Will Scarlet is in Wonderland!

So, after Once Upon a Time introduced Robin Hood into their tale of mythical / legendary / fairy tale characters, its Wonderland spin-off has decided to join in the game and brings us one of Robin Hood's Merry Men!!! In the third episode "Forget Me Not" we finally get a little bit of back story for Alice's #1 ally the Knave of Hearts. Before this all we knew about him was his willingness to help Alice, his first name Will, and the fact that his past holds a tale of heartbreak involving a woman named Anastasia! Three guesses as to what he has to do with Robin Hood?...

The episode starts with Robin Hood's Merry Men effortlessly lifting some valuables off a carriage in the Enchanted Forest, it's Will Scarlet's initiation into the band... and as he lifts his hood during the celebration we see he is none other than the Knave of Hearts! 

Robin cuts Will's hand and as the blood drips onto the fire we get the following conversation between Robin and Will explaining Robin's philosophy ("Rob from the rich and give to the poor" etc. and why that makes them not be thieves):

"Robin: You're one of us now. For life.

Will: A thief for life?

Robin: No. Not a thief. People call us that but that's not what we are.

Will: Then what are we?

Robin: We help those in need. A thief only steals for himself.

Will: Right. And that's not us?

Robin: We have a cause that is bigger than any one of our needs. That cause is humanity. When you steal for personal gain the first thing you lose is yourself."

That night Will enters a stone cottage and tells a blond woman in bed: "I'm in. The newest merry man. They bought it. They think me a believer of their cause and now their cause is ours."

Turns out he's using the Merry Men to get something magical from Maleficent's castle (he's convinced Robin they should go steal a chest of gold) that will allow the duo to leave their life behind and forge a new one. Later, in the forest when the Merry Men are celebrating over the chest of gold, Maleficent's voice rages over them demanding they return the "other" item they stole! 

 

The next morning Robin catches Will sneaking off and accuses Will of having sold them out (by stealing something magical which Robin had specifically forbidden) and demands to know why. He lets him go "to meet the fate he earned, the fate he deserved". And he says Will is the only thief present because he stole something for himself. 

Will rushes back in search of his love Anastasia... and it's a fresh faced... sweet Red Queen!!! (a.k.a. one of our two villains in Wonderland) He's brought her the Looking Glass. It opens a portal and they step through it into Wonderland!

As usual with Once Upon a Time, the flashbacks serve to inform what is happening in the present. The fact that Will is a thief will help out Alice in her adventures in Wonderland in search of her captive love Cyrus the Genie. That he's had his heart broken (I guess we will find out how at a later date) makes him be able to relate with the "monster" who holds them captive. A conversation he has with Alice at the end about the item they've stolen and what he'll do with it (or not) shows that at some point between the flashbacks and the present he took Robin's message to heart and is trying to live up to it:

"Will: Being a thief ain't up to anyone but me. If I give this to him then I went to steal this thing for me. That makes me a thief. But if I don't give it to him, well then I got it for you.

Alice: And what does that make you then?

Will: Hopefully someone with a shred of humanity left.

Alice: No hopefully about it."

So Once Upon a Time in Wonderland has shown us the fate of one of the better known Merry Men (only half a dozen of them or so have ever had names after all), presented their Robin Hood's philosophy (they aren't really thieves because they steal from the rich to give to the poor in the name of humanity) and posed an interesting question: how did Will's true love Anastasia become the evil Red Queen???

In other words, how did they get from this:

      to this?






Another question posed: what happened to make Robin break his own cardinal rule as presented here? He is clearly against having anything to do with magic... but we know from our first meeting of him in episode of 2.19 of Once Upon a Time that he stole something magical from Rumplestiltskin! As always with these series it's hard to work out the exact timeline of events (even trying will guarantee you a headache), but I would guess that flashback took place at a later date than this one...

Note: Even though Will Scarlet a.k.a. the Knave of Hearts is one of the leads, I won't be blogging about any other OUAT in Wonderland episodes here unless they further dig into the world of Sherwood...

Straight from Sherwood:

• Robin Hood
• Will Scarlet
• Merry Men
• Robin's philosophy of stealing for others, not themselves (a.k.a. Rob from the rich, give to the poor)