This week opens with wee Jafar and closes with Cyrus Doing Stuff and the bits in between were pretty good, too.
Long ago in Agrabah, little Jafar is the bastard son of the sultan raised as a peasant-servant and little more than a slave. Poor bb. He sees a witchy woman and rather than hide like his master, he follows her home.
Jafar: I wanna learn teh magicks.
Amara: Why?
Jafar: I want to fight back.
Amara: Yawn.
Jafar: I want revenge!
Amara: Hm. On whom?
Jafar: Everybody!
Amara: Yawn.
Jafar: On my daddy the sultan who hates me and ignores me and left me to the streets!
Amara: Daddy issues? You said the magic words. Come on in, jail bait.
When he’s older – how much, I don’t know because now Naveen is playing him but he is clearly still young and naive – she tricks him into poisoning an innocent and taunts him into letting the man die.
Amara: I’ve decided you’re ready to learn the dark magicks.
Jafar: But you said we need a human liver for that.
Amara: Luckily there was poison in that wine you just gave our goatherd friend.
Jafar: Oops.
Amara: You can give him the antidote or you can embrace your destiny.
Jafar: Is this really supposed to make me sympathetic?
Amara: Be the snake, Jafar.
Jafar: Well, when you put it that way.
Then they kiss because now he’s worthy.
Amara has a book with a spell that will give them All the Power but it requires three genies to cast. So they start collecting. Well first, they kiss some more and she tells him she loves him.
Jafar: Nobody’s ever been so kind to me.
Amara: Nobody’s ever loved you so much.
Oh, Amara, you are so doomed.
Somehow our Agrabahan Bonnie and Clyde trap Aladdin’s genie or someone with a lookalike lamp – that story TBD I assume – and then they take down the Agrabahan Sam Malone to capture the second. Jafar hears of a third genie – Cyrus – and gets set to trap him.
But first he puts a spell on Amara, stealing her magic and turning her into a snake and then his snake staff. So he carries his ex-lover around with him as a talisman. Because that’s well-adjusted.
In Wonderland of the present, Alice and Will are on the run from basically everyone because that’s what Wonderland is like. But specifically Jabba the Caterpillar’s collectors aka bounty hunters. Alice and Will split up because they both have a serious hero complex and Anastasia captures the Knave because Jafar ordered her to. It’s clearly a test because he has clearly caught on to the fact that the Knave and the Queen have history.
She succeeds in the capture so Jafar orders her to kill him. Anastasia sets the execution date and hot foots it down to the dungeon to set up Will’s escape.
Anastasia: The Rabbit is going to get you out. Leave Wonderland and never come back.
Will: I just got here.
Anastasia: You can leave or you can lose your head.
Will: Empty promises.
Anastasia: I don’t want to kill you!
Will: You can’t kill me. You lurve me.
Anastasia: Telling me I can’t do something is the best way to get me to do it!
Will is unimpressed because he believes in both Anastasia and Alice.
Alice is on that one road in Wonderland, looking for her friend. Instead she finds another rival for his affection.
Alice: Beat it Boba Fett, the Knave is my friend.
Lizard: I’m not Fett, I’m Lando. We can still save Han from the Red Queen.
Alice: These references are getting out of control. How do you know Will?
Lizard: He taught me everything I know. And I’m in love with him.
Alice: How many points are on this love triangle?
Truly I like this Lizard (short for Elizabeth, obviously) and Alice team up to save the boy plot. But why is Wonderland the Love Boat?
Anyway Alice and Lizard take out the executioner and they all escape into the labyrinth. But as it was all a test/plot/trap put together by the mastermind Jafar, he and Red surround them.
Jafar: Alice, I’ve been waiting to meet you, I’m –
Alice: I know who you are Jafar. Cyrus told me all about you.
Jafar: No time for flirting, make your wishes.
Alice: Never.
Jafar reads Alice like a book and force chokes Will.
Will: Anastasia!
Jafar and Alice: Orly?
Anastasia: Make your wish you silly girl!
Alice: I wish that if the Knave dies, I die.
Jafar: Glee!
Cyrus: Gloom!
Jafar tries to torture Alice but she is not swayed by her own pain. He turns the Knave to stone and bounces, high on his victory and looking forward to gloating to Cyrus. Jafar is twisted.
Left behind Alice confronts Anastasia and the Alice/Anastasia ship is born.
Alice: How could you do that to him? Anastasia?
Anastasia: Oh please, you brought him here. You put him into danger over and over. You wandered around acting superior like always and getting your way because you are who you are like always.
Alice: You betrayed your love!
Anastasia: So did you. We’re basically the same, it’s just I’ve accepted who I am. Now go away so I can cry over my statue.
Alice: You’re letting me go?
Anastasia: You’re already in prison. Don’t you know that’s what Wonderland is?
Anastasia is my favourite.
Meanwhile in the dungeon, Cyrus gets a wishbone from a guard. He breaks it and sharpens it but the guard realizes what he’s doing and throws it down the pit. But Cyrus is tricksy and that was all part of his plan. The story about wishbones, he explains, was made up by genies. There is nothing to the idea that the larger half gets a wish. The real story is much more romantic: the two halves of a wishbone will do whatever it takes to be made whole again. This is gross until you remember that hearts are muscles and bloody and just as bizarre a choice to romanticize as a bone. The wishbone half the guard threw away careens back up the pit and starts to cut the cage open. Cyrus! You are Doing!
In the final shots, Amara-the-snake-staff is watching Jafar, Anastasia is stroking her Will-the-Knave-statue and Cyrus is breaking free from his cage with a bone.
Who are you rooting for?