Tangled Twists
It's been a rough week, and what better way to unwind than to ramble for several pages about a children's cartoon?
But seriously, y'all. Tangled the Series is one of those shows that oscillates between being incredibly entertaining and incredibly frustrating....and never was that dichotomy more in play than during season 3.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS TURN BACK NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS
If you know, you know what the biggest problem in season 3 was: no, not the fallout from the Eugene backstory reveal at the end of season 2 (although I am not the biggest fan of that either). No, it was the handling of another backstory reveal entirely: Cassandra, as Gothel's daughter, going full villain at the advice of Zhan Tiri (the ghost of Zhan Tiri in Lolita cosplay? Unclear???)
Now, I have no problem with Cassandra being the surprise villain of the series or even with her being manipulated by Zhan Tiri in general, details aside. But I do have a MAJOR problem with the illogical and frankly boring plot twist that she is Gothel's child. This is not to say that I didn't see it coming--it's a fairly common twist for shows like these and the hints were not, shall we say, subtle...but I was hoping that was just a misdirection for the show's real, exciting, timeline-friendly shock moment instead.
Let's do a quick rundown of the main issues with this twist:
As the story goes, Gothel is a wicked crone who has retained youth for hundreds of years by the time she kidnaps Rapunzel as a newborn. Cassandra is allegedly four years older than Rapunzel and Gothel's biological daughter. How on God's green earth can a woman who is literally a song away from turning into dust still be able to bear a child? WHO COULD THE FATHER EVEN BE??? He's never mentioned beyond the fact that Cassandra does not know who he is. And that means Gothel spent four years raising a child (albeit as her live-in maid) before kidnapping Rapunzel out of necessity after the flower was picked. Gothel is shown not to love or care for Cassandra in the least, so why would she bother to endure the newborn, toddler, and elementary phases of child-rearing just to have a servant? Wouldn't it have been easier, more in character, and more...idk, age-appropriate for Gothel to just kidnap a random orphan to clean her house? There seem to be a ton of unsupervised kids running around...
Now that we're caught up, let's grit our teeth for a moment and say Cassandra is Gothel's daughter. So she sees the flashback, per Zhan Tiri's magic, of Gothel abandoning her and absconding with newborn Rapunzel instead. Why would Cass of all people immediately believe that? Even if you ignore that her characterization has made her incredibly suspicious and loathe to trust others for multiple seasons, the scene comes during an episode where the entire group is fighting their way through a house of illusions run by an evil guy who, like Zhan Tiri, is a creepy ghost thing wearing a harmless facade. This is after narrowly escaping a mirror universe in the same mansion where FAKE VERSIONS of themselves had tried to take over their lives. Why would Cassandra, a person who rarely trusts people even when confronted with evidence that she should, be so apt to believe that was what happened? Just because she was mad at Rapunzel? I don't think that's a strong enough excuse.
And another thing--why would believing Zhan Tiri's story incite Cassandra to put the blame on LITERAL NEWBORN Rapunzel for "stealing" Gothel's motherly love? Gothel only kidnapped Rapunzel for the magic, which Cassandra knows. And even if Gothel had done it to 'replace Cass with a more perfect daughter' or something, Rapunzel's kidnapping consisted of 18 years of abuse, culminating in having to watch her mother stab her boyfriend and have him die in her arms. Sure, she brought him back to life, but that's still some traumatic icing on the trauma cake. Why should Cassandra be jealous of that? By all accounts, Cassandra was lucky to be abandoned by Gothel when she was. She was raised by a loving adoptive father who allowed her to train as a Guard, even though it appears women aren't even allowed into the profession. She knows the ins and outs of palace life to the point where she gets the special job of teaching the princess about them, getting a front row seat to just how stunted being locked away in the tower made Rapunzel. She has the freedom to leave the palace and to travel alone, which Rapunzel couldn't do in the tower and still can't do now that she's home. Sure, being thrust into a handmaiden role when that's not what she wants is annoying, but she was given several outs throughout the series, such as in "Challenge of the Brave" when those warrior women invite her to join their clan, and she chooses to turn them down. She then gets to ditch handmaiden duties to follow Rapunzel on her super special journey to save the kingdom as her personal guard, which is not only a promotion but also proof that the King trusts her more than anyone else. Not to say she didn't have her struggles (especially with the burnt arm), but come on.
If the show wanted to make Cassandra's jealousy in this particular instance impactful, they could have done a better job of making Cassandra misunderstand Rapunzel's experience and/or giving Cass a concrete reason to think her life with Gothel would have been better--a blurry flashback where Gothel ignores and abandons her doesn't cut it. Cassandra is a flawed character, and certainly isn't always fair to others, but I don't think she's so far gone that her main motivation for her rift with Rapunzel would boil down to "my mom chose to abuse you instead of me!!!" Especially when there is so much tension between Cass and Rapunzel already. Before the reveal, we had a great storm of issues like broken trust, being friends despite a power dynamic, Rapunzel's growing desire for independence clashing with Cassandra's growing insecurity, and perhaps most importantly, the realization that Cassandra has physically suffered and has put her own dreams on hold so that Rapunzel can live her dreams instead while Rapunzel gets the friends/lover/power/everything while Cassandra has to 'wait in the wings'. Why would the writers pick what is frankly a weaker motivation when there was already so much there?
And to make a point about Cass's assertion that Rapunzel was 'stealing her destiny', well, Rapunzel being kidnapped didn't have anything to do with that either. She would have magic hair whether or not Gothel had abandoned Cassandra, and that's why she is involved in the prophecy at all. Gothel could have raised Cassandra with or without kidnapping Rapunzel and her destiny (and Cassandra's lack thereof) would have remained the same. I get that Cass is a gloryhound + she was already mad at Rapunzel and looking for a way to express it, but the justification for her leaning into her dark side wasn't very well-written.
So, because I haven't rambled enough...let's explore some alternate twists that could have been a stronger direction for the show to take!
TWIST 1: Cassandra is possessed
I'll admit that this idea isn't the most interesting as far as Cassandra's character development goes, as you can't really be held responsible for what happens while you're possessed. Also, it would be tough to justify why Cass of all people would be the one chosen for possession--sure, Rapunzel trusts her enough to keep her close, but not to the degree she does Eugene or Pascal. But it takes care of the motivation problem and would explain why Cass is so dang violent when she's in villain mode (which, let's talk about for a minute--she literally tries to kill them multiple times with those rocks and then in the finale she's like "I wasn't trying to hurt anyone"--girl what????). It's preferable to the similar theory of Cassandra getting trapped beyond the mysterious door and an evil lookalike taking her place--poor girl had a whole song about sitting on the sidelines, I would hate for her to spend a season as a sitting duck. There's a lot of ways this could go too. Maybe Cass gets possessed by Zhan Tiri in the weird room or by Gothel (so retraumatizing for Rapunzel and Eugene and Pascal!). Or to spice it up, maybe Cass was possessed by Zhan Tiri or some other corrupting evil forces when Rapunzel burned her hand--now that gives us some of that "maybe this is Rapunzel's fault" flavoring that could lead to the kind of conflict the writers were trying to cook up.
TWIST 2: In the room, Cass was shown what would have happened if Rapunzel had never come back to Corona (her “destiny”) and it included the opal somehow.
So let's take my qualm from earlier about Rapunzel's destiny being the same regardless of her kidnapping and alter it. Maybe Zhan Tiri shows a vision where Rapunzel never returns, the black rocks still attack, and Cassandra is tasked with finding the opal. In this alternate timeline, Cassandra uses her skill and ingenuity to fix the problem and returns a hero, finally getting the spotlight that she so desperately wants.
This twist has the benefit of building off a character trait we've seen Cassandra possess early on--her increasing desperation for glory. She would have reason to believe Zhan Tiri (whether or not the vision is real) because she contradicts her better judgment to serve that desire. Audiences know this from "Challenge of the Brave" when she hides Rapunzel's frying pan before the fight in the hopes it will make her lose (despite the fact that that's cheating and also that doing such a thing could have caused her so-called friend serious harm or even death) and never admits to it. Another benefit to this twist is that it gives her a solid reason (in her mind) to blame Rapunzel--if she had never returned, Cass would have gotten to be the hero instead of a forgotten sidekick. Now there's villain origin story!
TWIST 3: Zhan Tiri reveals that the king caused a problem by giving the queen the flower to heal her. Cassandra’s parents did the same thing with the opal; that’s why it was Cassandra's destiny to take it.
This one requires more rewriting of the series' arc but why not? The show has displayed several instances where Rapunzel's dad makes bad decisions, and "Rapunzel: Day One" exhibited how messing with magic can have unintended consequences. Gothel herself is a great example of how the sundrop's healing power can actually be harmful when relied on too heavily. Maybe uprooting the flower whole instead of taking a single petal created an imbalance of magic, and that's why black rocks are plaguing the city. Cassandra is an orphan because she is the Dark Princess, and when her parents tried to use the opal for healing at Cassandra's birth, they destroyed the kingdom entirely. This means Cassandra is to the opal as Rapunzel is to the sundrop, and that's why she decides to take the opal at the end of season 2--because it's her destiny.
Once again, this plotline would take a lot of work to fit it within the already established canon of the show, but that can be seen as a positive aspect when you consider how it can create new connections to characters and their motivations that were kind of tossed aside in canon. For example, it would give new weight to Quirin's shiftiness about the rocks--maybe he saw what went down with Cassandra's parents in the Dark Kingdom and then still encouraged the king to do the same to save the queen despite the consequences. Boom--now we know why he and the king only talk about the rocks in secret and why he appears to know so much yet say so little. Both of them seem pretty questionable morals-wise anyway. And it gives a good opportunity to flesh out more of Adira's intentions as well--maybe the conflict between Cassandra and Adira combined with Adira's evasiveness about her role in their journey was all because Cass needed to fulfill her destiny, and it was Adira’s job to make sure it happened?
Furthermore, this twist would take advantage of the parallels already drawn between Rapunzel and Cassandra's characters and further enhance the contrasts between them. It would explain why Cassandra would betray their group, maintain a reasonably mysterious backstory for her, and the series ending could remain largely the same since the opal would still be damaged and Zhan Tiri would still be able to steal it.
TWIST 4A: The stone corrupts the person who touches it. Cass was saving Rapunzel by grabbing it first.
This is one of my favorite theories because it allows a double whammy of "Cass betrayed us!" and then "Oh no she didn't, Cass saved us!" Cass gets to play the hero, as she's been chomping at the bit to do all season, and after a season's worth of angst, we are of course saved in the end by the power of friendship. This storyline also uses the ominous history of the opal and its destructive tendencies to an advantage, and avoids the unfortunate pratfall that the canon fell into...you know, the one where their message about friendship got distorted into accidentally encouraging kids to refrain from enacting healthy boundaries with violent former friends because loving someone means allowing them to keep hurting you?
This also feels more like a genuine twist. The contention between Rapunzel and Cass has been building for several seasons and we are poised--thanks to that warning from Vigor--to view Cassandra as most likely to betray the group right up to when she actually does it. (Sorry, I don't think anyone was fooled by the "Eugene wouldn't let us in so he's who the warning was about!" red herring.) What a cool twist it would be, to make the audience think everything was going exactly what they thought it would, only for the next episode to turn everything upside down! And if we have to include the secret door, we can just say that Cass saw saving Rapunzel was her destiny and that's why she was acting all weird.
TWIST 4B: The prophecy means Rapunzel needs to kill whoever the moon opal possesses, and Cassandra decided to martyr herself and thinks that appearing to be “evil” would make it easier for Rapunzel to do what needs to be done.
Basically the same thing as the previous twist, but with an extra dose of martyrdom and even more opportunity for the power of friendship to save us! Normally I would say this kind of plot is a little dark for a kid's show, but the movie already had Eugene get stabbed onscreen and Gothel fall out of a window and die, so. And how poetic for Cass, who has been upset about Rapunzel not trusting her for two seasons, to realize that she should have trusted that Rapunzel would always find a way to avoid hurting her friends, even friends who appear to be "evil."
TWIST 5: Eugene, as the Dark Prince, is the true wielder of the opal. Cass chooses to take it instead.
To be fair, the reason this this "twist" makes so much sense is because it's rooted in canon. Even though in the show Rapunzel is supposed to harness the powers of both the opal and the sundrop, it still makes sense that Eugene, as the heir to the Dark Kingdom, could also harness the power of the opal and work together with Rapunzel to unite the magic in some other way. We know this thanks to Demantius’ whole spiel about Eugene being the moon--not just the representation of the opal, but also the Dark Kingdom. Of course, we also know the consequences of someone other than Rapunzel touching it--Edmund lost an arm AND a kingdom to that thing, y'all.
The idea of Cassandra putting the pieces of Eugene's destiny together and taking the opal first is what makes this twist so fun, because regarding her motivation, we can go one of two ways: petty or self-sacrificial. Petty is that Cassandra couldn’t stand the thought of Eugene getting the glory, especially because he’s also the Dark Prince. She's already sidelined by Rapunzel on the regular, she's not going to be the ultimate third wheel! And wouldn't that just be a kick in the teeth after Eugene so graciously included her in his would-be-duet of "With You By My Side" with Rapunzel and made it a trio song!
The self-sacrificial option is that the opal would corrupt Eugene and because Cassandra knows Rapunzel loves him more than anything (and hey, she even kind of loves him too as a friend), she puts herself at risk instead. Which, you know, less funny than the petty option but 10/10 for friendship vibes--aw Cass, you really do care!
The main caveat of this twist for me personally is that I don't like that Eugene is the Dark Prince at all, lol. But I do really enjoy the frenemy-ship that Cassandra and Eugene have, so either petty or self-sacrificial would work for me!
TWIST 6: Cass is descended from the Saporian royals that would have taken control of the kingdom had the king and queen not fallen in love and started the new royal line that led to Rapunzel. Rapunzel’s destiny was always supposed to be hers.
Well, I will spare you more Tangled-related rants, at least for now, and end this ramble here. If you made it to the end, thank you for reading! <3
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