Once...in Wonderland 1.06: Who's Alice?

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.

None of what we learned was that surprising. Naturally anyone would be slow to believe that their daughter had been down a rabbit hole and lived in a world full of magical mushrooms, genies and smoking caterpillars. But it was Alice’s father’s poor judgement, and inability to deal with what had happened to her, and what she had been though that stung the most.

The stereotypical step mother whispering in his ear had a lot to do with it, of course. Though I could do without ever seeing Sarah again, Alice’s half sister Millie could be an interesting addition to the story. Wouldn’t it be fun to see Alice’s journey start again as her sister finds Wonderland? And sure, it would be even more fun to see Sarah’s face when Millie arrives at the door, babbling about a talking rabbit.

Now that Alice’s past life is about to collide with her new one in Wonderland it’ll be fun to see how it changes things between her and her father. Will she forgive him for never believing in her?

Though Ana tracking Cyrus was a bit of a waste, it’s all about biding our time until he and Alice are reunited. Now I’m starting to get curious about what that reunion will be like. Will Alice have changed? It still seems as though she’s not forgetting about Cyrus, even though she fell under a spell that could easily have broken her resolve.

Though it lacked excitement, and some of it was a little too silly, this episode had some of the strongest character work to date on this show.

7/10

He Said, She Said

Alice: “What if a person can’t forget their love no matter how much easier it would be?”

Also posted at Doux Reviews.