Once Upon a Time in Wonderland- the Road so Far

Once upon a time in a faraway land there lived some druggy caterpillars and double agent rabbits.

With the mid-season finale hours away, I wanted to do a recap of the first half of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland’s first season and make some predictions for the future.

The road so far…

Alice escapes from an institution, where they were about to lobotomize her brain or something, with help from the Knave of Hearts. The Knave, real name Will, had apparently been living in Storybrook with the many other magical beings when the White Rabbit came looking for him. Rabbit convinced the Knave to help Alice escape her terrible fate. Then Alice convinces Knave to go to back to Wonderland with her to save her true love, Cyrus the genie.

 

Now, I have never seen Alice in Wonderland and so I may not fully understand all of the references. I also do not recognize all of the characters. Namely, the Knave. Here’s what Wikipedia says about him:

The Knave of Hearts is mentioned first in chapter 8, and chapters 11 and 12 deal with his trial for a tart burglary in which the King of Hearts presides as judge. Alice eventually defends the Knave after the evidence becomes increasingly absurd and she is called as a witness.

In the film (by Tim Burton), the relationship between the Knave and the Queen serves more as the Knave being the Red Queen's personal assassin. However, much like the other servants of the Queen, the Knave secretly hates her though he plays on her insecurities to secure his position.

In Syfy's original miniseries Alice, the Knave is reimagined as Jack Heart (playing on the fact that "knaves" are now called "jacks"), the son of Mary Elizabeth Heart, a reimagining of both the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen. Jack is the heir to the throne of Wonderland, but escaped to the "real" world to avoid marrying the Duchess. He eventually fell in love with his martial arts instructor, Alice, and was kidnapped by Agent White of the White Rabbits, prompting Alice to enter Wonderland to find him.

Interestingly enough, the Knave of Hearts was also in season one of Once Upon a Time but was not played by the same actor. Wikipedia also says the Knave’s heart was removed by Cora (the Queen of Hearts), though this doesn’t jive with OUATIW’s story. I’m having trouble remembering back to season one of OUAT so I don’t know what all happened on there. Too many things to remember.

It seems that the Knave is sometimes the Queen of Heart’s sidekick, sometimes a criminal, and once the Queen’s son and Alice’s love interest. Now he’s the Red Queen’s (which is different than the Queen of Hearts apparently) ex love interest. It’s all very confusing.

Speaking of confusing, why has Alice not aged? Does she live back in time or something? Or in some other realm where time moves super slow? Because presumably the Knave was in Storybrook for like 30 years where people did not, in fact, age. But when the Rabbit took him to find Alice, it looked like he’d stepped into 1900’s London. Even if Alice had met the Knave as a child, she is in no way in her 30’s and also probably would have asked why the Knave had not aged at all. Alice also seems to have no idea about the telly since she looks clueless when Will mentions watching it. So the time thing is very confusing as well and I’m not sure what goes on.

Additionally, I presume the Knave lived in the Enchanted Forest or whatever? At least he must have at one point because he ended up in Storybrook. But before that he was running around with Robin Hood and his merry men somewhere. But wherever he and Anastasia lived, there was magic obviously. How many worlds are out there anyway? I should just stop trying to think about that.

Back to the plot… so Will and Alice are wandering around Wonderland looking for Cyrus the genie. We are to assume this is the genie from Aladdin though he is much less blue and not Robin Williams. He and Alice met on one of her many adventures and fell in love. The Red Queen “killed” him and Alice went home all sad. But now we know he is really alive and has been caged up in Jafar’s bottomless pit room. Cyrus doesn’t have his own Wikipedia page so I don’t know if his name is significant or not.

So Alice finds a necklace Cyrus had that shows her his love or… I don’t really know, but she finds it and this proves he is alive! In the first few episodes, she and Will get into some trouble whilst searching and we find out that Jafar, Agrabah’s number one villain, is responsible for most of it. Basically Jafar wants the genie all for himself, much like in the movie Aladdin. But, he cannot use the genie to make his wishes until Cyrus’ last master, Alice, makes her three wishes. She has made zero wishes because she just wants Cyrus to be free. Unlike Aladdin, she cannot simply wish for his genie freedom. So instead she’s been carrying the wishes around in her shoe. How has she not lost these by now? And do they not take your shoes in mental hospitals? Anyway, wishes look like little red rubies.

Jafar has developed magical powers over the years thanks to this witch lady he met as a kid and then screwed around with as an adult. Yeah, it’s weird. But he eventually killed her and took all of her powers, too. I’m not entirely sure what he plans to do with his three wishes (take over the world perhaps) but I’m certain it will not be anything good. He did have quite the troubled childhood. First his mother dies, leaving behind only the information that the Sultan is Jafar’s real father. Then when Jafar goes to the palace to meet his pops, the Sultan instead makes him a servant boy, lets his other son slap Jafar around, and then tries to drown Jafar in a bird bath. No wonder he has issues.

In Jafar’s corner, though somewhat unwillingly, is the Red Queen. She is a super skinny lady with huge, extremely glossy lips and an annoying voice. Also her real name is Anastasia and she used to be the Knave’s woman. Until they ran away together to Wonderland and she ditched him to become the queen. Kings do not seem to be super picky about their queens in OUAT worlds. I swear she was in the castle a total of five minutes before the King proposed. I sincerely hope the Queen and Will do not get back together because I seriously just do not like watching her on screen.

In a nutshell, that is what has happened so far. Alice and Knave have encountered some creatures that may be significant if you know anything about AIW and that’s mostly it. But now Cyrus has escaped and supposedly he and Alice will finally find each other in tonight’s episode.

Honestly, the Knave is the most entertaining part of the show, and when he gets turned into stone, things go downhill very quickly. I’m not entertained by Alice and Cyrus’ love story. They’re starting to remind me of Snow and Charming (and Cinderella and her dude, and Belle and Gold, and Ariel and Eric, and… well you get the point…) and they haven’t even found each other yet. It can only get worse. Since there aren’t enough storylines to detract from Alice’s epic love quest, I’m growing quickly tired of it.

I’m also not so crazy about the whimsical aspect. Since I’m not stoned when I watch this show, all of the bad special effects and CGI are distracting and that is all. I get this is Wonderland and it’s supposed to look wacky, but could they not have at least tried to make it look semi-real?

I fear for the future of the show and anticipate its cancellation. Once Upon a Time works because there are many characters and stories to follow and we’re not focused on five characters doing the same things all the time. I’m not sure what their plan is for the second half of the season or for future seasons but I almost think it would be better for them all to move to Storybrook and let Snow solve their problems because she loves doing that.

But if this show does manage to make it, here’s what I hope happens:

·         Jafar kills the Queen. Sure, she’s had some redeemable moments and all (i.e. freeing Will from his stone casing) but I cannot stand her in general. Maybe it’s just the actress they picked to play her but I find myself cringing when I see her onscreen. A new Red Queen could be appointed. Maybe even Alice! *gasp*

·         Alice makes her final wish. Perhaps this will happen on tonight’s mid-season finale but if not, it should happen before too many episodes pass by. I feel like there are only so many adventures they can go on and obstacles to overcome before Jafar finally gets what he wants, and we all know he will.

·         We see the consequence of Alice’s first wish. In order to save Will’s life when Jafar was threatening to kill him, Alice decided to make one of her wishes: If the Knave dies, I die. Interesting choice of words. Right now they are both safe but what happens once she makes her final wish and is of no use to Jafar? Then, not only does Alice have to look out for herself, but also has to make sure nothing happens to Will. How long does a wish last? Forever? If that’s the case, she and the Knave will have to keep in touch or she’ll be living the rest of her life in constant fear of his untimely death. Because let’s face it, the Knave is not the most upstanding citizen there ever was and a lot of people want him dead. I’m not sure I would have linked myself to someone like that, but I have a feeling this was not an accident and we will see the repercussions later on. Or, I hope we do.

·         Someone good turns evil. Whether it be Alice, Will or Cyrus, I would like to see one of our good guy characters go to the dark side. It doesn’t have to be forever, and shouldn’t be, but for more than one or two episodes at least. I feel like that would throw a good monkey wrench in there. Plus, with the Red Queen dead, someone has to take over the kingdom.

·         The ever-classic love triangle. No show is a good show without a love triangle. I don’t care what anyone says, one of the best parts about a show is the romantic relationships between characters. If this show continues with Alice and Cyrus being in love the whole time, I’m out. I wouldn’t watch OUAT either if it was only about Snow and Charming. I need drama and heartbreak and new loves and all that messy stuff. All I’m saying is, the Knave is perfectly available. Well, sort of.

·         The Knave gets his heart back. We found out recently that the Knave does not have a heart. Anastasia hurt him so badly that he took his own heart out and put it… somewhere. I think it would be interesting to see how he changes when he gets it put back in. Presumably having no heart does not change your personality much, as seen on OUAT, so I just wonder what else he might feel when he puts it back in. I only hope he doesn’t start pining for Ana again.

·         The special effects get better. I mean, come on, guys.

So now it is time to wait and watch. Also, I feel like I should brush up on my Alice in Wonderland knowledge. Maybe start with the Disney movie and work my way up.

~Mallory