Once Upon A Time In Wonderland - 1.12 "To Catch A Thief - Review - What Happens When You Catch Him?

Once Upon A Time in Wonderland gives us it penultimate episode with a title that not just necessarily ties back to a famous Alfred Hitchcock film staring Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, but is a title that really defines the whole Wonderland experience.

Our tale begins this week with a pleading Will now having his heart back, begging Alice and Cyrus to help let Jafar win so that he can have Anastasia brought back to life, but Alice and Cyrus who have sort of decided that they are going to free Amara from the staff and then return her to The Well of Wonders, declines, explaining that doing so could kill many many people. They ask him if he would like to accompany them on their quest, and like any typical thief that ever was, Will Scarlet sees this as an opportunity to steal the staff.

In flashbacks we discover when Alice first met Will. After my small gripe with last week's episode not seeing Will be Cora's Knave. I feel slightly better knowing that this episode attempts to make up for that. Alice is seen as a great Wonderland criminal and Cora has sent her 'Jack of all trades' along with soldiers to hunt down an kill Alice. 

Alice however finds a way to always be one step ahead of him, before Alice decides after catching the Knave in a net, that even he deserves a second chance, as she learns about his heart and sets out to steal it back. It doesn't take Alice too much effort to get into the vault, but rather the episode highlights counting, rhythm, and routine. When she brings it back she discovers that she can now control him, but does give it back on the condition that he will help find the White Rabbit so she can bring her father proof of Wonderland's existence.

Before they part ways the two share a meal and Will briefly tells her of the loss of his sister Penelope, and that he imagines Alice would be what Penelope would have been like as an adult. The two them then have fight royal guards along the garden walls and are able to defeat them by pushing them into the hedges, where they become captive to the greenery itself. Alice and Will exchange goodbyes and she goes on her way, where she will discover Cyrus' bottle...

Back in the current Wonderland The Jabberwoky too attempts to gain her freedom by attempting to steal the dagger away from Jafar with little success, as Jafar homes in on her own fears. She then takes matters into her own hands when she later catches up with Cyrus, Alice, and Will after Will saved Alice from falling down into a river. The Jabberwocky tries to make a deal with them, but Alice's says they will only have one, if they can bring Anastasia back to life. The Jabberwocky states that she can't and reminds them that all monsters aren't born monsters, but rather monsters are made...

The rest of the episode then plays out with a plan now hatched where Will leads Jafar's guards away from Alice and Cyrus so that they can get into the castle, knowing that Jafar should summon him any time. Cyrus is then caught and taken to Jafar. He has the Jabberwocky smell and examine his fears in which the Jabberwocky lies and agrees with that what Cyrus says about not knowing Amara. Will is summoned back into the bottle just in time and Amara appears! Jafar and Amara fight, as Jafar exposes his knowledge of where her true allegiances lie. Soon the two are kinetically wrestling with field of shard glass between them. Jafar is able to force a specific piece to move and stab Cyrus in the heart. Amara runs to her sons side as he lay dying. Will watches helplessly, while Alice can literally feel Cyrus' departure and leaves the now freed father of Jafar behind, as Alice runs into the thrown room where Jafar and Amara now working side by side to cast the spell. Alice holds onto Cyrus' body.

I was definitely grateful to see will at least once in his actual Knave of Hearts role and discover the time where he and Alice had first met, but I still feel a little disheartened about all of it knowing that Once Upon A Time in Wonderland has been officially canceled.

As expressed in the last review, it's hard to imagine Wonderland's story finishing up with now only one episode left, when the series really just started to hit it's stride in the whole Once universes. I think to some degree it's ending could seem contrived depending on where everyone actually ends up...

And A Quick Update:
Last week I wasn't sure who's RED car that was that swirled by Alice and Cyrus in Storybrooke. As it turns out it's Ruby's which can be seen in episodes such as "Red Handed" and "The Price of Gold". The hole in the street where Alice and Cyrus come out of the ground is something fans wondered about back in season two when looking a BTS photos. It looks like the writers made good use of it and thus that puts this story still in the beginning of season 2 time period @ the third episode "Lady of Lake" (which I also referenced in terms of Nyxe and other Grecian references in the Once Upon A Time Factor section in previous reviews).

To Catch A Thief
Alfred Hitchcock's and David Dodges' romance thriller To Catch A Thief really goes nicely with Wonderland's themes, which includes strong woman thieves or con artists such as Alice, Anastasia, and Amara, but does make one wonder how Wonderland will end with 3 characters dead, one that seemingly has to die, and with characters who may not come back the same they were when they died, let alone the prospect that others may yet to die??

Theory Time, Dearies 

"[Wonderland and OUAT] are slightly out of sync, "Horowitz added. "I would say that we love the characters in [Wonderland] obviously, and would certainly be open to it down the line...Next year, perhaps."


Home Is Where Will's Heart Was
My guess at this point looking at the press release for "And They Lived..." is that Cyrus and Alice will end the series on a happily ever after note, which I'm thinking will include existing in the current or future Storybrooke, but not before introducing her family to Cyrus. As for characters like The Knave, Anastasia, Jafar, Lizard, and The Jabberwocky, I get the feeling there could be bits of cliffhanger and/or winks to other adventures left open. I'm thinking that Lizard might be the Queen that Wonderland maybe has yet to have (The White Queen?), thus righting Anastasia's and Will's wrongs in restoring Wonderland to a new potentially happy era. I think Amara will have to go back to The Well of Wonders and will have a heart felt goodbye with her sons who will then become free of their genie curse (and Will too of course).

The Return of Jafar

As for Jafar, I think he's too good of a villain for the Once writers to just kill off, but I suspect that he will experience the loss of his father which pushes him into some future Aladdin story and maybe the spin on this could be that Jafar becomes a genie by trying to revive his father (and this would be a mini parallel to OUAT by having another kind of 'recurse') and sent somewhere like Storybrooke or back to Agrabah.

Home Is Where Will's Heart Is
As for Will and Anastasia they are characters whom I think also could easily pan over into another series and/or continue to go on adventures together (and potentially maybe there's still a long con here with stealing something else). I don't think they'll stay in Wonderland, but I'm not sure they would go to Storybrooke either and I kind of hope that maybe they go to the Enchanted Forest or Oz allowing them to randomly turn up in an unexpected way (like maybe Will can go back to Robin Hood's Merry Men and depending on the timing, maybe Ana has a way to connect back with her sisters, assuming one of them may be Ashley/Cinderella)

What's Left To Fear
And lastly The Jabberwocky seems like she's going to be imprisoned again, but I'm still hopeful that she could be seen again in the future sometime also, since it appears her origin story will remain a mystery before the series ends.

The episode was another fun episode. I always like Alice best when she's with Will and the natural brother and sister dynamic they share. Although I doubt this would happen, it would be strange if Alice would in fact be Penelope and somehow both characters just didn't know it, -that she was adopted and fell through a portal at the lake. At any rate the idea of his sister also could provide evidence that there is still more story to tell with Will sometime. (also please note raised by another Bad Robot themes and Fringe reference below)

I personally hope that some of my theory could turn out to be the case. I never like series that are too tightly shut by their ends and prefer some things resolved and others left open to potential future events, especially in a spin off series like this, where these characters could have a life within Once Upon A Time down the line.

Once Upon A Time Factor:
Each review I will bring this section to mention things like crossovers, riffs, similar themes, contrasts, and tie-backs, which may also span into Bad Robot works as well, since OUAT already clearly references them. I watch a lot of TV with mythology however, and if any of you see something I missed, then please share with us in the comments below!

This week there's lots and lots of things to look at.

Who's Snow

The simplest thing  goes with seeing Alice in thief mode very much like Mary Margret/Snow White when she first meets Prince Charming/David.  And Anastasia's body is being kept in a glass coffin.

As mentioned in the opening paragraph and many times in other reviews, criminals and thieves are highly thematic to Once Upon A Time and LOST both, with the Knave having so many allusions to Sawyer and/or the series winking at Sawyerisms.

Caught In A Net

It's hard not to think of LOST again both the time Kate and Jack get caught in one of Danielle Rousseau's nets, in which later Sawyer takes as a euphemism for a tricky relationship and sexual tension.

But speaking of Danielle Rousseau and her nets, the Jabberwocky and Danielle are two characters who are seen as "a little crazy" and both who maybe ended up being alone a little too long. But really, going back to Sawyer for a moment, Sawyer is not all that wrong, as nets really can be used metaphorically to emphasize leading people down the garden path, a lack of freedom, and ideas centered around fate or quantum entanglement in relation to events and human relationships.

Just One Person Who Truly Loves Us

The first couple of episodes of the series I had also noticed allusions to The Knave with Desmond and Charlie Pace. In "Trust Me" The Knave told Alice that he couldn't swim and Alice had to go and save the Knave from drowning. In LOST's "White Rabbit" Charlie Pace utters a very similar line in which he says he doesn't swim. In both cases we find out later that both characters can actually swim, but for whatever reason lied about it.

In the Pilot episode "Down The Rabbit Hole" the Knave has a set of keys on a key chain with one to Granny's dinner in Storybrooke, which has a small scaled version of red converse sneakers attached. In the LOST episode, "Flashes Before Your Eyes", Desmond time travels and meets Eloise Hawking on the day he was going to propose to his girlfriend Penelope "Penny" Widmore. Thinking he can change events from his previous experience, he decides he wouldn't be a coward and actually do it this time, but efforts are cut short when Mrs. Hawking insists that Desmond can not change the past and that he must follow through what he did before. She shows him how she able to see the future, as a man with red converses sneakers dies while walking near a construction site. The scene itself is meant to allude the Wicked Witch of East scene in the 1939 film of Frank Baum's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. LOST had many allusions and references to Oz, as Bad Robot often references Oz to go with their 'stranger in a strangeland' concepts and themes. We learned that the Knave's sister was named Penelope and ties him to Desmond again and perhaps suggesting he is still a fail safe key to Wonderland's ending...

Note: The name Penelope also gives us shared Grecian references, including The Odyssey. Other Wizard of Oz references seen in Fringe, Revolution, Almost Human, and pre-Bad Robot Felicity)

The idea of Penelope possibly being Alice crossed my mind also because there is an allusion to Peter Bishop and Fringe as well, which in itself extends itself to John Kennex and Almost Human, as both John, Walter, and Peter (twice in Peter's case actually) have fallen through ice on lakes, but in Peter's case also relates to being stolen by another version of his father from a parallel universe!!

Destiny Is A Fickle Witch

Once Upon A Time and Once Upon A Time in Wonderland have both alluded and reference Oz, with Once Upon A Time now finally in Oz territory by introducing Zelena and her flying Monkeys into the series as Cora: The Queen of Hearts' other and first born daughter. It's a curious connection to me as well when not only is Cora the huge link between both series, but also because Frank L. Baum's Oz lore is so reminiscent to Lewis Carroll's Alice adventures and that the Once writers seemed to bank on that notion with the key chain, the dandy-LION, and brick roads...

Curiously Once Upon A Time's season 3 Finale episode title is also the same as three of LOST season 4 episode titles and Once Upon A Time in Wonderland's season 1 finale title goes hand in hand with a LOST season 6 title...I am really hoping that if we get another spin off that Once Upon A Time in Oz might be what we would get, considering none of the characters on Once upon A Time are said to go to Oz this season and I can easily see the Knave becoming the Tin Man, although he could just be an a counterpart to the actual character and we could just get into Oz at the beginning Once Upon A Time's season 4.

Note: LOST and Once's being raised by another themes and LOST's season 4 finale when we see how Kate ends up with Aaron. For some reason Zelana wants Snow's second in line and fans can't also help but speculate that Emma could be mascaraing as "Auntie Em"...(and we also have all this "Uncle Henry" business too!)

Root Cause

Additionally last week's Once Upon A Time Episode "The Tower" also acted like a counter part to things going on in Once Upon A Time in Wonderland. The story about how Charming was able to save Rapunzel all played on FEAR, in which characters such as Rapunzel and Charming had to confront a cloaked monster who appeared as themselves, suggesting that our fears really actually come from ourselves. In Wonderland this related to the abilities of the Jabberwocky, but also the episode, "Who's Alice" where Alice had to take a leap of faith and confront a child hood version of herself. The minion sent by Zelena climbing up the tower wall may also act as a reference to Nyxe via a shared allusion to Samara in the film, The Ring. 

But also Charming was looking for a special root that would make one "not fear" after having nightmares about protecting his second child. The color scheme of the cut roots with purple and clear dots  reminded me of the way the sky looked when Cyrus and Alice looked up at the stars in "Home" and thus I think it's intentional juxtaposition from micro and macro cosmic. This root would have been convenient for our Wonderland gang, but ultimately is meant to be one of those ironic things in which the audience tends to have more answers than any one character or group of people. It also acted as a contrast to magic size-changing mushrooms (magical herbs), and people who don't have hearts within themselves (heartless = fearless).

Last week and the begging of the series I had made some connections from Amy Acker's Root on Person of Interest. In "Root Path" she saved a guy named Cyrus Wells who believed in a metaphysical universe, but this week on the episode "Allegiance" we find out that the machine can have "ears" by calculating a person's step with a person's weights (like an algorithm). This is kind of similar to seeing Alice count all through out the episode.

Note: Person of Interest's season 3 finale is also sharing a LOST title.

Speaking of The Tower Alice's sword fight scene at the top of stairs between the dungeon and the thrown room was reminiscent to Miles Mathewson fighting Monroe Republic militia in the Pilot episode of Revolution

And as previously mentioned in other reviews, we touch on John Locke's idea about being "properly motivated" in order to reach one's destiny. And because the Island was about spiritual progress and life extension, there's a connection here too with idea of having second chances. -And the van Ben Linus used to move John Locke's body was labeled Canton Rainier an anagram for reincarnation. Anastasia's name also means reincarnation and the series has been chucked full of these LOST-like themes.

About the Author - Darthlocke4

Laura Becker (Darthlocke 4) is a long time commentator, TV addict, and aspiring writer participating with other fans on SpoilerTV. She writes reviews and analytic type articles. Some of her other interests include philosophy, cultural anthropology, reading, drawing, and working with animals, as she grew up and continues to work on her family's horse farm.