- Title: Once Upon a Time in Wonderland – And They Lived…
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Created to be a single-season show with the possibility of building on the tale should ABC pick up the series for a Second Season, the final episode of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland not only wraps up the immediate events concerning Jafar (Naveen Andrews) gaining enough power to change the laws of magic but also takes us into the near future offering a look at the characters earning their well-deserved happily ever after.
Picking up immediately after the events of last week’s episode, Jafar uses his new power to raise the Red Queen (Emma Rigby) from the dead and bend her to his will to punish the Knave (Michael Socha) while also resurrecting and entire army of soldiers to track down Amara (Zuleikha Robinson), Alice (Sophie Lowe), and Cyrus (Peter Gadiot) before they can stop his plans. Things get pretty bleak for our heroes until Amara’s sacrifice at the Well of Wonders and Alice tricking Jafar to earn his rightful place inside a bottle saving not only Wonderland but also the Knave and Cyrus’ two brothers. Even the Knave and Anastasia get a happy ending of their own.
Although the show’s creators hoped to bring back the characters for another season, the episode’s long two-part epilogue makes it unlikely to happen as we get Alice and Cyrus’s wedding in front of friends and family (but no mention of what her step-mother thinks of the magical rabbits in her home), and a flashforward to Alice raising her own young girl and relating the stories of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland. As meant to, the episode caps off the series (even if the amount of epilogue feels a bit much) while also offering Alice the time to say farewell to the Knave and acknowledge the friendship at the heart of the series.
Given the tone of the last-half of the episode I’m not surprised the show wasn’t renewed for another season as Alice’s story feels very much finished by the finale’s end. That said, it wouldn’t surprise me to see any members of the cast (hopefully the Knave and Anastasia) eventually make their way to Storybrooke and find new life on Once Upon a Time.
