aid because even if she loves him, he can’t love her back. See, Alice may have helped recover his ripped out heart some time ago, but the Knave never put the darn thing back in. He didn’t want to feel all the pain Anastasia had caused him. But no time for that! The Necklace of Love glows again! That’s because Cyrus just jumped from the floating island, much to Queenie’s shock.
Also surprised is Alice’s father, who gets a visit from Jafar. Imagine the look on his face when the sorcerer pulls a certain rabbit out of his bag…
Rabbit Trails
The Red Queen does have some velvety, sneering lines this episode. “No need to be rude. We don’t even know one another,” she says to the imprisoned Old Man.
The line about True Love being the most powerful magic of all doesn’t have nearly the same ring to when being said by someone who isn’t Rumplestiltskin.
Disney continues with a tradition of wicked stepmothers in this episode. Alice’s stepmonster quickly corrects her husband when he introduces Alice as Millie’s sister. “Your half-sister,” she says.
The Red Queen admonishes her Tweedle for not understanding her plan. “You Tweedles never do. Each one dumber than the next.”
The guards who are hunting Cyrus are out to “make him pay” because he killed one of them. This seems somewhat reasonable because Cyrus did push that guy down a pit.
Please please please tell me we’re going to eventually see some of Cora from Once when we get the flashback story of Will having his heart ripped out. Or is this something the Red Queen picked up at some point as well?
Where do we think Will is keeping his heart? Hopefully not buried anywhere the White Rabbit frequents.
Oh and I finally learned that Wonderland fans are called Wonderers! Welcome all!
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