Miscommunication and Tragedy: My Thoughts on the Tangled Season One Finale

Tangled: The Series is quite a feat. It pays homage to when Disney would make regular spinoffs of their animated features. We get music, magic, and mystery.

I have to confess I wasn’t interested in the show when I saw it. The animation was very bright and sparkly, reminding me of late 1990s and early 00s Disney, which wasn’t bad, but slowly sliding into “okay” territory before we got the weird age of the middle 2000s. Mandy Moore and Zach Levi give it all their pipes, but the story wasn’t strong enough to win my attention span for an hour.

Then a new character caught my eye. He appeared in the second episode as a teenage alchemist. His name was Varian, he liked inventing, and he was destructive while wanting to improve people’s lives and impress his father. He won me over, and I decided to watch the series for him.

From here on out, we will be talking about the Tangled season one finale. So, in case you need a warning .. .

Spoiler Zone

All good? Then we proceed.

Fandom Context

Back between 2009-16, four movies caught the eye of animation fans: How to Train Your Dragon, Tangled, Brave, and Rise of the Guardians. Each of these movies featured a compelling lead — I will fight anyone who claims Merida is worth less than the others — who were teens fighting devastating situations. While the movies varied in quality, they held our attention. Fandom decided to create worlds were they intersected.

This crossover was called the Big Four. Copyright could never let it happen; Dreamworks spawned from its founder’s hatred of Disney, and besides which Pixar strives to create a separate identity. The creators were aware of it, however: the art, the fanfiction, and the music.

Varian’s Appeal

Varian reminds one of Hiccup Haddock from How to Train Your Dragon. Hiccup in the film is a well-meaning destructive inventor who seeks to impress his father and ends up changing lives for the better. The difference is that Hiccup uses dragons, and Varian uses alchemy.

Varian is also one of us, a member of the audience. He is a fan of Flynn Rider, insists on treating the Lost Princess of Corona with respect, and has a crush on Rapunzel’s lady-in-waiting Cass. (Well, I don’t have a crush on Cass but Flynn I completely agree.) He has a shrine to Flynn’s thief persona, and shows him a potentially dangerous secret. When we were teens we all messed up, and I can say trying to impress a parent is tiring.

Besides all that, Varian was a character who had potential to grow. He slowly learns to work smarter, not harder, or so we hope. Then we got to the mid-season finale, where Varian’s experiments to stop magic spikes from endangering his village go wrong and entrap his father. When Rapunzel couldn’t help him save Quirin, Varian swears revenge and decides to deceive the princess to get what he needs.

A few friends and I reacted in this way:

We kept watching, hoping this was just teen angst. Varian would realize he’s being foolish, and Rapunzel would help him rescue Quirin.

No. That did not happen. Varian nearly kills Rapunzel’s friends and family to get revenge, and fails completely to save his father. Now he’s branded a traitor, imprisoned and brooding in a prison. He crossed lines he didn’t need to cross. And we, the audience, are stunned.

I feel like I shouldn’t need to say this, but here we are:

Trying to Make Varian a Bad Guy Doesn’t Work!

There are a number of reasons why you don’t turn the copyright-friendly Hiccup who’s been nothing but friendly into a devastating villain that commits treason:

There are already a number of great villains in the show

You have the spikes, which are endangering livelihoods and residents of Corona, Lady Caine from the pilot movie, and various spirits and residents with ulterior motives. In fact, using Lady Caine would make more sense since, I don’t know, she appeared in the pilot movie. The spikes themselves are devastating to Corona. They are faceless. But no, we instead got the cutest and most-beloved character turned into a villain.

 

Making Varian evil is like giving a middle finger to the Big Four

I understand this was not the writers’ intentions. Disney compared to other companies is nurturing of fandom, and tries to involve viewership as much as possible. Regardless, this plot development hurts. It feels like you ignored why people made the Big Four in the first place. It made me scream on the inside at the seeming betrayal.

Varian’s transition into evil wasn’t written well

This again wasn’t the intention of the writers. They wanted to sell us a villain story. I don’t know why Varian had to be the season one finale. To motivate him to commit treason, the writers made him lose his father, have others reject him when he came for help, and become desperate enough to lie to get the tools he thinks he needs to save Quirin. He never needed to lie; Rapunzel was willing to help Varian, and kept saying they could work together. His betraying her was senseless, impractical, and lacked all the pragmatism needed.

 

Writers, I’m hurt and disappointed. You had a perfectly good character and turned him into a mess. We want to believe in Varian redemption, but now I’m not sure if I want to watch season two after how you massacred his character. Forget the magic hair plot and Cass’s griping with Eugene; this kid was the reason I was watching.

You can do better. I hope that you do.