Once Upon a Fangirl...: The Serpent

In this episode, we learn the backstory of Jafar as a child in Agrabah in the streets, until he asks a sorceress named Amara to teach him magic. She agrees to & when he reaches adulthood, they realize their shared passion for power & become lovers. Their main goal is to search for 3 specific genie lamps in order to cast a spell that can defy the laws of magic so they can become the most powerful sorcerers in all the realms. However, as his obsession for power & ability to manipulate people gets the better of him as he ends up turning Amara into a serpent as he In present Wonderland, Alice & Will continue their quest to find Cyrus after discovering the White Rabbit's betrayal, until they are chased by poeple that work for the Caterpillar & Will ends up captured & taken for execution by the Red Queen/Anastasia & Jafar, although it seems the former may still have feelings for him. With the help of one of Will's friends Lizard, Alice manages to save him at the execution, but comes at a cost as she uses her first wish to save the Knave & that if he dies, so does she, which pretty much means Jafar is screwed. However, he finds a loophole by turning Will into stone & Alice is now helpless to save him without using a wish. Meanwhile, Cyrus manages to find a way of escaping from his prison by using wishbones & the power they hold after remembering a long known story to genies.
As you can tell, there'll be many similarities between Jafar & Rumple's backstories due to both of them being abandoned as children, being sorcerers, having a student/teacher romances, manipulating people & choosing power over love! I can't say that I didn't think OUAT did it much better, because Rumple was redeemable to an extent, while Jafar is downright evil with no redeeming qualities even with a tragic backstory as a child! He uses & kills innocent people, including Amara & honestly, isn't really that good of a villain compared to others. I will say though that it is pretty interesting to see his origins & his reasoning mostly stems from his hatred for his father the Sultan. I liked the addition of Lizard along with more of Anastasia & a bit of development from her as she still cares for Will. It also felt nice to kind of see Cyrus' plans to escape come to an end as after 4 episodes, it should be about time he's out of his prison! Overall, I liked it. I think by now I'm starting to get into the show as the characters are more likeable than before, the acting is slowly improving (although Naveen Andrews has a bit of a habit of hamming it up) & the story is finally progressing quicker now that Alice has more on her plate than just saving Cyrus!