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Recap / Disenchantment - S1 E10: "Dreamland Falls"

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"I have nothing left to lose."

"Summon the army! This kingdom is under the attack of a ruthless enemy that will stop at nothing: my wife!"
Zog

Immediately following the last episode's shocking events, Elfo is dead. However, Bean had just used the Elixir of Life in hopes of reviving either her fallen friend, or her late mother Dagmar. Bean ultimately chooses her mother, causing Dagmar to turn back into flesh after years of being petrified as a stone statue. The entire kingdom happily receives Dagmar back as their rightful queen and throw a party to them, but they forget about their current queen, Oona, who is angered by Dagmar's presence and everyone's — including her husband's — preference towards her.

Bean tells the story about what happened to Elfo to Dagmar who says that they'll throw a fitting funeral for him. In the following day, a grieving court goes to Elfo's funeral, including Tess, who returns Luci the crystal ball given to her by Elfo, but they forget to bring Oona together, causing tensions between her and Dagmar to rise to the point where they start a physical struggle that causes Elfo's body to be thrown into the ocean and Bean to turn against Oona.

A meeting on the court ensues, where Zog must decide one queen to keep with him. While he is in love with Dagmar and she is loved, Odval argues that Oona is an important part of an already flimsy alliance with Dankmire, outside, Oona overhears Pendergast say that she has outlived her usefulness and swears against it.

In the night, Dagmar and Zog are drinking before she ditches him to spend time with Bean, with Luci being kicked out as well. Zog and Luci get separated when Zog goes after Oona and Luci finds a strange statue of Pendergast. In the following morning, Dagmar ditches Zog again to go riding with Bean.

Zog tells Luci the story of how he met Dagmar: he was a warrior that was never trained to be a prince, he assumed because his older brother, Yog, was killed by poisoned wine. Zog didn't want to rule, so he kept competing, eventually falling in love with Dagmar, the daughter of a noble from a far off land. They married and had a happy life, until Dagmar drank the poisoned wine.

Bean and her mother bond over several shared traits, including a taste for drinking and partying. While they party, Odval and Oona have a secret meeting, with him trying to protect her while Oona, furious, swear to make all of them pay for her anger, which Bunty overhears and swears to tell to Bean. Bean and her mother get even closer and when they come back to the castle, Bean finds Bunty turned to stone, she runs scared to find even more people, including Sorcerio, turned to stone.

Bean, Odval and Zog reunite, believing that Oona is behind it, they decide to act against her, despite Odval's advice. Zog sends Derek to a tower to protect him from his upcoming fight with Oona. Odval and Bean come back to say they can't find Oona and the group resources to the crystal ball.

The ball tells them that Oona is still in Dreamland and that "The danger is near", but Bean is zapped by the ball. Dagmar says she will protect Bean while Zog and Odval hunt Oona. Dagmar takes Bean to a secret library, while Luci figures out that the ball has the power to show holograms of things that happened in the room, including things from much long ago.

In the secret library, Dagmar starts spouting some cryptic and vague lines related about Bean's true nature. Luci finds and drags Zog back to the crystal ball room, showing him what really happened 15 years ago: Dagmar was victim of her own poisoning plot, she tried to turn Zog into stone by poisoning his wine with a potion, though Bean switched the glasses accidentally. Luci then reveals the secret library to Zog.

Dagmar says that Zog tried to change Bean, while she wants Bean "as she was born to be". While Bean is looking off into the night, Dagmar takes a flask of "Infernal Amplifier" and encounters Zog on the stairs. Zog tries to patch things up, but Dagmar says that something much bigger than them is going on, and is related to an ongoing war and the destiny of Bean. She pushes him downstairs, she then mixes the potion with another liquid and releases a huge wave of dark purple liquid on the kingdom. Zog and Luci are able to narrowly avoid the liquid, but Odval, the troops, and the kingdom are hit by the liquid and turned into stone. Dagmar quickly comes back to Bean and says they have to run away together. On another part of the castle, Luci bemoans that he should be the bad guy, but is attacked by an unknown assailant offscreen and bottled up again.

Dagmar pushes Bean in the ocean and jumps right after her, falling into the water, the two women swim for a ship of an unknown nation, with a group of unknown strange creatures as crew. They set sail for the "homeland".

Back in the castle, Zog bemoans to have nothing left to lose, having lost his family and his kingdom. His crown quickly falls from his head into the sea.


Tropes:

  • Back for the Finale: Nearly every character seen in Dreamland reappears either in cameo or otherwise.
  • Bait-and-Switch: Before the reveal that Dagmar is behind it, the episode heavily implies that Oona was behind the petrifications, with the first people shown as having been petrified being Pendergast, who suggested Oona had outlived her usefulness, and Bunty, who was going to warn Bean about Oona's revenge plot against Bean and her parents.
  • Berserk Button: What finally sets Oona off is Dagmar saying in apparent innocence how she didn't mean to "ruffle [Oona's] feathers", causing Oona to yell that she's not a bird and slap her.
  • Bookcase Passage: Queen Dagmar has a secret room that can be accessed through a door behind a bookcase. Luci discovers it and shows it to Zog.
  • Book Ends: The season starts and ends with Bean running away from the castle: in the beginning, she was running away to party, in this one, she is running away with her mother to an unknown land, fearing to be persecuted.
  • Call-Back: Derek is still traumatised from nearly getting eaten by the Dankmire hillbillies, having night terrors about their giant skillet.
  • The Cameo: When Luci gives King Zog a peek at historical events in Dreamland using the crystal ball, there is a very brief Freeze-Frame Bonus of Fry, Bender, and Farnsworth in the time machine from "The Late Phillip J. Fry".
  • Cat Fight: A "queen fight" breaks out between both of Zog's wives during Elfo's funeral, after Oona and Dagmar have finally gotten fed up with their passive-aggressive competition for their husband's attention.
    Zog: I'm much more embarrassed than I am aroused.
  • Comically Missing the Point: When Bean mentions Elfo's time as a subject of inhumane experiments, Sorcerio - the one who committed those experiments - gleefully whispers that she's talking about him.
  • Downer Ending: Elfo is still dead. Dagmar turns out to be evil, betrays her husband again, turns most of Dreamland's citizens into statues, and takes Bean away to use her as a pawn in some grand evil plan. Luci has also been captured in the middle of the chaos, the whereabouts of Oona and Derek are still unknown, while Zog is left alone as a king with no kingdom.
  • Exact Words: As Zog learns, telling the kingdom your wife is attacking isn't helpful when you've got two of them running around.
  • Foreshadowing: When Bean reaches out to touch the crystal ball, sparks of black electricity shoot from her fingertips. This foreshadows the reveal in Season 4 that Bean possesses powerful dark magic inherited from her mother.
  • Gilligan Cut: A just-revived Dagmar tells Zog he can throw a party to celebrate her return, so long as it's small and tasteful. Cut to the entire kingdom celebrating, and a giant firework display of Dagmar in the sky.
  • Hoist by Their Own Petard: It's revealed that Dagmar was the one who intended to dispose of Zog by poisoning his glass of wine with the petrifying potion. However, she didn't account for young Bean swapping the drinks by accident...
  • Laser-Guided Karma: An in-universe one, where a guard who doesn't believe Dagmar is Dagmar falls into the castle moat, which instantly whips him over the side of the waterfall. As he goes, he declares "I deserve this for doubting you!"
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Sorcerio remarks that "it took all season" for the Elixir of Life to finally work. But then he remarks, "And by season, I mean fall, or summer, or whatever this is."
  • The Missus and the Ex: Things get awkward for Zog when he suddenly has both his current wife and his previous wife alive and well. This leads to Passive-Aggressive Kombat between the two wives, until they actually brawl during Elfo's funeral.
  • Mood Whiplash: As Dagmar and Bean talk in the bar, Dagmar alternates between motherly affection and screaming abuse at a patron who's not playing darts well.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: While it's entirely understandable why she did it, Bean's choosing to cure Dagmar of her petrification instead of resurrecting Elfo proves to have been the wrong choice to literally catastrophic levels.
  • The Reveal: The petrifying potion was made by Dagmar, who was trying to poison Zog. Also, she has very big plans in mind for Bean...
  • Spoiler Title: Guess what happens to the kingdom in "Dreamland Falls"?
  • The Stinger: It ends with a post-credits scene of Elfo's corpse drifting onto a mysterious island, where he's pulled away by two women.
  • Taken for Granite: Dagmar covertly petrifies several people in the castle, before concocting a massive potion flood that will turn (almost) everyone else in the kingdom into stone as well.
  • Tempting Fate: As he looks out over Dreamland and his subjects all being frozen in stone, his wife having turned out to be evil, and his daughter gone missing, Zog states he's got nothing left to lose. Then his crown falls off.
  • The Unreveal: We don't know exactly what grand plans Dagmar wants to use Bean for, beyond vaguely describing that it's her "destiny" to participate in an ancient conflict of some sort. Also, where exactly she plans to take Bean, besides that it's their "homeland".
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Luci runs into a petrified Pendergast, and assumes it's just a statue, even though he's posed screaming in terror. After considering this for several seconds, Luci just shrugs it off.
  • Wham Episode: Bean's mother Dagmar turns out to be evil, turns nearly everyone in the kingdom into stone statues, and runs off with Bean to a distant land.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Oona's ultimate fate at the end of the episode is unclear. She's last seen scurrying off into the depths of the castle, but what happens to her afterward isn't shown.
  • "You!" Exclamation: Luci does this to an offscreen figure, implied to be Big Jo, who seals him in a jar.

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