- Title: Once Upon a Time in Wonderland – The Serpent
- wiki: link
After the Red Queen (Emma Rigby) captures the Knave (Michael Socha), Jafar (Naveen Andrews) demands the man’s public execution to teach all of Wonderland the cost of helping Alice (Sophie Lowe). Alice makes a new acquaintance, a thief named Lizard (Lauren McKnight) who offers to help her free their mutual friend before he looses his head. Although their rescue plan is successful, it doesn’t come without a price for both Alice, who is forced to use the first of her three wishes, and for the Knave who Jafar turns to stone when Alice makes it impossible for the wizard to kill him.
“The Serpent” also includes flashbacks to Jafar as a boy (Anthony Keyvan) and young man training under the witch Amara (Zuleikha Robinson) in Agrabah that explain his obsession with genies and the lengths he is willing to go to in order to control Cyrus‘ (Peter Gadiot) bottle and have his revenge. It also reveals the history behind the sorcerer’s staff which I would assume will come back into play before the end of the season.
Although the Jafar claims victory in both removing a player from the board and forcing Alice to make her first wish, the episode ends with Cyrus near escape and the Red Queen forced to confront the cost of her recent partnership. Although Jafar learns he cannot hurt Alice directly, his method of targeting anything and everything he hold dear gives him leverage as he only needs to force the girl to make two more wishes before the genie falls under his control. Given that one wish has been used in only three episodes, the future doesn’t look to bright for Alice or anyone she may consider a friend.
