“Anything is possible in Wonderland”

Once Upon A Time came to an end this week and everyone lived happily ever after… well except for Jafar who totally got what was coming to him. Despite really liking the show, part of me is relieved it’s over mainly because of the satisfying finale that we were given. During a time where series finales like to do the unthinkable and use the shock factor till the very last drop, Once strayed from that model and it was perfect. They did everything by the book; the fairy tale book!! It was a perfect ending to a less than perfect time spent in the not so wonderful, Wonderland.

We began the episode where we left off last week. Jafar and Amarra were doing the spell to become the almighty and powerful and it worked. They were now the most powerful sorcers in Wonderland and nothing and no one could stop them. Obviously allowing Jafar to have this much power was a recipe for disaster. His first order of business– to make his father finally love him– something he’s wanted since he was 10 years old. But, once he got the loved he so dearly longed for, he had other ideas for daddy dearest. He wanted him to feel what it was like to get killed by somebody he loved and just like that he drowned his father–cold heartedly.

Jafar also planned to kill Amarra, but while he was distracted with his father, she escaped with her son Cyrus and Alice. Back at the rabbits house they plotted to take down the evil sorcerer. The only way would be to build an army which would be led by Alice. They would make their way down to the castle, while Cyrus and his mother would go back to the well of wonders. In order to break the curse, Amarra had to return the stolen water meaning she had to sacrifice herself. When she would die, the spell would be broken and Jafar would lose his powers. Now in theory that sounded like a brilliant plan, but Jafar had some other tricks up his sleeves. I mean, he could finally break the laws of magic– of course he was going to take advantage of it!

First he brought Ana back from the dead, just like he promised. But, it didn’t come without a consequence. Ana returned but was cursed into thinking she actually loved Jafar. The whole idea was disturbing, especially seeing these two exchange tongues…. I was probably more disgusted than Will. Than, Jafar went about bringing soldiers back from the dead to fight and defend the honor of Wonderland.  Resurrecting his army was the only way he’d make sure that they stayed loyal to him. And they did… they attacked any intruders that got in the way of finding Amarra. They brought Alice back to the castle, where Jafar threatened to make her forget ever meeting Cyrus unless she told him where Amarra and Cyrus were. Clearly, Alice has never been one that was easily threatened so when Jafar gave a speech about his power would erase her memory and make her suffer a fate worse than heartbreak, she responded with a beautiful speech about how her love was more powerful than any type of magic– even a sorceress one. His magic would never be able to hurt the love her and Cyrus share. Hey, after all, he tried it once already and it didn’t work.

Unfortunately, Ana babbled and told Jafar where Amarra and Cyrus were headed and pretty soon, Jafar caught up to the mother-daughter duo, killing Amarra in cold blood. Truthfully, her death was inevitable but still really sad to have to watch Cyrus see his mother die. The good part was that Jafar was pretty oblivious to how the well of wonders worked and why Amarra was there in the first place. I guess power doesn’t get you everything.

Meanwhile, back at the castle, the rabbit came to help Alice and the Knave, but Anastasia saw and got furious that someone was trying to harm her lovers plans. Will tried desperately to convince Ana that she wasn’t really in love with Jafar; that it was just a curse. The only way to do that properly in a fairy tale is obviously through a kiss. He risked sticking his arm out through the portal that kept him enclosed and pulled Ana towards him hereby breaking the curse. Alice was able to get the rabbits help and teleport over to the well of wonders, just in time as Jafar was about to harm Cyrus.

Cyrus tried to push the remainders of his mother’s borrowed water into the well but Jafar used his magic to steal it out of his hand. And that’s how the battle for Wonderland was won. The water, was never Jafar’s to steal. He basically committed the same crime that got Cyrus and his brothers banished to a bottle for thousands of years. As a result, the guardian placed cuffs on Jafar, stripped him of his magic and off into the bottle he went. It was karma– good karma!!! Silly Jafar, haven’t you heard good always trumps evil!

But it was Ana who really had the hardest day, er week, in Wonderland. First she was killed by Jafar in front of Will’s very eyes. Than she was brough back but put under a spell that made her believe she was in love with Jafar. Will than broke the curse, but once Jafar was banished to his bottle and stripped of his powers, Ana died once again. Thankfully, the guardian of the well realized it wasn’t Ana’s time to go and gave them some water from the well of wonder’s as a gift to bring back Ana, who was resurrected for a third time. Finally, a happy ending for the almost-doomed couple! These two have really had an adventure trying to be together.

With the storm gone, Cyrus and Alice decided to go back home… Alice’s home that is. In a satisfying and tasteful ending, Alice returned back to England to reconcile with her father. We flash forward and see Alice in a lovely white wedding dress. Her father is recalling his time spent in Wonderland and thanking his daughter for proving to him that forgiveness is possible. He walks Alice down the aisle and gives her away to her magical genie Cyrus and the two are made husband and wife by the rabbit. Wonderful touch really. It makes the whole story come full circle and provides evidence to her father and his new wife that everything Alice went through was real. Cyrus’s brothers and happy couple Will and Anastasia are all in attendance for the ceremony. When the ‘I do’s’ were said and done, everyone went back to Wonderland to start a new, peaceful and wonderful life… everyone except Alice and Cyrus. (I’m not surprised, would you want to go back to Wonderland after that experience??) One of the most successful moments during the finale wasn’t the marriage between Alice and Cyrus, nor the reconciliation of Will and Anastasia, but the goodbye between Will and Alice. A true measure of their friendship. We started this show off day one with these two friends, who have grown and evolved. It was sad to see them part ways. Sometimes, I sort of rooted for them to be together…. Nah!!

Yet the best part of it all was the fast forward a couple of years later. Alice was having tea time with her daughter while reading her a book about Wonderland and all of the adventure’s she had there. The daughter, completely mesmerized by the stories asked her mom if they were all true? How could they be possible?? “Anything is possible in Wonderland,” Alice replied, just as Cyrus turned the corner to join his lovely ladies for tea. The rabbit chucked from behind a tree knowingly fairly well, all was right in the world. And what was that story Alice was reading her daughter? Well, it was titled, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. A fitting title for stories that we all grew up with as a kid!!!! And they lived happily ever after…. The End.

Other Thoughts 

– How will this time lapse affect Will’s crossover to the originals Once Upon A Time? Will it Will in the future? Will it explain his time in Wonderland? What happened after defeating Jafar?

-Why did Will return to Storybrooke? What about Ana? How did their relationship go after the original happily ever after? I mean, we all kind of know that doesn’t exist.

– RIP Jabberwocky… well until someone finds you and tries to help you again.

– I wonder who got cursed with Jafar as their genie! Ha, sucker!

– Isn’t it kind of a creepy to think that maybe leaving Wonderland was going to heaven? Maybe this was all some kind of dream, like Lost? I highly doubt it but imagine a twist like that!!! Maybe this all happened in Alice’s mind… maybe it was never real at all!

I called it!!! With the cancellation of Once Upon A Time in Wonderland, I said that hopefully some of the characters from Wonderland will travel on over to Storybrooke. Well, turns out I was right. The charming Knave is on his way to the magical town!

Micheal Socha, who plays the Knave on the spinoff show, is joining the cast of Once as a series regular! Bloody brilliant!!! It only makes sense since the Knave’s real home is actually located in Storybrooke (Alice and Cyrus just traveled there to get the Knave’s heart.) Now with his love Ana dead, he’s got nothing better to do. Plus, why would he want to stay in wretched Wonderland? It’s anything but wonderful??? Truthfully, after Jafar and Amarra take over, it might not even exist!!!

What about Alice and Cyrus? No news on whether any other Wonderland characters will make the move yet… but anythings possible after all!

Photo Credit: ABC/ Once Upon A Time In Wonderland

Shot through the heart and your to blame, you give love a bad name!!!! (Sorry I had to.) That’s really what Ana should be saying to Will, you know if she were alive. All jokes aside though, this episode was one of the most emotionally stimulating mainly because of the Ana and Will relationship development.

After running into some problems trying to cast his spell on the genies, Jafar thinks Ana put a protection spell on her ex. He tries to use to jabberwocky to sense the truth. She does, but not from Ana. Alice and Cyrus snuck into the dungeon to help Ana and the jabberwocky picked up Alice’s fear of revealing that the Knave was actually heartless. While Cryus and Alice embarked on the journey to find the Knave’s heart before Jafar, Will and Ana rekindled their broken relationship as cell mates.

As the two ex-lovebirds try to has out the past, we’re taken down memory lane to the night where Anastasia met Cora for the first time, her future husbands ex-wife. It was the night before the wedding and Cora offerred to teach Ana how to do magic, but Anastasia with the “good” still in her, politely declined as she didn’t want to disobey the king, who wasn’t fond of royalty using magic. Cora watched as  the Knave snuck into Ana’s room that night and begged her to stop this foolishness. To come back to him and runaway with him. As Ana considered the offer, Cora used her evil ways to devise a plan to break up Ana and Will once and for all. I mean, the woman is pure evil. After all, she’s the evil queens mother. And she needed someone to do the dirty work for her. To take the throne of Wonderland and make it into everything she’s ever wanted it to be and she saw that spark and that power in Ana.

Cora came to the woods to meet Will on “Ana’s behalf” to let him know it was over between them. The Knave was so heart broken, he didn’t want to feel the pain anymore, so he asked Cora to remove his heart. Obviously, she did and the Knave walked away feeling no more pain. Well, I think he still felt empty inside, but it didn’t hurt, which is all the guy could really ask for right? This was all in fact part of Cora’s plan. Back at the castle, Ana was packing her things to go meet her beau, when Cora stopped her. She showed her a projection of the forest, convincing Ana that Will didn’t wait around for her. Apparently, that and some kind words about being all that she could be, the daughter Cora never had was enough to convince her. She pried on Ana’s weakness; feeling not good enough to motivate her and teach her dark and powerful magic. And that’s how the Red Queen was born.

Fast forward to the past and Ana realizes that she had the only magic she needed all along. She regrets coming to Wonderland and ruining what they had. It becomes apparent that their love story never finished, except that the Knave can’t feel love or forgive without his heart. This romantic moment led to the biggest shocker of the night and not because someone died, but because Will and Ana’s relationship is deeper and more valuable than Alice and Cyrus’s. They remind me of those teenagers that date for a couple of days and fall in love and can’t stay away from each other, but its just young love. It’s not forever. They just like the idea of each other and of being together, but they don’t really know what it means.  Will and Ana on the other hand have history. They’ve gone through the good and the bad and their need to live a happy life ended up screwing their relationship up in the future

After their talk, Jafar returns with the Knave’s heart in hand. He shoves  it through Will’s heart and all of his feelings rush back in. He embraced Ana and they share a passionate kiss, that for the moment, stops time.  It’s magical; beautiful; its love and its completely ruined by Jafar. In order to see if Will’s heart is actually working properly, he stabs Ana in the back forcing Will to watch her die. This moment is completely heart breaking. Watching her die felt like Jafar was breaking ever bone in my body. I shed a couple of tears, seeing her take her last breathe while Will sobbed, helpless. But, it is Wondrland and after I composed myself, I wondered, is there a possibility that Jafar used Ana as a bargaining chip? If  the Knave will make him a deal is there still a chance that Ana will survive? After all, without his staff, I don’t think he can complete the genie spell.

Which brings us to the other, less exciting and kind of impossible storyline. Aside from looking for the Knave’s heart in Storybrooke (and it was so fun to see these characters in our favorite little town), Alice and Cyrus were also at Jafar’s mercy this week. Honestly, their trip to get the heart seemed rather pointless to me as I knew the moment they’d get back, Jafar would just take the heart. If they did anything, they saved Jafar the trouble and than handed him right what he was looking for. But, in exhange they got a powerful weapon! Cyrus’s mother…. Well, not exactly. When Jafar finally got the heart, he figured these two were now useless to him. He tries to kill them, but the staff doesn’t budge and instead, turns on Jafar, siding with Cyrus who now has full control of the magical staff. Here’s the WTF, ‘are you serious’ moment. Cyrus takes out his ‘this finds my mother’ compass and sees that it keeps pointing to wherever the staff is. Obviously, the staff has to be his mother!!!! Cause that’s the only logical explanation right? No dude. Not at all. How did you even come across that thought? Oh, of course the compass isn’t broken, it keeps pointing at this stick so that must mean the stick is my mom. I’ll let it slide though because we’re in Wonderland, where anything can happen. We’re also dealing with magic and the end of a season so time is of the essence. I’m assuming next week will be all about finding a way to free mama and Will, whose probably going to be really depressed. RIP Ana darling. All hail the queen!