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Greetings my fellows Wonders! (Or whatever Once Upon a Time in Wonderland fans are calling themselves. OUAT fans are Oncers so just a suggestion.) Now that the spinoff has finally premiered it’s time to see if it lived up the hype. Let’s take a trip to Wonderland…
We open on an abandoned tea party. A hole suddenly bursts from the ground and a little girl in blue and white dress climbs out of it. She looks around happily and with a sigh of delight says, “Home.”
She tears off running over the hills and through the woods before arriving at a manor home yelling for her father. He opens the door, looking stunned to say the least. See Alice was gone a very long time and her dear Papa thought she was dead. While she’s more interested in telling him all about where she’s been and what’s she done, he’s more concerned that little Alice has gone to the crazy place. In fact, he starts having a talk with a doctor about her mental health, but Alice, who overhears, is determined to prove she’s not a liar.
Flash forward to present day (ish). We pan in to a familiar clock tower. Hello Storybrooke. A young man (Michael Socha) strides through town and is nearly run over by a Yellow Volkswagen Bug. Then he bumps into Grumpy and Ella who are leaving Granny’s Diner. The man pickpockets the door keys and lets himself in to have a cup of coffee while he waits. The diner vibrates and a hole explodes in the floor (this seems to be a theme on this show). The White Rabbit (voiced by John Lithgow) pops out and helpfully identifies the man as The Knave of Hearts. The Knave isn’t sure what to make of the Rabbit’s appearance or his insistence that “We’re not late for something. We’re late for someone.” That being Alice, of course. The Knave puts on his unconvinced face for the first, but certainly not last time in this episode.
We jump to a gritty asylum where grown up Alice (Sophie Lowe) is being interrogated by a panel of doctors including the one from when she was a young girl. He’s summarizing Alice’s “miraculous, strange and terrifying adventures” in Wonderland: food and drink that changes your height, smoking caterpillars, talking rabbits and such. Turns out little Alice made multiple journeys to Wonderland, each one making her father more and more concerned. He finally broke down and asked Bald Doctor for help.
