Headscratchers / Tangled: The Series

• How did Rapunzel get her golden healing hair back? It's cut at the end of Tangled and remains cut for Tangled Ever After, and this show is stated to be in between. Status Quo Is God, perhaps?
  • It seems the return of Rapunzel's hair to being extremely long will be the focus of an early episode, likely the first one. How it becomes short again for Ever After is another mystery.
  • It might even be its own story arc, judging from the premier movie. Looks like they're going to make it a major plot point instead of just glossing over it.
  • Confirmed, the first episode has Rapunzel touching spikes that sprouted up at the spot where the magical flower was originally, which regrows her hair. Her hair being back is a major plot point, plus it's lost its healing powers and is now impossible to cut. How it's short again for Ever After hasn't been explained yet but it's clearly something they're exploring.
  • To be fair, the explanation could be that, since Rapunzel's wedding clearly has guests from outside of Corona attending and since Rapunzel's hair regrowing wouldn't be common knowledge to them, Rapunzel is wearing a wig. That would also appease Frederic's concerns that his daughter would be targeted again for her magical hair, hence why he'd give permission for out-of-country guests to attend, and it also would explain Rapunzel's short hair during her cameo in Frozen. Of course, that leads to the Fridge Logic of how all that hair would fit under a short brown wig...
    • Alternately, by the time the series ends, her hair could be back to "normal" again somehow
  • "Beginnings" reveals that her powers in the series are actually derived from the Moonstone. Doesn't explain why her hair is blonde again though.
    • She does still have the Sundrop within her, as shown by her ability to use the fourth incantation. The main thing she lost when her hair was first cut was the ability to use healing incantation.
• If Uncle Monty hates green, why does he wear green pants?
• When Eugene is put on guard duty, there's only one prisoner in the dungeon. What happened to Lady Caine and her cronies?
  • Maybe there's a proper jail somewhere else that they got moved to, and the castle dungeon is only meant to be a temporary holding place?
  • Cassandra v. Eugene shows the dungeon had two levels, as the Stabbington brothers were kept in the cell directly below where Cassandra and Eugene were. When Eugene was a guard, the Captain probably just dropped him off at the upper dungeon level rather than going down an extra floor. It might be that long-term prisoners like Lady Caine and the Stabbington brothers are kept in the lower, more secure cells, while temporary or less dangerous prisoners are kept in the upper cells.
  • Also supported by the fact that the Captain still doesn't like or trust Eugene, so of course he's not going to have him in charge of really important prisoners.
  • A later episode also mentions a prison barge. They might be there.
• We only have Lady Caine's word that her father was merely a petty thief who was treated far too harshly. As someone who both has a criminal father, as well as being the leader of a criminal gang, is her word on the subject reliable?
  • No. You don't have to believe her.
• Is there any non-marketing reason why Rapunzel's hair grew out again? From what I can tell, it doesn't have its healing powers anymore, so why have it be brought back at all? Why not just leave her as a brunette for the show?
  • Because A: It's iconic, and B: It gives them a good jumping-off point for a Myth Arc.
  • Even if it doesn't have healing powers, it's still the absolute best weapon and safety device Rapunzel can have, given its prehensileness. Forget the frying pan; Rapunzel's hair is the strongest weapon in Corona and beyond. Rapunzel wouldn't have survived her adventures (especially during the 2nd and 3rd seasons, when things get serious and dangerous) without her hair.
• Although I know Tangled Ever After was probably made long before work began on this series, and thus the character of Cassandra hadn't been made yet, but how will they provide an in-universe explanation for her not being at the wedding in the short?
  • Most likely they'll just handwave it that she was there but just happened to never be on-screen.
  • Any chances she did show up at the wedding but wasn't spotted by the viewers because they didn't know her yet? Like some Early-Bird Cameo as a background character.
  • The Season 2 finale might be a good indicator...
    • The Season 3 finale gives an even better one. She may have not come at all, or was watching secretly from a distance.
• Why did Rapunzel decide to take Shorty along on her quest in season 2? He's like the single least useful person to have along on a dangerous quest to another kingdom.
  • She didn't. He stowed away and it took some time before he was discovered.
  • Rapunzel's not about to kick someone out because they're useless. Or admit that they're useless.
  • Plain Doylist explanation: they needed a Plucky Comic Relief character, because Season 2 was (mostly) darker and serious than season 1.
• In “Race to The Spire”, why would Zhan Tiri use the shapeshifting cloak if they’re already a shapeshifting demon?
  • Maybe she currently can't use her shape-shifting? Instead of being able to use it at any time, there's a time limit where she has to stay in her current form until the next time when she can pick another form.
    • Her little girl form does seem to be based on the form we see in a flashback of her and Demanitus. So she's not really a shapeshifter at all, she's just has a sealed form and a true form.
• After "A Tale of Two Sisters", why does Gothel even have a daughter? She obviously didn't want her.
  • Maybe it was a way for her to affirm her own eternal youth to herself? Biologically, Gothel would normally have been way past her childbearing years. With the sundrop's power, however, she could return to her physical prime. She may have decided to get pregnant and carry the baby to term in order to test the waters of how "real" the sundrop's rejuvination of her was, and in order to stroke her own vanity for being a young woman once more. Alternatively, she didn't realize that she'd be able to get pregnant once again, and just got impregnated by accident while using her newfound good looks to seduce men.
  • We're assuming she had a choice in the matter. Gothel possessed a flower that restored her to the prime of her youth, she presumably took full advantage of that (so to speak), and the movie and series are set in a period of history where methods of birth control/abortion were largely unreliable at best. She very likely conceived by accident and had little choice but to carry the pregnancy to term.
    • But not choosing an abortion because of how unsafe that then was, doesn't explain why she didn't give Cassandra up for adoption (or even flat-out dumped the baby at an orphanage, or even worse abandoned the baby to die after its birth—she's ruthless and malignant enough to be capable of that). Remember the flashback where we see Cassandra with her as a kid, Gothel only seems to be annoyed by Cassandra, and not capable to derive anything positive from Cassandra's existence.
    • She kept Cassandra to use as slave labor, somebody's got to clean and fix things and Gothel's not going to do it unless she has to. Cassandra probably wasn't even the first child she'd had.
  • There are abusive narcissists like Gothel in the real world that have kids. Commonly they'll do it to stroke their own egos in various ways. Young children idolize their parents, which Gothel would clearly value. Free labor is another reason, which she was obviously using Cassandra for. They tend to see their kids as extensions of themselves and not people in their own right, making their kids' accomplishments their own. Even into adulthood, Gothel would have continued to manipulate Cassandra, guilt tripping her if she ever tried to be anything but exactly what Gothel wanted her to be. She probably would have killed her eventually so she wouldn't question her mother's eternal youth.
  • I think she had a child for that very reason, she's a narcissist with a huge ego who needs to limit her social interactions as much as a possible. She needs someone to alleviate her loneliness and stroke her ego, and a child is devoted, dependent and under her control.
• What I really don't understand is, why is it such a harsh thing for Rapunzel to be forbidden from leaving Corona? Granted, it's not exactly the size of Russia, but it's a fairly big area all the same, and she's got free reign over the entire place—okay, it's traversable within a single night on horseback, but it's still pretty darn big. Heck, she's not even forbidden from leaving the city or the castle! (I don't know how to put a spoiler tag on so I'll leave it at that for now.) Maybe it's the symbolic element that hurts most, and that's understandable, but saying "You can't leave the borders of (e.g.) Prussia" is a heck of a lot different from saying "You're confined to about 500 square feet of tower for the rest of your natural life". I dunno, you'd think someone'd bring it up...
• Does Rapunzel's nightmare about Gothel in the second episode have any meaning? Like foreshadowing Cassandra's Face–Heel Turn.
• What was written on the note Quirin was holding when he was encased in amber?
• Where was Quirin when Varian, his own son was kidnapped Cassandra in "Cassandra's Revenge"?
• What did Cassandra eat at the beginning of season 3? The series makes it look like she was alone in the castle with only Owl and the Enchanted Girl for company, training all the time, and didn't leave it until "Beginnings".

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