>>119230891I get a really powerful sense that they just... couldn't.
Both because of what Disney itself mandated and because of the limits of some of the people working on the staff.
I feel like Disney's almost in a kind of... bubble. A bubble that has largely been constructed by themselves, but which they themselves now kind of police, not just for their own content but for a lot of animated content in general.
And there is this sense I get, this impression, that in Season 2, and to a lesser extent in Season 1, Tangled The Series bumps up a bit against that limit. That bubble. It doesn't slam hard against it, but it bumps. Just a little.
The idea that a children's story can have some very sad things, and some very scary things, too. The idea that a Disney princess can actually do very bad things and do the wrong things. The idea that Disney's ideas of destiny and happily ever after can be cruel, and wound those who are left outside of them. And even wound those who are INSIDE them. The idea that when you poke around in magic and fairy tales there might actually be something a bit horrifying and scary in them.
There is the HINT of this in Season 2. Obviously it reaches its climax in "Rapunzel and the Great Tree." But it shows up throughout Season 2, and into the finale. But the show very pointedly retreats into something safer, more binary, more black and white, easier to explain, in Season 3.
I can't help but feel that Tangled The Series would have been better handled by a company other than Disney. Some company that could have leaned in to the show's own violations and subversions of so many core aspects of just what Disney does. Because the show does indeed do this. But in the end, it pulls its punches and retracts its claws. Probably because that's what was mandated.
