Pascal’s Backstory

So it seems that Pascal is Disney’s version of Moses, except I don’t think Moses’ mother died immediately after saving him. It really was such a tragic backstory for Pascal. First his mother died, then he almost drowned, then he got poisoned and almost died. Poor thing. I do like how Toddler Rapunzel refers to Pascal as a frog, which is a great callback to the original movie.

Rapunzel and Pascal

I really love how they practically addressed what I’ve been complaining about: Pascal having been reduced to a background character and not really interacting with characters other than being Rapunzel’s shoulder decoration. I’m really glad Pascal got an episode focused on his relationship with Rapunzel. Also I love how angry Rapunzel got when Cass and Eugene suggested that they pause the search for Pascal. I honestly got chills.

I thought that Lance pretty much coaxing Pascal into running away was interesting, mostly because I don’t know where he came from. He just showed up and I was so confused. Like does he live in Corona now? I mean I like his character, but he just showed up and I was like, “He’s still here?!” Also Pascal looking through the journal and seeing that Rapunzel’s life is different with more people involved was heartbreaking. BTW it was good to see that Rapunzel is actually filling the pages of the journal. I was wondering if we would ever see it again.

It was nice to see the tower again. I love how disturbed Eugene and Rapunzel were when they saw it. I mean not a lot of good events happened in this tower—of course besides the growth of the bond between Rapunzel and Pascal. Also the joke about Eugene dying in the same place twice was hilarious. I do have one question: did the King know they went to the tower? I mean he is against them going outside the kingdom walls, right? They probably sneaked out, which is awesome. Rebellion for the sake of friendship. I can roll with that.

Seeing Pascal outsmart the snake was amazingly unexpected. I honestly thought that Pascal was going to get bitten and then we would have an identical scene to when they first met. But I do like this different outcome. It really shows that times are different now. It was also nice to see that Pascal and Rapunzel didn’t have a fight, because it isn’t really Rapunzel’s fault that she’s busy all the time and Pascal knows this. He misses the simpler times. Although I would argue that it is always important to make time for the special people in your life. Also those sketchbook drawings at the end of the episode while the “Friendship Song” played were also a nice callback to the ending of the original movie.

I really love how faithful they are to the source material and that they are giving one of our animal characters some time to shine. Hopefully we get a Maximus-focused episode, because he too has suffered from backgrounditis.