Mirror, Mirror

 

It’s time for the evil clone trope.

Summary:  When their caravan is waylaid by a fallen tree in the middle of a storm, the group stop by a seashell house owned by a Frenchman named Matthews. As they explore the house, they come across a mirror that houses evil doppelgängers who quickly replace everyone except Rapunzel and Pascal.

Yup, It Sure Looks Like You Got a Hurt Hand There, Cass

Consequences need to matter. They need to have a lasting impact on the story. Otherwise there’s nothing there to cause conflict and therefore no reason to include it in the story.

Oh Look, the Mains are Fighting Again for the 50th Time. Not Like We’ve Never Seen That Before.

Do the writers not know how to write any other conflict besides petty annoyance? Why are these people even friends? You can’t act like the time cooped up on the road is driving them apart if they’ve done nothing but fight before then as well. This has no impact other than to make the audience not care. 

Just Cause You Point Out the Flaw Does Not Mean It’s Still Not a Flaw

Just because you make a meta joke acknowledging that you’re main characters are going to make a mistake against their better judgment, does not change the fact that they’re making a mistake. 

This isn’t as egregious as back in the The Eye of Pincosta ,because at this point they have no reason to be suspicious of the house and it is raining and the caravan is leaking, but it still paints your main characters in a bad light. 

Also remember when Cassandra was the smartest one in the group and not the dumbest bitch on the planet? 

Yeah me too. 

What the hell happened S3? 

So This Episode Features the Same Problem As Not In the Mood, Beyond the Corona Walls, and King Pascal 

This episode exists just to set up later plot points that won’t be revlevent until season three. Those points just being an introduction to Matthews and the shell house. Yet the rest of the episode is unneeded filler. It’s not using its given screen time efficiently. 

I Know This Is To Set Up Suspicion of Matthews for Later, But It’s a Poor Argument

Yes! No one is ever just nice! No one actual helps people during storms! People don't ever just live out in the country in big fancy houses or have taverns on the side of roads! 

It’s all the more insulting that Cassandra turns out to be right here for little reason, especially when she was so way off base with Adria just two episodes back. 

This This Only Episode Where Shorty Matters

Shorty actually has a reason for being here. He’s too weird for the mirror people to replicate and so tips off their evil scheme to Raps. He also is shown defeating the mirror Rapunzel by using his equally weird hobbies.  

Now he did wind up resolving Freedbird and freeing everyone from the Vodniks’ coral prison, but that’s cause he’s a walking deus ex machina and the writers wrote themselves into corners there; he’s not actually interdigital to those episodes’ stories. Here however you’d have to restructure the whole episode to make it work without him. 

On the one hand that makes him less replaceable than Hook Foot, yet on the other hand, there’s not enough scenes of him doing things to justify his existence in the season. He’s also just a plot device and not an actual character who drives the action usually. Basically like Fidella and Owl, but with the ability to talk and is more intrusive. 

Evil Cones Is Also A Worn Out Trope 

This has been a science fiction staple since the 50s and it’s just a modern play upon the folkloric myth of changelings and spirit dopplegangers. Unlike the previous “fake god’ trope though, this one has more room for flexibility and the writers here go for an 80s Thing homage which is kind of clever. But that still doesn’t change the fact that it’s overplayed. 

So At What Point Did Cass Get Captured By the Mirror? 

Was this before or after dinner? Because before she was with Raps the whole time and I doubt a clone Cass would say anything about not trusting the shell house. Meanwhile, after dinner, Raps and ‘Eugene’ were guarding the mirror, so when? 

Timeline Alert! 

Is this three weeks since the Great Tree, or have they been stuck in the caravan for three weeks? I’m going with Great Tree since they were ticking each other off in both Brothers Hook and Rapunzel Day One. 

Therefore it’s been seven months since Secret of the Sun Drop and possibly now going on eight months. 

This Explanation Doesn’t Make Sense

They don’t ever answer Rapunzel’s question. The “share the same mind” explanation is a load of bunk that’s contradicted several points in the episode and it doesn’t inform the audience of anything.  We never find out what they are, what they’re after exactly, why they were trapped in the mirror to begin with, nor how the mirror actually works. 

It’s the same issue as with Mother and Father in Freebird. It’s a fantasy trope played straight just because this is meant to be a fairy tale world, but it clashes with what little world building we’ve gotten thus far. 

Still Not an Explanation 

It’s just Rapunzel with red eyes and extra long fingernails. That doesn’t tell me anything. It’s clearly not these creatures true form and it doesn’t explain how she only manifested when the real Rapunzel showed up. Cause beforehand the others were trapped in the mirror alone and apparently didn’t see the reflection clone appear until Raps pushed her back in. 

What are these things? Where do they come from? How do they work? What do they want? 

Not answering these questions is just lazy writing. 

If They ‘Share the Same Mind’ Then Why Do They Fall For Rapunzel’s Bluff?

Like shouldn’t they be able to sense that she’s the real Rapunzel because she’s not mentally communicating with them? 

So Um...How Do We Know Cass Even Did Get Out?

Like it’s clearly intended by the writers for season three to be the real Cassandra and that the mirror Cass is defeated here, but like this scene is edited weird and mirror Cass would explain how OOC Cass acts after this dumb shell house arc. 

So Why Can’t Y’all Just Stay in the Caravan? 

Like at this point I think the storm would be safer. The caravan is literally right there, all you gotta do is run for it and hunker down in it. Yeah it leaks a little, so what? You surely have weathered out storms in it before if y’all been traveling in it for over seven months now. 

So What Did We Actually Learn Here?

How to get along? Cause that’s something the gang should already know how to do given the time they’ve spent together, and it’s not like they won’t be right back at each other's throats again in the next episode. 

Conclusion 

I like the episode better than King Pascal and it’s less pointless than the Hook Foot episodes, but it’s still emblematic of many of the problems that season two has.