OUAT-Wonderland Review: Episode 13 "And They Lived..."

By Edward Kitsis & Adam Horowitz & Zack Estrin

**SPOILERS!**
If you have not watched this episode, please do so before continuing!

So our three trusty heroes infiltrated the villain's castle in an effort to foil his plot to become the most powerful sorcerer. Among their allies is the powerful sorceress who is not only the mother of our heroine's love interest, but she also taught the villain everything he knows and has spent the entire series as an inanimate object with magical powers--until the life of her son is threatened, then she comes free and decides to make her move on the villain... Too late, of course, to save her son's life, as the blackguard kills him--devastating the heroine and manipulating the heroes' most powerful ally into accomplishing his own ends... which he does... Ergo, without further ado...

Random Thoughts, Observations, and Best Scenes and Quotes:

-The episode starts off with a Character Resurface of Total Convenience: remember that one quick part, just before Amara appeared (out of freaking nowhere!), Alice was down in the dungeons and freed the Sultan and asked for his help? Well, apparently it took this long for the guy to get back up to the throne room... because he shows up after Jafar has done the spell and become über-powerful (because apparently that needed to happen), but before Jafar is about to stab Amara in the back so that only he will be the most powerful and there would be no other way for the good guys to win (because apparently that didn't need to happen... for the first time in OUAT history, folks!)

-"The way to show true power is through mercy!" Wow! This, from the man who originally said, "True power comes from fear"? Sounds like someone has put his time to good use in learning moral lessons instead of trying to amass ultimate power...

-Unfortunately, Jafar The Super-Powered Man-Child is in no mood to listen to any kind of rational thinking (Well, duh; why use your brain to figure out how to be an effective person when you can just use magic to get what you want?); he wants what he wants with the least amount of effort possible--so what does he use his newly-acquired mojo for? Two things: he unleashes magic mind-control to force the Sultan to say loving things to him as a father to his son-- the "only thing he's ever wanted"-- but when this does not satisfy him, he merely kills his father by magically drowning him. THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T JUST "HAVE" NICE PEOPLE, JAFAR!

-At least this little tiff gives Alice and Amara time to escape... and where do they go? Where everybody goes for healing, apparently....

-But then again, while the Rabbits are arguing and Percy is complaining about the state of his bloodstained carpet ("At least both sides match now! Who needs a scrapbook when we can use this carpet? 'Look, kids, this is where Alice almost died, and here's where Cyrus' spleen fell out...') Amara just uses her super-magic to heal him anyway... so what was the point of this? Why couldn't they just escape to the labyrinth and heal him there? Maybe I'm just picky because they're such annoying characters...

-Back in the Castle, Jafar is throwing his weight around again... This time, he's paranoid about anyone being more powerful (or even as powerful) as he is, so what does he do? Takes the Vorpal Blade and pins Jabberwocky up in his dungeons. Apparently somebody's still sore about the way she totally pegged him when they first met... And now Jafar is short an ally... what few allies he had... and he just killed off his most powerful one, which makes him an idiot... Wonderful...

-Back in the Rabbit House, the writers give the Rabbit something to do: go and round up all the citizens of Wonderland to come fight for Alice and hopefully take down the most powerful person in the history of the world. Who wouldn't want to sign up for that, right?

-Back in the palace, Jafar's up to his old tricks again; he releases Will (who is over that "My will is thine" tripe; he comes out looking very bored and demands, "What the bloody hell do you want?") inside a magic triangle barrier that he can't cross, just to show him that Jafar has "held up my end of the bargain." He brings out Anastasia... But she has no memory of Will, because Jafar has (WHAT ELSE?) used his magic to make her fall in love with him!!

-So now Jafar has effectively proven that the Three Rules of Magic no longer apply to him... and he just stands there snogging Ana in front of the tortured Will.... Which makes him an idiot AND an ass.... but he's not done...

-Now he's gotta get himself an army, and because all the LIVING soldiers have defected to join Alice, he goes to the graveyard and raises all the dead soldiers, which makes them beholden to him for giving them life (even though they never asked for it, and probably didn't want it after all...) and so they are compelled to do what he wants.... Jafar, the Jerk-Ass Idiot!

-Meanwhile, Alice decides that Cyrus and Amara should go to the Well of Wonders and lift the curse, while she goes and sacks Jafar's castle.... Didn't anybody ever tell her that it's never a good idea for the good guys to split up? 

-And now we have the Battle of the Pep Talks: Jafar vs. Alice. Jafar begins by rousing the newly-resurrected soldiers with the hype that "Wonderland is in danger"... but by the end of the speech, he tells them to "Kill all who resist! Bring Wonderland to it's knees!" Umm.... getting a little carried away with yourself, aren't you? Because if the Citizens of Wonderland are charged with both saving Wonderland and bringing it to its knees.... don't those two goals kind of cancel each other out?? Then what the heck are they fighting for??

-Meanwhile, Alice gives her speech: It's clear, direct, and consistent. She knows they're fighting for a cause greater than any one person, they're fighting for their homes, they're fighting for their families and loved ones! Alice Wins Best Speech!!

-Not long afterward, the two armies collide in an ambush. I have to say, good thing the "resurrected dead" aren't really zombies; they can bleed and die all over again. Amara can use her magic to get the squad attacking her and Cyrus to stab themselves, but Alice gets captured by the time Cyrus realizes that his true love doesn't have the magic power that his mother does. Minor detail, might have been good to consider BACK WHEN SHE PROPOSED SPLITTING UP IN THE FIRST PLACE!

-So now Jafar has Alice bound to a chair in his throne room, he's got Will in a magic triangle... What does he do? Time for another round of Kiss The Girl! Wow, kissing in a TV show is really boring... And besides, it just goes to show how shallow Jafar really is. Everybody knows TRUE Love is more than just a never-ending snog fest, you numpty! 

-Finally, Jafar turns on Alice. He's raised the dead, he's made someone fall in love.... now he's going to change Alice's past, to make it so that she will have never met Cyrus.

-"You've already loved and lost.... but what would you be if you had never loved at all?" Hey! No fair copping that quote!

-Hurrah for Alice. She doesn't break, not even once. She owns Jafar every bit as much as the Jabberwocky did. She points out that the love he fabricated with his magic over Anastasia is not true love, and his threat to take away her meeting Cyrus and how that would remove love from her life is totally false because "true love always lasts" and that's the sort of love Jafar will never feel, with all his magic and manipulation. Now who does that remind you of???

-He storms off in high dudgeon when he finally figures out that Amara and Cyrus are trying to stop him... which gives Alice and Will the opportunity to work on Anastasia!

-Will follows Alice's speech about love up with one of his own, and it's bloody brilliant. Anastasia thinks that what she feels toward Jafar is "love" because that's what his magic has told her; Will responds with, "Love is messy. It means arguing and making up and crying and laughing and struggling and sometimes it doesn't seem worth it but it is, and at the end... you forgive each other." WHEEE!!!!!

-Hurrah for True Love's Kiss! There was really no other way to follow up a speech like that... and it was every bit as fantastic as it ought to be! Some people would rather ship Alice and Will... but I really think that Anastasia is the only one for Will (and she certainly reforms a lot better than another Evil Queen who persists in teetering on the brink of good and evil... blergh!)

-Anastasia manages to free Alice, but Will is still trapped, so Ana stays with him while Alice goes to help or warn Cyrus about Jafar.

-Finally, we arrive at the climax over the Well of Wonders. Cyrus is saying goodbye to his mother, and Nyx arrives to accept the offering... but just then Jafar pops up and tries to interfere... He kills Amara, and the water starts seeping out of her onto the stones of the Well, and just before he kills Cyrus too, a Rabbit Hole explodes under Jafar at just the right moment (the first time in the whole show that I'm actually cheering for the Rabbit) and knocks him off his feet. Alice comes out and tells Cyrus to give the water back, which he tries to do...

but just before it drops all the way, Jafar takes it back and scatters it! All hope is lost, and it looks like Jafar has won once and for all... but no writer is that stupid, for Alice points out, "That water wasn't yours to steal." OWNED, SUCKER!!

 

-Here we pause for a musical interlude that sounds a lot like Jafar's theme from the Disney movie, plus we have the same "Jafar-getting-sucked-into-the-genie-bottle moment" (Which was a lot more dramatic in the animated version, methinks...)

-With the banishment of Jafar, all his magic is undone... including the resurrection of Ana. Poor Will! He's got no hope left... The guy could really use a Plot Device of Incredible Convenience about now...

-Enter Cyrus and Alice, with a bottle of water from the Well of Wonders that was "given, not stolen" so it's totally okay! Alice drums up some tosh about "She said it was time for the Red Queen to move on, but Anastasia must continue..." but Anastasia waking up and Will getting his true love back is so perfect and adorable that we can quite ignore how abhorrently pitiful the writing has gotten by now.

D'AWWWW!!!

-Fast-forward to Alice preparing for her wedding day. All of a sudden, Edwin the Coward is accepting of Cyrus and grateful for Alice's forgiveness of the abominable way he treated her when he didn't believe... You realize this doesn't change the fact that Cyrus is nothing but the son of a poor sorceress from a different world and no more a gentleman than when he was a genie, and so accepting him means that you necessarily believe the magical land exists, because Cyrus exists...

You know what? It's the finale; never mind all that...

-The wedding of Cyrus and Alice, which of course means a "curtain call" for all the characters... not that I mind... the sight of Millie the "Sensible Daughter" sitting on the Hero Tweedle's lap is just adorable... but... WHAT THE HECK?? First they were ready to lock Alice away for mentioning a Talking Rabbit... now the writers expect us to believe that they are suddenly okay with SAME TALKING RABBIT OFFICIATING THE WEDDING?? Like he has some kind of extra-terrestrial ordination or something?? Oh help...

-In the end, Will and Anastasia return to Wonderland and become the White King and Queen, and Alice writes her adventures in a book, which she shares with her daughter while the whole family has a tea party in the woods... and Percy the White Stalker Rabbit looks on...

FINAL SCORE: This ending was fitting only because it was so campy and cliche that it "fit" the rest of the show. There were no loose endings, no killer tag scenes that leave you wondering, everything's "Happy-ever-after"... which is new...

As far as the categories go, the Heroes of course shine while the Villain can go boil his head in a vat of molten lava for all I care. It's really too much to expect the villain to go amassing an unbeatable army at the very end of a show... no, he's gotta get rid of the strongest people on his "team" and surround himself with little people... Geez. This episode gets full marks for banter because of all the great quips and speeches that happened (I'm not calling Jafar's power-rant a speech... it was more like a frenzied rave than an actual speech in any sense of the word...). The Graphics were passable, and the level of Conflict and Resolution suitable to an ending. All this adds together for a grand score of 9/10, the best this show can achieve! 

Heroes: 5/5

Villains: 4/5

Graphics/ VFX: 4/5

Banter: 5/5

Conflict/Resolution: 5/5

TOTAL SCORE: 9/10

Finally it's over!! (Or is it?)