Before the Happy Ending, there was more hair-raising adventure to be done!
I'm just going to go ahead and say your hair magically grew back, I'm not gonna ask how, obviously you don't want to tell me or else you wouldn't have tried to hide it from me so I won't ask how it grew back but tell me please how did it grow back!?
— Eugene, to Rapunzel
Tropes in this episode:
- Advancing Wall of Doom: Once Rapunzel touches the spikes, they start chasing her and Cassandra relentlessly.
- Agony of the Feet: The very first time Rapunzel ever wears shoes in her entire life, and they're high heels. Ouch.
- Almost Kiss: Between Rapunzel and Eugene twice; they are interrupted by Cassandra each time. They finally get to kiss in the end.
- Bait-and-Switch: It looked like Lady Caine wanted to target Rapunzel, but her sight was the King who locked away her father.
- Bittersweet Ending: Lady Caine is defeated and Eugene agrees to wait until Rapunzel is ready to tie the knot, but the King forbids her from leaving the kingdom without his permission. Arianna seems to promise, however, that she'll work on the King and Rapunzel strengthens her resolve to find out the secret to why the magic in her hair returned.
- Both Sides Have a Point: Both Eugene's and Rapunzel's feelings about their new life make a lot of sense. Having been a prisoner her whole life, no amount of wealth or love can make being locked up again worth it for Rapunzel. Eugene, by contrast, has spent his whole life broke and alone, making it hard for him to understand why living in luxury surrounded by people who care about you could be anything but pure bliss.
- Buffy Speak: When calling the attention of the nobles, Eugene doesn't know the female form of marquis, so he instead says "the female versions of those". note
- Captured on Purpose: Lady Caine's plan was for her cronies to intentionally get arrested, knowing that they'd be taken to the palace dungeons where Lady Caine, who's already infiltrated the palace under the guise of the Duchess of Quintonia, can let them out, allowing them to bypass the guards and strike from inside the palace.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The Duchess of Quintonia is one of the guests Rapunzel has to greet at the beginning, and leaves after making a snide remark. She returns in the narrative much later, because she's the infamous Lady Caine in disguise, who was spoken of a lot, but never seen until this moment.
- Diegetic Switch: "Life After Happily Ever After" starts out in the internal thoughts of Rapunzel before switching to herself, Eugene and Fredrick actually singing onscreen. Ditto for "Wind In My Hair" and its reprise.
- Disproportionate Retribution: After Rapunzel disappeared, the King cracked down on all vice and crime in the kingdom, even petty crooks. This was a tad overkill, and became Lady Caine's motivation when one petty thief included her dad.
- The Door Slams You: Lady Caine decides to make her exit once Rapunzel, Eugene, and Cassandra take out her thugs, and chooses to exit through the door the soldiers are currently trying to bash open. Cue said door being knocked down right on top of her.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: A ship can briefly be seen when the spikes seemingly react to Rapunzel and her hair regrows, hinting at the figure in The Stinger.
- Godzilla Threshold: Cassandra using her fighting skills and revealing herself to be a secret warrior was seen as an absolute last resort, as this double life of hers is a threat to her position as a lady-in-waiting.
- Gratuitous French: The inside cover to the journal Rapunzel gets from Arianna has an inscription reading "Plus est en vous", which is French for "There is more in you".
- Hair Flip: Rapunzel does one after taking off her wig revealing her newly grown long hair prior to stopping Lady Caine and her goons.
- Hair Reboot: Quite literally rebooted, too. Rapunzel's magical hair is restored by a blast of magic much like a jump-start. This soon becomes a problem for her because the cutting away of this hair was a symbolic growth of her choosing her freedom and individuality, and she ends up regressed back to a state of captivity. Rapunzel's goal for the series is to find out why this has happened.
- I Surrender, Suckers: The gang of criminals went about committing any sort of crimes, then suspiciously surrendered themselves to the guards without even putting up a fight. It was all part of Lady Caine's plan to invade the castle from the inside.
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: After learning that Rapunzel has her golden hair back but won't explain how that happened, Eugene urges her not to keep secrets from those she loves. Moments later:Queen Arianna: [calling from outside Rapunzel's room] Rapunzel, honey?
Eugene: [without missing a beat] Hide. Your. Hair. Woman! You gotta hide your hair! - Incredibly Long Note: Rapunzel hits a bunch of these during "Wind In My Hair".
- Irony: Throughout the movie, King Frederic spends time speaking about threats from outside the kingdom to his daughter, but the whole ordeal greatly demonstrates that the real danger comes from within, and despite his best efforts to curb it, he woefully underestimates the threat that poses.
- Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: When Rapunzel discards all her cumbersome royal getup to enter the fray in a tense situation, she immediately kicks off the high heels she had on, which is very justified because she could not walk in them at all.
- Misplaced Retribution: Lady Caine blames Rapunzel for her criminal father being arrested and taken from her. Why? Because it was her disappearance that caused her father to crackdown on all criminals, including her dad. Never mind that Rapunzel was kidnapped as a literal baby and held captive against her will.
- Mood Killer:
- Cassandra purposely ruins the moment between Rapunzel and Eugene in the boat.
- Again when Eugene has another moment with Rapunzel after her hair is restored. While Pascal and Maximus are moved by the scene, Cassandra frowns in disgust.
- Averted with Pascal when he sees that Rapunzel's hair is back; Eugene is shocked - Pascal just stares with a look of utter glee at the sight of it, having realised that something has happened, but there's nothing he can do about it and everything is all familiar again.
- Motor Mouth: Eugene after seeing Rapunzel's hair restored to its super long blonde locks again. He hurriedly tries to come to terms with the event, how it happened, why it happened, and trying to assure this changes nothing between them. Kudos to Zachary Levi for saying the entirety of the following spiel without stopping for a breath at any point.Eugene: Hoooo.... hoooo mama! Ha! Okay! Okay... this is new, I mean, no, not new, right? 'Cuz we've seen this, obviously, that whole magic thing is involved again. It was magic, right? Actually, you know what, you don't need to tell me. I'm just going to go ahead and say you hair magically grew back, I'm not gonna ask how, obviously you don't want to tell me or else you wouldn't have tried to hide it from me so I won't ask how it grew back but tell me please how did it grow back? Don't answer that. The important thing is you're okay. You are okay, right? Because as long as you're okay, I don't care what happened, I mean I care, obviously I care but I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation - WHERE IS THE WAR!? - that you'll share when you're ready!
- Mugging the Monster: It's a good thing Lady Caine didn't know that Rapunzel is a Pintsized Powerhouse and has experience in hand to hand combat.
- Never Trust a Trailer: Most of the trailers play up the parts where Rapunzel's hair grows back; while this does indeed happen, it doesn't occur until the second half of the movie.
- Oh, Crap!: Rapunzel has a rather huge one when she realizes her hair has magically grown back.
- Ominous Latin Chanting: Plays while Rapunzel and Cassandra are running from the rocks when they suddenly sprout up behind them and when Rapunzel's hair magically grows back.
- Painful Rhyme: Acknowledged as Eugene tries to sing something that rhymes with his surname of "Fitzherbert".
- Pet the Dog: Lady Caine allows Cassandra to pick up the candleholder she's using as a weapon in their fight.
- Posthumous Narration: As is standard for the franchise, this is played for humor. Eugene declares it's the story of how he died... and went to heaven, with Rapunzel objecting to the hyperbolic description of their new life.
- Precision-Guided Boomerang: Rapunzel gives Eugene a frying pan which he uses a shield against one very large thug's sword. When two more thugs show up to surround him, he throws it Captain America style, somehow bouncing it off their heads to knock all three thugs out.
- Prefers Going Barefoot: While in the original movie it was more of a peculiarity about Rapunzel going barefoot, this pilot pokes fun at it by showing how someone mocks her for not wearing shoes while being royal, her wiggling her toes on the ground because they are free, and Rapunzel has apparently never worn shoes before period when it turns out she has no ability to walk in anything besides her bare feet.
- Rejected Marriage Proposal: Rapunzel turns Eugene's proposal down. It's not a flat "no," however, just a "no, not yet," which he agrees to, though he doesn't understand why.
- Revenge: Lady Caine's father was a petty thief locked up after Frederic went to town on the kingdom's criminal element, and her attack in the opening movie is based off of revenge for that.
- Revenge by Proxy: Adding to the above, Lady Caine seems to blame Rapunzel herself just as much for causing the king to crack down on crime, just because she was kidnapped as a baby!
- The Stinger: The last shot of the movie before the credits is a P.O.V. Cam of someone staring at the black rocks surrounding the tablet that Rapunzel and Cassandra examined earlier.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- While Rapunzel is a Magnetic Hero and overall nice person, she has never had proper social interactions with anyone other than Pascal and Mother Gothel for eighteen years, and six months after that, she's only interacted with her parents and Eugene. So, when she meets visiting aristocrats she does some mildly inappropriate things.
- The king and queen try to give Rapunzel constant princess lessons to make up for eighteen years of lost time. It's not enough to make her Silk Hiding Steel.
- As many a statistics expert can say, cracking down on parents that commit petty crimes won't endear people to the authorities nor offer much familial stability.
- Having spent eighteen years not knowing where your daughter was or if she was even alive can do a number on your psyche. King Frederic's over-protectiveness may be overkill, but it's not unrealistic given the circumstances.
- Although Eugene's marriage proposal is well-meaning, Rapunzel turning it down is natural. Someone who's been imprisoned the first 18 years of their life is bound to feel anxious at any indication they'll be bound to one place for the remainder of their lives. However, this one's partially averted with the fact that she is not against marrying Eugene - she actually looks thrilled when he asks. It's the "never leaving the castle again, ever" thing that's the problem.
- Rapunzel went from being kept prisoner in a tower to being thrown into the incredibly restrictive role of princess, with an overbearing father who won't let her leave his sight without armed guards. This essentially means the events of the movie are still her only days of actual freedom she's ever had. Naturally, she is very antsy and dying to have just a single hour to herself.
- Triumphant Reprise: Following a brief Dark Reprise of "Life After Happily Ever After", Rapunzel sings an upbeat reprise of "Wind in My Hair" as she prepares to face the world one obstacle at a time.
- Underestimating Badassery: Caine underestimates both Rapunzel and Cassandra, which really comes back to bite her.
- Ungrateful Bastard: King Frederic comes off as this at the end after Rapunzel, Eugene, and Cassandra repel the bandit infiltration in the castle, in the process saving him and the other nobles. Rather than see that his daughter can obviously handle herself and that perhaps he may have been too overprotective, Frederic instead confines her to the kingdom more strictly than before.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Lady Caine disguised herself as the Duchess of Quintonia, but that raises the question of what happened to the real Duchess, if she even existed.
- You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With: Lady Caine says this after her defeat to Rapunzel. Rapunzel is not impressed.
