Another plot episode and another mountain of missed opportunities, failed set ups, and foreshadowing that goes nowhere. But outside of that it’s pretty entertaining. Are we seeing a pattern yet?
Summary: Rapunzel and Eugene go on a journey to retrieve the fourth and final piece of the scroll that will lead them to the Dark Kingdom. They receive help from Vigor the Visionary, who reveals himself to be Lord Demanitus himself, the author of the scroll depicting the purpose of the Sundrop and Moonstone. He leads them to the maze that he hid the last piece of the scroll in. Guiding them through the maze, they obtain the last piece, which united the four into one singular map. As they are about to leave, they are attacked by a stone monster.
Maybe That’s Why You Should Have Brought the Only Person Who Can Read It Along?!
Once again, having the characters acknowledge their stupidity in meta dialogue doesn’t alleviate the fact that the audience is going to think them stupid.
Regardless of your personal feelings towards Varian or what he has done in the past that does not change the fact that he is literally the only character in the show thus far who can translate the scroll. The mains knew that before leaving and they knew from the get go that they were going to need the scroll piece which is why they took it from him.
Not bringing him along, not getting a translation key from him before leaving, nor even showing us a scene of Raps trying to ask him to translate the scroll for them before leaving and then having him refuse to do so, is a plot hole.
Timeline Hint...Sort Of...
Rapunzel said last episode that it had been almost year since they left Corona, and it’s now close enough to her birthday again that Eugene could be tricked by it but not enough to actually be her birthday.
So...when are we again?
I’m going to guess 10 months after Secret of the Sun Drop? Maybe... It could also be 9 or 11 who knows... but I am still seeing fall like trees which is our only indication of a changing season in this show because the creators don’t understand climate apparently.
Maybe cause we’re now further north of Corona we see fall/winter leaves even into early spring?
Where Was This Rapunzel In Season 3?
Rapunzel actually giving a crap about what Eugene wants is as rare as seeing a fawn in the woods. It happens, but most of the time you forget it's even there.
While come season three, Rapunzel will just shoot the poor deer dead.
Madame Canardist is a Wasted Character
I’ve already discussed at length the biggest problems with Madame Carnardist in my Vigor the Visionary and Curses reviews. So I won’t rehash those talking points here again. However what I spoke about were larger problems with the media industry and bigotry as a whole and not the specific impact the character has on the story. Which is next to none.
The crew went through all of this trouble to make a deleted character from the film relevant to the series’s plot, and even there they failed. Madame Canardist is nothing more than a translator for Vigor when Demantius isn’t around. The story doesn’t utilize her properly despite her connections to one of the more plot important characters.
What is her relationship to Demantius and Zhan Tiri? How did Vigor come into her care? Why is she the only person who understands him when Demantius isn’t in control? If Vigor is centuries old by this point than how old is she? What is her stake in all this and why does she bother with Rapunzel at all if she has nothing to gain from it? Why doesn’t she go along on this important quest through the maze seeing as how she is Vigor’s caretaker?
She’s not completely useless, but like with Lady Caine, Xavier, and Hector before her, she has far more potential than the series is willing to explore with her.
So Much For Caring About What Eugene Wants
Welp that lasted all of five seconds.
Man, Rapunzel is a shit girlfriend.
The Pay Off Works, But It Then Serves No Purpose Afterwards
I don’t mind the idea of Demantius being the monkey. I mean it is one of the very few plot points in the show with proper foreshadowing and follow through. And yes, Demantius does accomplish one thing here, by helping Raps obtain the last scroll piece.
The problem is, nothing changes with this revelation.
No one’s perceptions or interactions with Demantius/Vigor are altered after this reveal. No one changes their plans, goals, or motivations afterwards. Things carry on more or less afterwards the same as if they had never met. The only thing of importance here is the scroll pecice and that’s only relevant in Cassandra's Revenge and is then forgotten about completely for the rest of the series.
What’s the point of having a plot twist if the status quo still remains?
If the information being revealed doesn’t alter the story then why keep it secret to begin with?
How Could You Research Them If You Never Found Them?
So did Demantius write the incantations or not?
He is the one who put them on the scroll, so it’s natural to conclude that he did create them, but he couldn’t have done that unless he had studied both the moonstone and sundrop to see the effects the two macguffins had to the spells.
Now according to this exposition dump, the sundrop and moonstone had been around for ages before Demantius and had become legends by his time. It is possible that someone else studied the two macguffins before him and came up with those incantations, but who?
The ancient people of the Dark Kingdom might have studied the moonstone since they were tasked with guarding it, but no one knew where the sundrop was until Gothel found it.
The audience needs to know this sort of information in order to understand the motivations driving the conflicts of the characters.
Imagine a Lord of the Rings trilogy that never bothered to say where the one ring of power came from or how it came into Gollum’s possession. You’d be left wondering why everyone was fighting over what amounts to an invisibility spell that once belonged to a small deformed hobbit who used to catch fish.
This Explanation Goes Nowhere
Why did the disciples betray Demantius? What did they gain from siding with Zhan Tiri? Why was Gothel with them? Did she betray everyone once she found the sundrop? What was Demantius and Zhan Tiri fighting over to begin with?
Don’t expect any of those questions to be answered. The series inexplicably makes a big deal over Gothel being connected to Zhan Tiri, but then never actually explains what that connection is, what they’re relationship dynamic was, nor how it connects back to Rapunzel’s and Cassandra’s current conflict.
That’s the real failing of the show’s lore and backstories. They don’t connect back to the current conflict. It’s just there.
In a well constructed show, Demantius would have been a parallel to Rapunzel who was also ‘betrayed’ by people she trusted. It would have been revealed that it was Demantius’ own actions that drove away his followers and caused them to side with Zhan Tiri. Thereby serving as a warning to Rapunzel herself and forcing her to realize in the end that in order to save everyone she’s have to apologize to those she hurt. We also would have gotten three betrayals instead of two since that’s more thematically impactful.
But this isn’t a well constructed show and the characters in it don’t ever evolve.
This Contradicts What We Find Out In Season 3
We find out in the last season that Zhan Tiri was originally from this world and that the only reason she was ‘bent on destruction’ was because of Demantius ticked her off somehow. She also had no magical powers of her own until after Demantius had banished her to that other realm where she was imprisoned.
Also Demantius didn’t use any powers. He just chucked her into a portal he had built without any warning or trail, with zero idea if it would kill her or not, all because she just stood there yelling at him. Like there wasn’t even any physical fighting, so it wasn’t a case of in defense either.
Demantius should have been revealed to be the real antagonist all along but that would require the showrunners to be actually clever for once and not misogynistic towards their female characters.
This Makes Zero Sense
First off, when was Zhan Tiri ever looking for Demantius? She’s been too busy trying to escape from her prison and it’s been centuries. She has no reason to suspect that he’s still alive nor does she care. Zhan Tiri’s plans are not dependant upon whether or not Demantius still exists.
Secondly, how is the host body still alive after centuries? Why go with monkey when I’m sure there are actual human beings out there who would agree to living forever. Does the transfer actually destroy the mind? Cause if not you could have had an actual coherent host that could have helped out when Demantius was dormant.
And don't give me any guff about ‘ethics’ because this is the man who played judge, jury, and executioner to his supposed friend/possible lover and probably killed one of his disciples as Sugarbee’s spirit was trapped in his device.
Not the Best of Plans My Dude
So Demantius is basically committing suicide here for no real reason.
Unless he was just already dying anyways when he made the transfer, then Demantius is drastically shortening his conscious life span. The monkey will live on, but he won’t.
So why? He had no way of knowing that the sundrop would become a person in the future, it’s completely coincidental that he met Rapunzel just at the right place and time to help her, and as stated above, Zhan Tiri was no longer a threat to him or the world since he imprisoned her and defeated his disciples.
Like what was his thought process here? “I just really, really want to be a monkey?”
Eugene Isn't Wrong
Look, I am a deeply religious person and I have faith in many things, but even I know that critical thought is necessary for basic survival and that scepticism is just plain common sense. Believing in something doesn’t mean shutting your brain off and never thinking for yourself.
Demantius has yet to give any reason for why Eugene and Rapunzel should trust him. Him saying ‘have faith’ repeatedly does nothing to instill confidence and in fact does the opposite. If you want to people to believe in you, especially in a dangerous situation that you dragged them into, then you need to earn that trust.
There’s a world of difference in assuming the best in people and being a fool, and Rapunzel is not the better person just because she blindly goes along with anything because she stubbornly wants to do whatever she wants and assumes she’s always right.
Eugene is Still Right
Is ‘Faith’ the new ‘Destiny’ now? Are we just assigning different meanings to random words in order to push the story’s narrative along?
This entire maze only involves solving puzzles, answering riddles, and a bit of running and climbing here and there. ‘Faith’ has absolutely nothing to do with it.
This theme doesn’t even work when you take into account the reveal that it’s Eugene who needs to have faith in Rapunzel. Because Rapunzel isn’t the only one doing these things and getting them through here.
In fact Demantius being here, and being the one who built the maze in the first place, kind of negates Rapunzel’s importance in this area. Secondly, Eugene is doing half the work anyways so it should be a message about having faith in each other. But they already have that so...yeah what’s the point of Demantius constantly bringing it up?
Why Are You Caring About Money While Stuck In a Death Trap?
You’re rich now, Eugene. You’re the future prince consort and live in a palace. As soon as you get back to Corona or a place that recognizes Corona as a kingdom you’ll have plenty of money to spare. But you can’t do that if you’re dead inside a maze.
Moreover, Rapunzel still has money on her. She just threw two coins in to the well; one for her and one for Demantius. You two live together! You’ve been traveling inside a caravan together for over a year now and neither of you work. Ergo, you should logically be sharing your finances at this point in time. Especially since that is what you’ll be doing anyways once you’re married for real, as you’ll both be heads of state.
That’s Now How Faith Works
Faith is evidence for things unseen, or to put it more accurately the evidence for things that are unprovable. God, death, the future, creation, souls, the meaning of life, ect, are all concepts that can’t be proven nor disproven. No one upon this earth will ever know for certain what happens after death, how the universe was made, or if there is any intelligent life out there beyond ourselves.
People don’t like the unknowable.
Believe systems of all kinds, whether they be religious or not, exist to bring us comfort when face with the dread of such existential questions. Even if that belief system is agnosticism itself.
Gravity, weight, and basic physics however are all provable concepts that have been around since Ancient Greece, if not longer. Man has always known that if you drop something it falls, even if they didn’t have the math to back it. It’s just a fact of life.
‘Faith’ isn’t going to stop Eugene from falling. It’s not going to make the bridge more sturdy. It’s not going to magically make him as light as a feather. It won’t turn the acid below him into water. “Faith’ can’t literally give you wings and make you fly; that’s just a metaphor.
What Demantius is promoting here isn’t faith. What he’s asking Eugene to do is to blindly follow his orders without question.
This is especially jarring when you consider that Demantius is supposed to be a famous scientist. He should know very well the importance of critical thought and that having faith doesn’t mean shutting your brain off.
The Scroll is Such a Let Down
We’ve spent a season and a half finding the pieces for this thing and it won't actually be relevant until the halfway through season three. Mostly because the one person who can translate it isn’t here.
On top of that, it’s no longer important outside of one episode. It’s an example of the payoff not living up to its hype.
So This Is a Lie
The scroll only contains four incantations on it, and one is on the back in invisible ink and not the fourth pecice itself. None of those incantations involve combining the moontsone and sundrop together. In fact, after using two of those incantations only once they’re never seen being used again for the rest of the series. Furthermore, once the moonstone and sundrop are combined they only allow the user to perform the healing and hurt incantations, which Rapunzel can do anyways without the moonstone.
Demantius wrote the dang scroll himself! He should very much know what is on it and what it does. This is yet another case of the writers not planning things ahead.
Being Good at Riddles Doesn’t Make You ‘Pure of Heart’
Being ‘pure of heart’ means that you are kind. One does not need ‘faith’ to be kind. Being kind is doing the right thing and helping others even if it doesn’t benefit you at all.
Not only does running through a maze not have anything to do with faith, it also has nothing to do with kindness.
The only thing it proves is that Rapunzel enjoys running through a maze, and will do so in addition to dragging others along with her regardless if those people want to do it or not.
That’s not being kind.
If anything Rapunzel has only proven thus far in the series that she is a very selfish person who shouldn’t be trusted with such grave responsibility.
But as already pointed out, Demantius doesn’t care about actual faith, kindness, or purity. He just wants blind obedience. He’s mistaken Rapunzel’s exuberant and stubborn nature for nativity; not realizing that her complancany is only because they both desire the same goal.
Had he asked Rapunzel to do something that she didn’t already want to do, she wouldn’t have been so ‘pure’ to his mind.
That Is a Very Valid Question
Eugene has a point. There’s no reason to go on this quest. In fact knowing about season three in hindsight, turning around now and not going to the Dark Kingdom would be the better option for everyone.
Cass couldn’t steal the moonstone. Zhan Tiri would never be freed. Corona will never be destroyed and the brotherhood never mind trapped. As for the black rocks they will just sit there impotently not doing anything.
Even freeing Quirin, not that Rapunzel cares, only requires the hurt incantation, which she already has.
The only problem is that Cassandra has ZT trapped in her mind but without the moonstone that has no consequences outside of Cass hearing a annoying voice in her head that she is perfectly capable of ignoring. And even that wouldn’t have happen if they had turned around after the Great Tree.
SHOW DON'T TELL
Nothing in the show back up what Demantius is saying here. We haven’t seen the rocks being active since season one. Even when Rapunzel was lollygagging around or going off the path.
When they do become active again in the next episode it’s to help her, and after that in season three it’s all Cassandra’s doing.
Also in season three Rapunzel is able to rebuild Old Corona around the rocks with little problem even though she didn’t reunite with the moonstone.
In a Competent Show This Would Be Foreshadowing. This Is Not a Competent Show.
I genuinely thought this was hinting at Moon Eugene, when I first saw this. Now couple that with the talk of ‘three betrayals’ earlier and I thought Eugene would be the final ‘betrayal’ and that a true love's kiss, after Rapunzel had apologized to him, is what would reunite the two powers and save the day.
I’m not going to fault the show for not living up to my expectations and predictions, but I will fault the series for failing to utilize Eugene properly and not working him into the main conflict. He’s the duel protagonist of the franchise. He should have just as much weight in the narrative the same as Rapunzel has.
Oh How I Hate Where This Arc Goes
What the show does wind up doing to Eugene however, is incredibly stupid and frustrating.
Remember how I said that ‘faith’ in this show is just blind obedience?
Yeaaaahhh....
That’s what Eugene takes from all of this. Not that he should support and believe in his partner, something that he already was doing by the way, but that he needs to be a doormat to her and her whims.
Like with Rapunzel yelling at Hook Hand in Brother’s Hook, this is the point where Eugene’s character starts to break. You just wouldn’t know it until after watching season three.
This Is Such a Lazy Cop-Out
Like the audience has these questions too. Neither us nor Rapunzel will ever have these questions answered. You just backed out of committing to any real answers because you didn’t have your story planned out like you should have.
Why Does Everyone Act Like There’s a Prophecy When There Isn’t Any Actual Prophecy?
Once again, Demantius had no way of knowing that the sundrop would become a person. No one did. There’s no prophecy and there’s zero explanation for his psychic abilities, which are inconsistent at best. In fact I don't think he does have such powers, otherwise he’d be more helpful inside the maze. I think those are reserved for Vigor only and we don’t know where he got them or if he even is a ‘real’ psychic.
Tangled the Series wants to act like it’s running on a predestination plot. That events must occur and will occur regardless of what actions you take to prevent it. Now ignoring how that causes problems with the characters’ agency for a moment; you can not have any predestination if there’s no actual destiny.
Chosen one plots often have prophecies for a reason. Predestination is there to evoke either tragedy that can’t be prevented or present consequences for if/when the main hero doesn’t follow along. Either way it’s there to establish conflict.
Everyone in TTS acts like there is a conflict when said conflict hasn’t actually been established!
This is writing 101. You need conflict. You need to establish shit. You can’t just pretend that a conflict exists where it doesn’t. ‘Fake till you make it’ doesn’t work in long term storytelling and television animation. It has to be pre-planned.
Also The Timeline Doesn’t Match
Demantius said that it was a millenia when the sundrop and moonstone fell.He also just said he’s been waiting for a millenia to ‘meet the sundrop’. Yet Demantius acted like the sundrop and the moonstone were already legends by the time he started to search for them. That means they had to be around longer than he has. It also brings us back to the first question of who wrote the incantations if he and Zhan Tiri never found them?
Believing In Someone Does Not Mean Shoving All the Work Onto Their Shoulders
You’re supposed to be in this together. Couples should work as a team. Both of your lives depend upon getting out of here so you should both be coming up with ideas and working together.
Not only does this miss the entire point of what ‘believing in your spouse’ actually means, it’s also incredibly unfair to both of these characters. It’s unfair to Rapunzel for put so much pressure and unrealistic expectations onto her and to have her be the person to carry both of them through when Eugene is perfectly capable of physically doing things. It’s also unfair to shove Eugene to the side and make him a useless character all of a sudden.
Rapunzel Does Nothing To Earn Such Blind Devotion
Rapunzel’s magical hair has nothing to do with Rapunzel as a person. It’s an entity separate from her being. Literally. The hair can move of its own accord as shown here and it’s possible to physically separate Rapunzel from her powers as seen in the finale.
Believing in Rapunzel should be about believing in who she is as a human being, about her individual character. It should not be because she has magic glowing hair.
Not only is this a betrayal of Rapunzel and Eugene’s relationship and why they came to love one another in the first place, but it’s also a betrayal of Rapunzel’s growth as a character. It’s not only Eugene who blindly kisses her ass after this point, it’s everyone, even though she gives them little reason too.
This the Last We’ll See of Vigor and Madame Canardist
Three episodes spent establishing these characters and now they’re just gone for no reason. They’re never seen of nor mentioned again beyond a single meta joke. Despite the main conflict revolving around Demantius and them both having the closest connection to that character.
This Is Bad Foreshadowing, But At Least It’s Actual Foreshadowing
Up till now any ‘foreshadowing’ we got for Cass’s villain arc has been confined to poorly thought out background images; the painting of the moon, the broken mirror in Gothel’s tower, and I won’t even dignify Chris’s bullshit about her handmaiden dress being blue.
Not to mention all of that was only in season one. Outside of her conversation with Eugene about their parents, way back in Cassandra vs. Eugene, we haven’t had any real foreshadowing until we hit the Great Tree.
Since the Great Tree we’ve only had a couple of bitch fights with Raps, which I personally don't consider real foreshadowing since no ill will was attached to those, and her glaring angrily at Rapunzel after escaping the shell house.
In light of that, this scene is at least genuine foreshadowing, it’s just poorly done foreshadowing.
While the other attempts at foreshadowing were too subtle, this one is too obvious. It gives the game away too early because there’s no other viable options within Rapunzel’s group. Adira comes closest and she’s not actually here and not really considered a friend by Rapunzel herself.
So what winds up happening is that Cass’s arc feels rushed despite being planned since the beginning.
Conclusion
I spent three days fighting tumblr to get this review posted! Appreciate it!
As for the episode itself, it’s fun to watch in isolation, but it’s such a let down knowing what’s to come from it all.
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