Showing posts with label
Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.
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Showing posts with label
Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.
Show all posts
Wonderland’s finale was predictable and cheesy, but it served the series well in tying up loose ends and bringing the stories together in a satisfying way.
Similar to last week, this episode was all about payoff as the few storylines introduced when this journey began are coming together. It may have lacked spark, but there’s a neatness to everything that took place in ‘To Catch a Thief’.
When a series takes on more than it can handle, it often falls apart due to the sheer implausibility of maintaining several stories and dynamics. Wonderland did itself a massive favour by reducing the likelihood of that happening by narrowing down its cast of characters, and the ways in which those characters could develop. That decision really paid off in ‘Heart of the Matter’, which succeeded on a number of different levels, but it never would have been possible if everything was too spread out.
Wonderland has been going hard and fast since it’s returned from the winter hiatus, but what it needs to do now, more than anything else, is to better define the characters that are driving it.
‘Home’ gave Wonderland an opportunity to make the story that’s being told a lot more exciting. The power plays, dynamics and mythology were almost upended, so the big question with ‘Nothing to Fear’ was whether or not it dropped the ball in the face of all that.
As Wonderland nears its end, and leaves us indefinitely, it’s great that we’ll be left in a very good place. ‘Home’ was a game changer that successfully tied up some of the show’s bigger plots, and completely upended a few others.
I’m glad that there’s very little that Wonderland will have up in the air when it inevitably ends in a few months. This episode definitely made that much clear, with a remarkable sense of closure between two characters in particular.
In line with Wonderland finding its feet recently, this episode gave its characters some much needed fleshing out. We learned about Alice’s struggle with her return to her normal life in Victorian England, her father’s inability to accept what his daughter had been through, and since Wonderland (like Once Upon a Time) is all about believing, his lack of belief affected both of their lives.
This episode made me smile. It was the first time I felt that Wonderland was the show it was meant to be from the start. It just sucks that we won’t get to see much more of it.
Something about some of Wonderland’s characters is still falling flat, despite this episode’s effort to give them more weight. Although in some instances that effort is paying off, albeit in small doses.
Wonderland’s identity is shaping itself more each week and ‘Forget Me...Not’ was the strongest episode so far, both in terms of quirkiness and development. Wonderland is showing the same strength as its parent series originally did by marrying its character exploration with our own exploration of Wonderland itself, much in the same way as the flashbacks in the Enchanted Forest explained present day events in Storybrooke.
If there’s one thing that Wonderland has going for it over Once Upon a Time, it’s humour. Once is already so ridiculous that a show that stretches that boundary is going to need some serious grounding, and the script this week felt a lot less scattered and more focused on the main themes of the show so far.
Two years ago we started a journey that was centralised around the one main goal of breaking the Evil Queen’s curse. Now that that story has evolved and developed into something more complex, we start a new one, a fruition of that growing and evolving world. Wonderland’s opening episode isn’t as streamlined as its parent series’ phenomenal debut, but it boasts the same appeal and kookiness that drew me in back then.
