Once Upon A Time in Wonderland Review: Episode 2 "Trust Me"

By Rina Mimoun

**SPOILERS!** 

If you haven't seen the episode please do so before continuing!

Now that the characters have all been introduced, it's time for the onslaught of flashbacks to explain why these characters, why this time, and all manner of confusing plot threads to unearth!

The first thing to establish, of course, is Agrabah as a setting.... because it will feature more prominently as more of Jafar's back-story is divulged. One thing of note: it's rather less barren on this show than Disney led us to imagine. Which sort of makes sense, since why would anyone build a city among sand dunes... (what is this, Arrakis?) but whatever. It did bother me slightly, that the designers apparently had no sense when they decided to plop the castle like a crash-landed space shuttle right in the middle of the city... but anyway, moving on!

Jafar's visit to a man in the village seems random at first--until Jafar starts pointing out how successful and unreasonably wealthy this man is. Just when we begin to think, "Geez, does this guy want the whole city to maintain a certain level of poverty?" we realize that Jafar knows the reason behind the man's success: "It almost seems like you have everything a man could... wish for; is that it?"

Busted. The man ducks into the back room and summons Cyrus the genie, and makes an important third wish just as Jafar bursts into the room after him: he sends Cyrus and his bottle "As far away from Agrabah as the earth from the sun!"


So basically, that's how a genie from Agrabah ends up in Wonderland, waiting for Alice to find him and release him from his bottle.

Cut to Alice and the Knave, who are hot on the trail of Cyrus--sort of. Alice is practicing her sword skills, evidently expecting a Robin-Hood-style "swoop in and kick some butt!" rescue.
I love the banter between these two. The Knave is as cynical as Alice is romantic, and the two personalities balance each other well as they trade quips with perfect ease. A small snippet:

Alice: I've got a plan!
Knave: (confused) And a new outfit--where did that one come from?
Alice: (casually) The clothes-horse stopped by while you were sleeping.
Knave: (snark!) Of course it did. Is there any chance of a coffee-horse coming by?"


In the end, Alice decides that the easiest way to rescue Cyrus is to retrieve the bottle and use the wishes, which will automatically transport Cyrus back into the bottle. They decide to leave the Rabbit behind—not knowing that he is a double agent and ready to leak their plan to the Red Queen.

Her Majesty, meanwhile, is dutifully engaged in the stereotypical business of being queen--which evidently consists of allowing the gentry to fill her throne room with complaints and bickering. Of course, the reason for showing this scene is not to demonstrate what a capable regent she is. No, this is merely a filler scene, which the Queen dismisses with the complaint, "Your problems bore me."

 
Now... who does that remind me of? 
.....

.....

.........


Jafar interrupts her "duties" and wants her to do the work of finding the genie's bottle (since we know he's already got Cyrus). Annnnd.... this is where the villains get campy: Jafar is allowed to be cruel and disintegrate a room full of innocent people just so the Queen doesn't have an excuse not to comply, and the Queen herself is grasping at whatever straws she can to maintain her equality with (if not dominance over) Jafar. "I have needs; I need to be sure that you can meet them."

The White Rabbit arrives, and he knows where the bottle is, because it's the location Alice told the Knave when they thought he was sleeping. Jafar plans on meeting them.

The Knave, meanwhile, is trying to keep up with Alice, and at the same time rein in her romantic abandon, which dictates that "Nothing will stop us from being together" and any obstacles can just be hacked out of the way with her sword.

Any obstacle, that is, except a huge lake that would take two days at least to walk around--and the Knave reveals what just might be his biggest fear: he can't swim. ("What do you mean, you can't swim? How have you lived your whole life and never learned to swim?" "Oh, I was busy doing other things... like BEING AFRAID OF WATER!") 

Since walking would take too long, Alice insists that they will "Take the fairy."

No, that's not a mistype. I mean a literal fairy who is in charge of carrying passengers on clouds of fairy dust across the lake.

One problem: the Knave and the Fairy have a history. And it apparently isn't pretty. The knave seems oddly nonplussed, but the fairy is "...professional and she doesn't let feelings interfere with my work--especially old feelings which I've completely gotten over!"... Or so she says.

While they're making their way across the lake, we are treated to a flashback of Alice's first meeting with Cyrus, where he gives her the wishes and cautions her about being frivolous, because--as anyone who's ever watched Once Upon A Time knows, "All magic comes with a cost." Since they spent all that time getting to know each other anyway, Alice would far rather go on adventures with the genie than merely get wishes from him.

Cyrus tells her about Jafar (he seems to do that a lot with his masters... the last guy knew about the dark, evil man, too....) and also mentions that he's seen a lot of things and picked up a lot of skills from centuries of traveling from master to master. he promises to teach her swordplay and other things he knows. "There's a whole world out there, Alice; I can show it to you."

Oh dear me... we simply had to have that Disney moment, did we?

Back over the lake, the fairy takes them halfway across before exacting her revenge on the Knave and dumping him into the lake. Alice dives after him, and the two of them end up on a rocky island in the middle of the lake with no way off. More Cynic Knave ensues, and still Alice insists on maintaining her idealism in the face of having no hope--until the "island" moves and knocks them into the water again. This time, Alice figures out that it isn't an island they're on--it's a giant turtle shell. Whaddaya know, there's a way to get across the lake after all!

When they finally disembark, the fairy returns to get in one last jab, and she mentions Anastasia--ostensibly another of the Knave's former loves (why else would he be called the Knave of Hearts if he didn't have a string of them?). He seems ready enough to talk about the others--but Anastasia has him clammed up tight. Though he behaves quite stonily toward the fairy, asserting that he never really thought she was anything special, and he hasn't felt much of anything since Anastasia left--one thing I have to say for the Knave, is that he is quite possibly the bravest of the bunch, going along with Alice to find her true love after being so burned by his own, and he shows a considerable amount of "heart" (for a guy who reportedly has none) in sticking up for Alice in spite of her idealistic flights of romantic fantasy.

Another Alice/Cyrus flashback, in which they are sparring with swords, and he tries to teach her about "knowing who you're up against" and "finding your enemy's weakness and using it to your advantage." Of course when she ends up trapped by him between their two swords, the whole lesson turns into one big segue into the first kiss--Cyrus' "weakness", according to Alice.

Clever girl.

Cyrus and Alice talk about making her wishes, but Alice would rather keep him around. Cyrus is falling in love and he doesn't want to be separated from her. She promises not to, and they promise to never move on from each other. He proposes they bury the bottle.

Jafar has arrived at the location--but the bottle isn't there. Turns out this was all part of a plan by Clever Alice to draw her enemy out and discover who they're up against. What with his knowledge of magic, it's unclear whether this would help them at all, but at any rate, her trap succeeds, and she brings the Knave to the true location of the bottle--only to discover that someone has dug it up.

But who could have known?

Surprise! Apparently the White Rabbit observed the whole thing and thought little of it--until the Red Queen had need of the bottle and ordered him to go retrieve it for her. So now she has her "trump" to match Jafar's--and the playing field is a bit more to her tastes.


All in all, it's been a rather disappointing day for the Knave and Alice, and she even begins to show signs of succumbing to the Knave's perpetual negativity. He calls her on it, and cautions her, but not with much feeling. A message written on magic paper folded into a crane arrives--it's a note from Cyrus, and it gives Alice the hope she needs to keep going. Cyrus is begging her to leave Wonderland, but Alice sends her reply:

All in all, a reasonable start to the epic adventure. We see that the heroes are making progress, the villains are unaware, and there are still plenty of ambiguous plot threads! Who is Anastasia, and what happened between her and the Knave? How are they going to get Cyrus' bottle back? Will Alice at last end up having to use her wishes?

FINAL SCORE: The Heroes are getting stronger--only because the Knave is presenting as the strongest character of them all, and it's finally beginning to rub off on Alice. The Villains sort of slipped in this episode--everything was kept superficial and "floaty", with their dialogue being stereotypical: the Queen is greedy and Jafar is cruel. Visually, this episode didn't use quite so much CGI as the last one did. As far as conflict building and resolution--I felt it wasn't quite coherent in this episode as I should have liked. I'd call this a fairly-decent sequel!

Heroes—5/5
Villains—4/5
Banter—5/5
Graphics/VFX—4/5
Conflict/Resolution—3/5
OVERALL: 8/10