We’ve finally made to season three and the entire reason why I made this review series. This season features some of the worst writing I have ever witnessed in a television program. And this season kicks off with the third worst episode of the whole series. Rapunzel’s Return is the iceberg that sinks this show and manages to assassinate everyone’s character.
Everyone’s.
Summary: Inside the House of Yesterday's Tomorrow (as seen off screen in "Rapunzeltopia"), Cassandra is greeted by the Enchanted Girl, a spirit who reveals that Cassandra is the biological daughter of the late Mother Gothel, who abandoned her on the night she kidnapped infant Rapunzel. Enraged that Rapunzel has been (unknowingly) overshadowing her for the entirety of her life, and that she will always be unfairly overlooked, Cassandra snatches the Moonstone Opal, absorbs it, and declared Rapunzel's destiny as her own. She manages to escape from the group and cuts all ties with them, with Rapunzel unable to wrap her head around the entire situation. The group returns to Corona and find that it has been taken over by Varian, who has aligned himself with Andrew and the Separatists of Saporia to erase the King and Queen's memories and enslave Corona's citizens.
Plot Hole Number One: Why Would Cassandra Just Blindly Follow A Ghost While Trapped Inside a Haunted House?
Outside of that one snarky remark, Cassandra never stops to question the literal ghost who is bossing her around. The ghost she met in a creepy haunted house. A haunted house that she was already suspicious of before ever going in and that has tried to kill her and her friends many times now.
Cassandra, the most distrusting and cautious of of individuals in the show thus far, just suddenly decides to leave her brain behind from this point forward for no given reason whatsoever.
If you have to dumb down your main character and have them behave OOC in order to get your plot rolling along, then you haven’t a good plot.
Plot Hole Number Two: Cassandra Sees for Herself How Awful Gothel Was to Her Here, So Why Would She Obsess Over the Woman?
Forgetting for a moment that Cass very well knows that Gothel treated her best friend like shit and tried to murder her other friend, Eugene, as evidenced by Quest for Varian; Cassandra can see for herself right here that Gothel is a crap person who never treated her right.
I mean there’s denial, and then there’s flat out stupidity. Cass being hurt by the this reveal is one thing. Cass believing that Gothel really loved her and blaming everyone else for her death is totally another and not based in any kind of sensible logic.
Plot Hole Number Three: Why Would Gothel Even Have a Child to Begin With?
Look, I’ll accept that the flower can deage Gothel enough for her to get laid and bare a kid, but that only brings up the question of why she would keep said kid?
She kept Rapunzel cause she needed her powers in order to stay alive, but Cass? What reason would she want to have Cassandra around? A baby can’t do chores for you and it's a hell of a lot of work to raise one. Plus the show repeatedly tells us over and over again that Gothel doesn’t really love her or even likes having her daugther around so... yeah, what is the point of this? Why didn’t she just drop Cass off at an orphanage to begin with?
You can’t make this type of reveal and have it go against the what we fundamentally know about the characters without explaining why they would partake in such actions.
This is Manipulative Writing
But of course the real reason why this flashback and “twist” exists is just to manipulate the audience into feeling sorry for Cass. It’s not here to actually enhance the story, further the characters, nor answer any mysteries in any real way. That’s why it’s such a poor plot point.
It’s setting up the viewers to have a bias so that they’ll more readily forgive Cassandra for her irreprehensible actions later. In short, it’s the same bullshit that the writers pulled for Frederic back in season one. Only it makes even less narrative sense here because this ‘tragic backstory’ is so divorced from later events in the story.
It’s also flat out lazy because all it’s doing it slapping Rapunzel’s backstory onto Cass instead of letting Cassandra be her own character with her own battles and character development to have.
And before you say, “well that’s the point”, then let me tell you it’s a stupid point. One that makes zero sense for the character and is insulting to the audience’s intelligence.
Plot Hole Number Four: Why Didn’t Gothel Just Stay Hidden Till the Soldiers Left?
Hell, why did Gothel even come back here? We already established that she doesn’t really care about Cass and it’s a plot point that’ll only be further reiterated as the season goes on, so why? Why would Gothel behave like this? How does this help her in her goal? Gothel’s suppose to be smart remember?
Plot Hole Number Five: How Does Any of This Logically Help Zhan Tiri?
So Zhan Tiri is the blue ghost girl and while the series tries to keep it a secret reveal for later, it’s pretty obvious from the get go, so I’ll just be calling the character by her name.
Anyways, Zhan Tiri’s plan is to show Cassandra her past, in order to make Cass angry enough to steal the moonstone and fight Rapunzel, so that the two powers fighting each other will then release her from her interdimensional prison.
Now ignoring how literally none of that was set up nor previously established, and ignoring that Zhan Tiri’s disciples were trying previously to stop the sundrop and her friends from getting to the moonstone, thereby undermining their master’s plan; just how exactly is any of this suppose to work?
Why would showing Cassandra how her mother was a shitty person somehow make Cass angry at Rapunzel, angry enough to try and kill her even, and somehow keep her angry for months on end, in order to fulfill this clearly illogical action that holds no personal benefit to herself?
I don’t mind Cassandra becoming a villain; I just want it to make sense.
This does not make sense.
Not only does it require incredible leaps of logic and Cassandra acting out of character to work, it also depends far to much upon conquincidence and things playing out just in exactly the right way to benefit Zhan Tiri and her poorly laid out plan.
Would it not have made more sense for this “evil master manipulating worlock” to just, you know, lie?
Like shouldn’t she be trying to make Gothel look good? Shouldn’t she be trying to make it all seem like Frederic’s fault (which it mostly is anyways)? If you want Cass to attack Corona and turn against Rapunzel, then why not lie about their involvement or tell some half truth?
Or better yet why not make Gothel and actual complex figure for real?
Ugh... I got to move on from this point, but believe me, we will be back to this dumbfuckery in later episodes.
Plot Hole Number Six: You Can’t Just Ignore that Cap Exists and Is the One Who Raised Cassandra for Most of Her Life
Like I’m sure finding out that you mom was a piece of crap who abandon you hurts, but that doesn’t automatically erase the fact that Cass’s dad was there for her, raised her, and loved her for the majority of her life. I’m not saying that Cap is perfect, but he at least tried to do right by her (and is consequently the best parent in the show) and Cassandra is old enough to recognize that fact. Pretending otherwise is a disservice to everyone. It’s a disservice to the Captain, to Cassandra, to Rapunzel, to Gothel, and to the viewers watching along with this BS.
Trauma Doesn’t Make You Suddenly Stupid
Look, I’m not downplaying Cass’s trauma here. She is allowed to feel upset and yes trauma is painful and effects us all in different ways. Also yes, past trauma can carry on through into adulthood and still harm you.
However that’s not an excuse for hurting others. Cass’s trauma isn’t any less traumatic than any of the other characters’, but neither is it somehow more important than any of theirs. She doesn’t get a free past to step on people just because she was sad once.
Cassandra is, once again, old enough to know this and more importantly smart enough to realize that what happened in the past, if even true, has nothing to do with what she is currently dealing with right now.
Like why is she believing any of this? Why is she still listening to the suspicious ghost that she met in a magical house that’s tricked her and her friends numerous times before? Why would finding out her mom was shit make her turn that anger against her best friend? What does any of this have to do with her current struggles with trying to build up her career or staying friends with Raps?
Remembering past trauma does not make your brain shut off. Even having a mental breakdown or panic attack still does not render you completely senseless and anything done under extreme pressure like that is temporary. You don’t wind up acting bananas constantly for over a year.
As a woman who suffers from complex-PTSD and is an abuse survivor myself, Cassandra’s story is deeply offensive to me. Not the least of which because it actively dumps her down.
This Is the Point Where Cassandra’s Character Gets Assassinated
Like I said in the opening, everyone’s character gets assassinated in this story. Cassandra just happens to be the first to die and it’s right here with this line.
Not only is this line incredibly cringy and poorly worded, and I have to just feel sorry for the VA here cause there’s no way to make this much stupid sound good, but it’s also completely divorced from what’s going on.
Cassandra is suppose to be explaining to her friends why she’s stealing the moonstone and her answer is “I’m this dead bitch’s daughter”? Like oookaaay, and that has what to do with it exactly?
Did Gothel have any connection to the moonstone? Does stealing the moonstone somehow bring her back or fulfil her revenge? What does grabbing the moonstone actually gain Cass and what does that have to do with her dead abusive mom?
The reason why Cass doesn’t work as a villain because she has no goal nor reason for doing what she does. She just lurches from plot point to plot point with no idea of what she is doing nor why she is doing it.
But watch as the show keeps digging in its heels and keeps insisting that Cassandra’s connection to Gothel is totally a sympathetic motive even as it makes less and less sense every damn time it's brought up.
What Does Destiny Even Fucking Mean Any More???
What Destiny?!
There is no damn destiny. There is no prophecy to fulfil, no world to save, no consequence for just having everyone sitting on their asses for two whole seasons. And even if there was a destiny to even steal; why would Cass even want it? What does actually she gain from any of this? And how does any of it connect back to Gothel?
This Should Have Been the Point of Resolution Not the Inciting Incident for Their Break Up
Look no idea is without merit. You can make the stupidest sounding idea engaging if you present it right.
This was not presented right.
If Cassandra being Gothel’s daughter was to hold any meaning to the story, then it needed to be what brought her and Raps back together again, not what broke them apart.
Rapunzel says it right here. Logically this should be common ground for the two of them. There’s no real reason for Cass to direct her anger at Rapunzel over this.
But this show doesn’t care about logic, reason, or treating it’s audience with intelligence. It’s just flashy bullshit “drama” that pretends to be deep but is really a shallow puddle once you stop to think about it for two seconds.
Let’s Talk About “Sisters”
Cass’s face just says it all doesn’t it?
The creator, Chris, wanted to make a story about two “sisters”, because he has two daughters and he thought that would be inspiring and speak to little girls everywhere.
It’s a nice sentiment. Shame he’s so utterly incompetent at it.
There was no build up to them being sisters. Instead all we got was a bunch of meaningless parallels and a very toxic friendship. Even with the Gothel reveal the connection to them being siblings is tenuous at best because there’s no biological relation and more importantly, they weren’t raised together.
Chris is basically trying to rip off the likes of Frozen or Guardians of the Galaxy here with Raps and Cass’s relationship but it doesn’t work when the two siblings in question didn’t actually grow up together. There’s no reason for Cassandra to project her anger at their abusive parent on to Raps because that parent wasn’t the one to actually raise her. And on top of that, said abuser is dead, and both her and Raps have separate guardians in their lives, so the jealousy angle doesn’t work either.
And to make it all the more confusing, Chris failed to inform his crew of this brilliant plot twist, so we now have two seasons of gay baiting put in by the storyboard artists hitting that Cass is in love with her “sister”, And because the hardcore Cazzpunzel stans are the only fanbase that hasn’t given Chris the boot, there’s still even more gay baiting to come.
Why are We Victim Blaming a Baby?
Seriously, Cass? You are twenty four and have a brain. Why are you blaming someone for being kidnapped as a baby? What kind of sense does this make?
Worse, there’s plenty of real shit Cass could get angry at Rapunzel over and this is what you go with show?
If anything Rapunzel should be the one who is pissed here. Cass got to escape and lead a normal life with a loving father all because she got kidnapped as baby. And now said bitch is trying to gaslight her while stealing the very thing she’s been risking her life to grab for a year now.
No You Haven’t Cass
Once again, you got to live a normal life with a loving Dad. You had plenty of chances to build relationships and further your career for 18 years while Rapunzel was trapped in a dang tower, and Rapunzel returning from said tower didn’t cut you off from anything. In fact Rapunzel being rescued from the tower actually presented more opportunities for you and you spent all of season one climbing up the ranks.
There’s Nothing In the Show to Back Up This Statement
Nothing is at stake. There’s no threat here other than Cassandra herself. Cassandra is dranger to the world here not the moonstone. If you wanted it to be the other way around then you should have kept the rocks active during season two.
So Why Didn’t We Go With the Original Set Up From Season Two?
As said before, there are real reasons that were set up during season two that could have motivated Cass.
- Rapunzel is irresponsible and can’t be trusted to save the world
- Rapunzel is a shit friend and Cass is better off going her own way and leaving everyone high and dry.
- Cass’s hand was injured by Raps and the moonstone might be able to heal it
- Cass sees the injustice in the class system and wants to fight back against the royals in order to help everyone, not just herself.
- Cass might believe she’s stopping Zhan Tiri and not realize she’s being manipulated by her instead
- Or is playing along with Zhan Tiri under the idea that she can stall for time figure out how to stop her.
- Cass wants to play her and use the power of the rocks to save people only for it to go wrong later.
- Possession (which was the original idea in the concept stage)
Like I said, there were plenty of ways to make this work. In fact some are so dang obvious that you’ll hear Cass fans try to claim that a few of those are what her real motivation was despite the the show clearly going against them later. The “fighting against the class system” is a real popular one despite the fact that Cass herself attacks a bunch of poor people repeatedly and doesn’t seem concerned about anyone but herself.
But I digress.
The real reason why we have this bullshit is cause Chris doesn’t want to hold his favs accountable. Rapunzel’s flaws can’t be called out in any meaningful way and Cass gets a convenient scapegoat in Zhan Tiri.
In short both Cassandra and Rapunzel have their agency stolen away from them by the narrative, while still trying to pretend that they’re “strong independent women”. Even though those two things aren’t compatible at all.
What Exactly Have You Been Denied Cass?
Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?
- Lance, Eugene, and Lady Caine were all denied physiological and safety needs while growing up in an orphanage and then later on the streets as a thieves.
- Rapunzel was denied psychological needs while being raised by her abuser.
- Varian was denied everything on that dang list.
Cassandra tho?
Trauma or no trauma, Cass was still raised in a safe and loving environment for the majority of her life. She, at best, has been denied “self-fulfillment” needs and even then that’s a stretch cause throughout season one we see her time and time again gaining what it was she wanted.
Cassandra isn’t anything special. She’s not suffered any more than anybody else in the show and in fact has lived a pretty cushy life when all is said and done, especially when compared to other characters in the show.
The worst that she has to complain about is working a crappy job for a little while and having a shit mom that she can barely remember. Boo Fucking Hoo.
Note How Easy It Is For Cass to Control the Rocks Here
The show can’t even keep Cassandra’s powers consistent. Like everything else about the character, Cass’s powers come and go as is convenient for the narrative with little explanation as to why.
This Song Doesn’t Work Because It was Cut In Half Due to Time
I’ve talked about the problems with this song before in my songs from TTS ranking list. It’s choppy and consistent. Yet it only feels that way because it was cut down. It’s missing a full other verse, second chorus, and a bridge.
Which is inexcusable because there’s so much dang filler in this show!
We could have had time for the full song if they had just cut one of the non-essential episodes and made all of this a full episode on it’s own. Just save the Corona and Varian stuff for later if need be.
The management of this show is just atrocious.
Why Wasn’t This the Cliffhanger for Season Two?
Speaking of making all of the Cassandra stuff it’s own episode... Everything we just seen should have been in season two.
It’s more connected to what happened last season, it flows better, it would have had more time to breathe, and it would have given us more time in the Dark Kingdom. Given as that this is what season two was building up too, it would have been more satisfying there.
And if the writers still wanted a cliffhanger to end the season in order to draw crowds then this right here was it.
So We We Spent A Whole Season Getting Here and We’re Just Going to Leave Now?
The Dark Kingdom is Wasted!!!!
And because the Dark Kingdom is a bust, the entirety of season two now feels even more pointless.
Chris said he cut the Dark Kingdom stuff because it didn’t interest him.
Chris is a fucking fool.
Ignoring that different people will gravitate towards different things and you need to keep that in mind when writing for mass audiences; you don’t spend valuable time setting things up just to drop them later.
If you didn’t like that particular plot thread then you needed to just not bring it up to begin with. Once you’ve put it in there you need to commit to it.
Behold the Only Thing Useful Shorty Does This Whole Season
There is less Shorty overall this season which is ultimately a good thing, but it does highlight what a stupid decision it was to bring him along to begin with.
I mean did we really drag him around for a whole season just for this? Couldn’t some other Pub Thung or townsperson have found them? One that could talk.
Adria Gets Put on a Bus
Adria doesn’t get assassinated like some of the other characters, but she does get unceremoniously shoved off without any real closure. The character will return later in the season, but brainwashed and without any lines. Which is doubly insulting to the VA who voices her.
And Here Is Where Lance Gets Assassinated
Lance is drastically dumbed down in season three. Even more so than in past seasons. You could call it flanderization specifically, more so than assassination, but the effect is the same. Lance’s character is effectively dead from this point onwards.
Also this should have ended the Lance & Adria ship in the show for good. She flat out rejects him here, but nope.
Eugene is the Only Person Acting Like a Real Human Being This Episode Thus Far
Edmund spent his whole life protecting the moonstone. He lost everything to it. He was convinced that letting Rapunzel take it would be best only for her to lose it right afterwards. And what does he do? Immediately become the “comedicly bad dad” in show oversaturated with both comedic foils and poor father figures.
Meanwhile Eugene is the only one properly responding to what is going on. Don't expect that to last.
I Thought You Left Cass?
Remember that foreshadowing with Quirin way back in the pilot?
This is just that, but dumber.
There’s no reason for Cass to hang around out of sight only to stare menacingly at Rapunzel and company as they leave. It’s just a lazy hook to get viewers to believe that there might be more going on with Cass then what we’ve been told. There’s not.
So This Map Proves That the Dark Kingdom Is North East of Corona
Continuity and worldbuilding in this show is utterly garbage, so I’ll latch on to any little scrape of info that we get.
According to the map shown here, the balloon is heading Southwest back to Corona. That means the Dark Kingdom is Northeast.
So if Corona is somewhere in Northern mainland Europe that means the Dark Kingdom is either in a Nordic country (Norway,Sweden,Finland, ect) or Russia.
Meta Jokes About Being a Bad Writer Doesn’t Excuse Bad Writing
Get use to this. Season three is full of meansprited meta jokes that try to defend against the quite frankly valid criticism that the show has received. Or more specifically the criticism Chris had received.
Most of season three was written during the hiatus of season two back when Chris was seeing backlash from the fans due to his PR fiasco and that’s not even taking into account the crew walkout after season one.
Not only is that too late to be writing your final season, but it’s also reflective of how Chris can’t handle critique with grace nor listen to other ideas as jokes like this are in poor taste.
Everyone Acts Shocked Here but Honestly this Fits King Frederic’s MMO
This is the same guy who prosecuted poor people for eighteen years with his crack down on crime, and thrented the life an orphaned teen. Is anybody really surprised by this?
I Thought Your Real Name was Hubert?
I guess he just prefers the name Andrew. I don’t know. But what do know is that “the devil is in the details” is a thing my animation teacher in college use to say repeatedly, and no one working on this show seems capable of remembering or keeping up with details.
Why Are There Only Five Saporains?
Saporia was set up as an entire race of people who’d been displaced from their homeland for generations. They’ve been living as nomads for centuries according to season two. Why are there only five of them in this episode?
How did they overthrow a kingdom with only five people? How do they maintain hold of it with only five? How do they expect to further their bloodline and culture with only only five of them?
Why did we waste money on a bunch of one off villians that we sent packing in season two and not built more Saporian models instead?
Like you could have had the core five here, as like leaders, and then imply that there are more of them with background citizens and guards ect.
NO!!!
WE DO NOT IMPLY THAT A 15 YEAR OLD BOY WAS LOCKED IN A JAIL CELL WITH A GROWN MAN FOR NEARLY A YEAR!!!!!
I.... What?!
Who the fuck thought this was a good idea to put in a children’s show?
Did no one behind the scenes stop to think, “Hun, maybe we shouldn’t suggest that a teenager was trapped inside a small enclosed space with no way out twenty for hours a day with an adult who attempted to murder his girlfriend when lying to her stopped working. Perhaps someone might get the wrong impression.”?
Like I hate censors as much as the next person, but editors work in the business for a reason, and that reason is to pull the artists aside sometimes and go “Hey, that shit don't fly with normal folk.”
What’s worse is I don’t think the writers were even trying to be shocking and edgy here. I just think they were careless. They needed a quick exposition dumb to explain how Varian and Andrew know each other, and didn’t think through the implications of that line nor considered how Varian’s age changes the context of his situation.
Which is beyond inexcusable because it’s so damn lazy!
You wouldn’t need rushed exposition had you actually took the time to set up this plot point back in season two. Heck, you wouldn’t have needed to even set this plot point up had you not cut Varian’s original story out at the last minute. Finally, you should care enough about your characters to at least take their age into consideration when writing their development.
There’s also the fact that it makes most of the ‘heroes’ look like assholes.
We’ve seen these dungeons several times throughout the show. We know of their poor conditions. There’s little light, the food is slop, there’s no way to stay clean or use the restroom, prisons are never let out for exercise, ect. Like these are medieval style dungeons that are considered inhumane my modern audiences.
Just because the show tries to play off the horribleness of it for laughs doesn’t mean the audience is going to find it funny that they traumatized a fifthteen year old with it.... again!
Moreover Frederic had promised last time we saw him that he would give Varian help. He idea of ‘helping” Varian is supposedly to throw him into a nasty jail cell with a violent criminal? WTF? And there’s no indication that he tried anything to save Quirin either.
Not to mention that none of the mains act surprised by this revelation, nor comment about how awful Varian’s treatment is. As usual for them.
It’s just sicking and most of the atempts to explain away this line by the fans have been super pathetic.
“Frederic was giving him therapy while in jail” - there’s nothing to indicate therapy exists in this world and even if this were true it would be undermined by stupidly throwing him in a cell with Andrew.
“It’s not literal, Varian was in a separate cell” - once again there’s nothing to back this up and even if that were the case it’s not that much better because it’s still a dungeon cell with zero privacy and Varian would still be close enough to Andrew to talk to him thus invading his personal space to some degree or other.
“Well he tried to help but Varian wasn’t cooperative” - still not an excuse and there’s nothing on screen to back up this headcanon.
“It’s someone else’s fault.” - Who’s? Frederic is in charge of everything. The buck stops with him. If a guard did this without his knowledge then that means Frederic neglected his duties and his promise anyways.
“Well maybe it’s true, but Varian did a bad thing and teens who do really bad things get sent to prison in the real world too” - Not an argument. Teens aren’t typically jailed with adults and the conditions for modern jails are at least somewhat better than those in Corona. Plus kids being sent to jail in any form is major topic of controversy in today's time. I’ve already covered why trying teens as adults is a vile abuse of power in the real world; I shouldn’t have to mention that the current government throwing children in cages is a bad thing as well!
“Well that’s just part of the time period” - Doesn’t make it right, and sadly it’s not something in the distant past either. It’s currently happening right now in the US. It was happening when this episode and season was being written. The writers unthinkingly threw in a very real thing that affects hundreds of thousands of children and didn’t bother to follow up on it or comment about how wrong it is.
There’s just no excuse for the way Frederic and Rapunzel treat Varian in this show. There’s just not, and some of y’all really need to stop trying to do so cause it means you’re inadvertently condoning real life abuses of power.
You can like a character and except that they’ve done wrong. That’s a thing that you can do, you know.
Let’s Talk about Character Design
For the most part the art direction in the show is top notch. It really is the best looking animated show on tv today, and the character design is usually of this same quality. But they really dropped the ball with Varian’s design here.
The structural bones of it isn’t bad. Taken on it’s own it would be fine, but good character design is supposed to give context and enhance the story and this doesn’t do that.
We’ve haven’t seen Varian in a year, but instead of visually showcasing the passage of time by having him physically age we just get season one’s design but in bargain bin hot topic clothes and a drawn on barcode.
Even the color palette is wrong.
Varian’s is suppose to feature blues and earthy browns to go with his eyes and hair but instead we get bright reds, neon chimballs, and sharp contrasts with blacks and whites that just clashes with his base colors.
And what does any of this tell the audience? How does it add to the story? What can we glean from his new design about what transpired in the last year?
Nothing.
At best it just reinforces that villian Varian is a try hard edge lord, but we already knew that. We would have known it even without the villain arc cause he’s a teenager. Not that he looks it. The boy is supposed to be either 16 or soon to be 16 and he still looks fucking 12.
What’s more they spent money on this. They made not one, but two new models with two new outfits, but they couldn’t be arsed just to make him a little taller? And no, he’s not actually any taller in season three. He was always Rapunzel’s height regardless of animation errors and squash and stretch techniques.
It’s a waste. Just like nearly everything in season three.
This Is Such a Cop-out
Speaking of things being a waste. Wiping Frederic’s and Arianna’s memories is taking the cowards way out. It’s them escaping any sort of meaningful consequence for their past actions and robs them of the chance to grow and develop as characters. All cause Chris didn’t want to deal with people pointing out the bullshit his self insert caused.
Well guess what, I’m still pointing out Frederic’s BS, only now I’m extra angry cause I was robbed of a genuine character arc, so fuck you!
Was Varian Actually Needed for This Plot?
No really. What does Varian even do here? The wand of oblivium is Saporian magic and they could and apparently did wipe the king’s and queen’s memories without Varian’s mindwipe concoction. That alone apparently gives them the power to run the kingdom.
All Varian does is give them some alchemy based weapons and a bomb he accidentally invents. Both are things that the Saporians could have made themselves given how they know apothecary according to Rapunzel Day One.
I’m currently in the middle of writing an AU fanfiction where Varian winds up in another world before the events of this episode, and let me tell you it is incredibly easy to write him out of the majority of season three without changing the plot much.
Given how Varian is meant to be a main character this season, that’s not a good thing.
So How Come None Of the “Heroes” Give a Shit?
Like I said above, none of the protagonists show the least bit of concern for what Varian is going through. Even though ignoring his needs is precisely what lead to this mess in the first place. It not only makes them look heartless, but it also makes them look plain stupid as well.
Why is it so hard to just even pretend to care about the fact he’s been orphaned? Half of them are orphans themselves for fucks sake!
Varian’s Not the One in Charge Here Rapunzel
I know Varian is the bigger threat and has more of a personal connection to Raps, but it’s pretty clear that Andrew is the mastermind behind this coup. What good does shouting at Varian do? What makes Rapunzel think that any of the Saporians would listen to him even if he did change his mind? What makes her think ordering Varian around after she helped ruin his life would get him to change his mind. Like, my gosh is Rapunzel dumb!
Why Are We Victim Blaming a Child Soldier?
That’s what he is at this point. He’s a weapons specialist for a rival kingdom fighting for control of the government. A government that has abused its own people leading to such an uprising.
A teenager may not be as blameless as a baby but it's still beyond callous and cruel to blame kids and young teens who join extremist groups in war torn lands out of desperation.
Is This Suppose to Be the Inciting Incident for Varian’s Redemption, Cause If So, That Makes No Sense
This look of regret is the only indication that Varian is questioning where he stands before his redemption in part two. Except there he points out that he’s been thinking about it for while now, even before Raps showed up. Only there’s nothing to suggest why Varian would suddenly change his view point and motives. So the audience is still in the dark about his thought process even with this “hint” and I use that word loosely.
Conclusion
So that’s the end of part one. I hope to have part two up before the week is out.
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