Ideas for the Tangled: The Series spinoff/sequel series Disney needs to make of Cassandra adventuring through the lands outside Corona, doing good, learning and healing from her past, making new friends and of course getting tangled up in some epic overarching plot.
Each episode is framed through letters of noteworthy events she writes to Rapunzel. First herself, but her first travelling companion soon sees that it’s difficult with only her crippled or non-dominant arm to use and convinces her to dictate to them. Eventually the letters became a group thing, with certain friends establishing correspondences with different inhabitants of Corona (e.g. a scientist with Varian to share knowledge and bounce ideas off each other) and them all leaving footnotes, scribbles and drawings around Cass’s text - with her permission of course. The opening starts with her saying, “Dear Rapunzel…” before singing and involves visuals of her letters coming to life.
The opening song is called “Find Myself”. A longer version may be sung in the premiere like “Wind in my Hair” was, or a fulfilled reprise in the finale. It refers to both the adventures she has wherever she “finds herself” geographically and how her aim is to find her own new identity.
The premiere begins with a young traveller who becomes Cassandra’s first companion, who’s just left home, being mugged by thieves. The woodland road is empty, no one to hear or help. Suddenly a figure in shining armour leaps out of the wilderness and effortlessly takes out the whole gang, face obscured by her short yet unruly hair, hard to get a good impression of between her swishing cloak and constant, fluid movements in and out of the shadows. She raises her sword and orders the thugs to leave. They scamper away. Her sword and armour glint in the sunlight that outlines her powerful silhouette. Huddled against a tree, the traveller looks on in awe at what seems to be a folk hero brought to life. “Are you a knight? A royal guard?” The woman turns to face her and the audience and shakes her head, slightly amused, nothing but genuine humility and pleasure in a job well done in her features. “No,” she says lightly, “just Cassandra.” Cue opening.
Cass calls Rapunzel her sister. No, that doesn’t mean she’s a princess. No, it isn’t legally binding. It’s complicated.
Cass definitely has some form of PTSD. She has recurring nightmares of and flashbacks to her Rapunzel withering her arm, fusing with the Moonstone, because that transformation really did look horrifying, and all the times she nearly killed her old friends. Except sometimes in the nightmares, she succeeds. Her habit after rousing from a nightmare or flashback is to look at her reflection or hands to ground herself in her black rock armour being gone. The long-term effects on her mental health of Zhan Tiri’s year of abuse and manipulation of her are examined too. She loathes abusers and manipulators who pretend to care about their victims. Her overwhelming remorse over her evil actions only worsens her residual issues: the guilt complex; thinking of herself as worthless and a burden; her need to please and make others comfortable at the cost of her feelings; considering her problems ten times less important than everyone else’s… wow, she has a lot of residual issues. Her communication skills and self-worth do get better, but it isn’t linear. She apologizes way too much and can unhelpfully selfless. She’s also extremely distrustful of and tense around magic, especially her interacting with it. Last time she used magic, she nearly destroyed her home and everyone in it. And her sister nearly died because of her own powers multiple times. A teammate could practice or study magic, or even be a magical species like a werewolf to force her to confront this. Buckle up, this is the Steven Universe: Future of the Tangled franchise.
Her arc in Season One is coming to terms with the full scope and depth of her harmful actions and assembling the basic mental health toolkit she should really already have. She’s trying really hard to atone for her mistakes and make the most of her clean slate, but that leads to her not telling anyone about her villainous phase or by association any of her issues resulting from it. She doesn’t trust herself not to hurt people around her at first, so she’s averse to the others joining her until she realizes a) they’re annoyingly, admirably determined and not going to let her stop them, b) it really is good for them, and c) she shouldn’t have to be alone and can do the relationship thing again after all. In that order.
One or more of Cass’s new friend circle is disabled, for example suffering from chronic pain. That way they’d already have pain meds to share with/replicate for her. She’s self-conscious about her disability and prefers to keep it private initially, so that solidarity is a great help. They teach Cass that she is not a burden. And actual physical therapy techniques instead of forcing her arm to work exactly as it did before right away. “Oh… that makes more sense.” They have regular sessions, slowly regaining the use of her fingers and working from there. The scientific friend (or a team effort) eventually makes her a cool pressurized mechanical brace that in conjunction with the meds gives her the most possible use of her arm for the least possible discomfort, symbolic of her growth and settling into her new life. If it’s a team effort, it would also represent the group’s bond. Knowing Cass, it’ll be specially designed to hold her weapons too. It’s continuously upgraded.
One of the main cast is a refugee - or given the age range at the start is mid-to-late twenties, maybe their parents were refugees - from the Dark Kingdom. Let’s call them D for convenience. Through them we see what the Dark Kingdom’s actual culture and society is like, or was like; how the neighbouring countries adapted to its collapse and mass evacuation; how its people adapted and where they found or made new homes.
By the Season One finale, King Edmund has restored the kingdom to the extent it’s ready for a reintroduction of its diaspora and of course the group stop by. They’re all excited to see the progress. It’s almost like the Moonstone never happened. D is ecstatic and highly sentimental, but the further in they go the more anxious Cass gets. Even without the black rocks, she keeps being reminded of the last time she was here. But she doesn’t want to ruin D’s special day and bottles the PTSD up into a Molotov cocktail. “There’s no Moonstone, there’s no magic… you know there’s no Moonstone. The only thing that could ruin it this time is you!” Until Edmund invites everyone into in the palace for a grand ‘welcome back’ banquet, with a side of ‘sorry I accidentally rendered our entire country uninhabitable because I got sick of my duty’. Hey, now that I think about this, he can talk to Cass about their respective kingdom-destroying Moonstone incidents and owning their guilt. It doesn’t do her much good at the time. The room is right there, where that infernal blue opal used to be, where she - she can feel the spikes stabbing through her skin - it’s right there and the entrance hallway still has a few cracks where the rocks, her rocks jutted out of the walls - and she can’t breathe. Her POV trembles and blurs, her skin turning to black rock armour again. Her friends drop everything in concern when she falls to the floor, hyperventilating and crying. She screams for Rapunzel and Eugene. After calming down enough to remember what’s going on but not enough that she flees the scene, the crew find her alone in the stables tending to Fidella. (Fidella is her comfort animal.) Cass finally explains the events from “Destinies Collide” to “Plus Est En Vous”. Remember that big disaster in Corona a year or so ago, with the black rocks? That was her. No, it was literally her. D asks why she didn’t tell them why she was so uncomfortable today. “Because this is your day! I didn’t want to ruin it, the way I ruined things before,” she says, hugging her chest. “You should be happy. This place means more to you than I’ll ever know.” A contemplative D nods and says gently, “True. But it also means more to you than I’ll ever know. Just because your emotions about being here are harder to deal with than mine, that doesn’t make them matter less.” They cry and hug and Cass promises to be more open. It ends with the voiceover of her letter describing the new, happy memories she and her friends have made in the Dark Kingdom, giving her hope she can reach a peace with her previous time there.
Her arc going forward (I’m assuming the show has three seasons to mirror Tangled: The Series) is in Season Two to strike a healthy balance. To accept the duality of her nature; the good and bad of her actions and intentions; when she is and was a victim, and when in the wrong. To embrace her present and stabilize her more recent friendships while maintaining her old ones. She needs to learn from her past, but now she’s realizing she shouldn’t let it, including indirectly through denial and rejection of it, consume her either. The group has to decide on their responses to their leader being a former dangerous menace to society and reshuffle their dynamics. They have individual personalities and backstories and arcs I can’t be bothered to think of that influence how forgiving they are, how much they choose to address it, etc.. In Season Three Cass’s priorities shift to figuring out what she wants in the long-term and how far she’ll go to get it. Will she ever return to Corona permanently? Where else would she live? Does she want a romantic relationship? In short, the seasons are past, present and future.
Found family. I will never get tired of this trope done well. All the main characters have Reasons they’re functionally homeless and free to chase the plot around the continent. The common thread is that they were unhappy where they were before. One, a foil to Cass, felt neglected and left to seek fame and glory. The magic one was already an outcast, used to having no stability or security. One had an abusive/dysfunctional family and no way to escape it until the others offered them a new support system. And so on. D was seriously considering staying in the Dark Kingdom in the Season One finale (the group may have been going there in the first place because that was D’s original goal), but supporting Cass made them realize that knowing it was safe and liveable was enough for now. Their real home is where their heart is. In Season Two Cass’s habit after nightmares and flashbacks becomes looking at her companions and their camp, or her arm brace, to ground herself in not being alone anymore. Near the end of the show (probably the finale) she says to the others, “You know, it’s funny. When I left Corona, I didn’t think I needed anyone except Fidella and Owl. Now I can’t imagine taking another step without you beside me.”
We visit each of the other kingdoms named in “Beginnings” at some point. I can’t decide whether Cass should be a giddy fangirl training with the Ingvarr Battalion, or be underwhelmed by them after her life experiences.
The show’s finale special would start with Cass getting a letter with Rapunzel and Eugene’s wedding poster attached, or written on the back of the poster. “Yes! Finally! I was afraid they’d never have a successful proposal.” Cass is the chief bridesmaid and the others are invited too. But then whatever the main threat is rears its head for the ultimate battle. They race to defeat it for many reasons, but a smaller, selfish one is to not miss the wedding. In the darkest hour Cass sends Owl to tell Rapunzel they don’t think they’ll make it and insists that since the whole kingdom is invested in this, to go ahead without them. Rapunzel reluctantly agrees. Cass omits the true stakes, so she doesn’t know that in the worst case scenario her former handmaiden might not make it in the grimmer sense. Hence Cass’s absence in Tangled Ever After. At the end we see the final scene of Tangled Ever After and Cass and co. suddenly slam open the church doors, breathless and bedraggled. “Sorry… sorry… we had a… thing, big thing,” Cass pants as the newlyweds rush to greet her and she spots their rings. “Don’t tell me I missed the vows!” She has a big reunion with her old friends and her father. After she and Eugene sincerely say how much they missed each other and she tells him he’s a better captain of the guard than she ever would have been, they resume their snarking like she was gone a few minutes. She’s bashfully hailed as the hero she always wanted to be. There’s lovely epilogue scene of Cass’s group team crew family getting along with various Coronans at the afterparty - e.g. Catalina and the magic character compare their respective powers. Finally, Raps and Cass discuss their personal plans for the future. They’re all happy. Everyone gets to just exist and be happy.
