Rapunzel's New Quest (and My 200th Post!)

Today is a big day for both Rapunzel and The Princess Blog! The second season of Tangled: The Series kicked off this morning in a big way with a new name and an exciting special called Beyond the Corona Walls. The show itself appears to now be called Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure even though the URL still has "Tangled: The Series" in it, and it's still listed alphabetically under "T" on the Disney Now show page. I am so stoked to be able to write about this amazing premiere for my 200th post. The Princess Blog has come a long way since my 100th post. Even though I stopped updating every day, I've still had at least one new topic to write about each week. I started a YouTube channel, weekly book reviews, and a relaunch of all the books I wrote. I'm very excited to bring you all the latest princess news and reviews for another hundred posts!


Beyond the Corona Walls follows the open ending of the previous special, The Secret of the Sun Drop in which Rapunzel learned that her magical hair shared a connection with the mysterious spiky rocks that had been popping up throughout the series and decided to follow the path they laid out for her to see where they would lead her. The new season revealed that she teamed up with a lot of friends to go on this adventure. Besides her closest companions, Cassandra and Eugene, Lance Strongbow and Hook Foot, who were introduced in the first season, accompanied the group on the caravan pulled by Maximus and another palace horse along with the little old man from the movie as a stowaway. Rapunzel also has a new look for this season with a dark burgundy adventure dress that reminds me a lot of the one Odette wore for outings in the Swan Princess sequels. That's not the only similarity I found to The Swan Princess in this special. A duet sung by Rapunzel and Eugene in the second act called "If I Could Take that Moment Back" was very similar both visually and thematically to the Swan Princess romance theme "Far Longer Than Forever." Both songs were sung with a lot of emotion and alternated beautifully between the two characters who were separated from each other but longed to be together again. There was also a joke about a giant swan decoration during the wedding scene later on.


There were several new characters introduced in this special. The most surprising one was a woman named Stallion, who was apparently engaged to Eugene back in his Flynn Rider days when he allegedly left her at the altar. Stallion was the daughter of a rich baron from the first town Rapunzel's caravan stopped in. As soon as she saw Flynn Rider again, she was desperate to have him back, so her father resorted to poisoning Eugene's friend, Lance Strongbow, to convince him to marry Stallion. Marriage was also a big theme in this special. Eugene awkwardly proposed to Rapunzel for the second time in this series even though she still wasn't ready to settle down. Of course, they both regretted their actions later when he was forced to marry Stallion instead. It's very interesting to see a fairy tale series about a princess who isn't ready to commit yet when her lover can't wait to begin his life with her because it's usually the other way around. It shows just how modern of a take Tangled is on the "Rapunzel" fairy tale. Of course, in the original step, Rapunzel had already given birth to twins and wandered through the desert for a long time searching for her prince, so marriage was a pretty obvious next step when they were finally reunited.

The other important new character from this special was Adira, a badass samurai woman who apparently knew Rapunzel's father in her youth. It looks like Cassandra has some competition for the toughest woman in the series now. I just love how this show is chock-full of strong women! Adira has a very unique character design with her aged white hair and half her face painted in a possible homage to Mulan's iconic dual identity image from the song "Reflections." It's pretty clear that we will be seeing a lot more of Adira this season, as her story is far from over. She knows a lot about the Sun Drop Flower and the rocks that she isn't telling us, and she also has a history with Rapunzel's family. It's unclear at this point what her intentions are with Rapunzel. Even though she initially gets into a fight with Cassandra, she doesn't seem to want to hurt the main heroines of the show, or at least not yet. She imparted them with some advice for their quest, but the information that she chose to divulge was vague and full of holes. We may not learn the full story until the end of the season. I did notice that she pulled out a scroll near the end of the special that contained an image of the Sun Drop Flower, a purple moon-like symbol, and the rocks that they had been chasing down. I assume we will be learning about the moon item later since it's probably also connected to Rapunzel somehow like the flower and the rocks are.



Overall, Beyond the Corona Walls was very exciting and fun to watch. It had some great songs, and taught us a few things we didn't know about Eugene and the king's pasts. It also brought up plenty of questions that we will await answers to from future episodes this season. It was a clever idea for the series to take us outside the kingdom of Corona and show us other parts of Rapunzel's world that we have never seen before. This leaves plenty of room for new adventures without having to repeat storylines or get awkwardly creative like the Aladdin series did at times. I'm really excited to learn more about Adira, the rocks, and the new moon flower. Maybe by the time the third season starts, I'll have three hundred posts out for all of you to enjoy!

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