Descendants: The Return of Red

“Descendants: The Return of Red” is a sequel to the 2024 film “Descendants: The Rise of Red”, which itself is a spinoff of the original “Descendants”. It was produced by Disney Channel and is a Disney+ Original. The film resolves the cliffhanger at the end of the previous film, sees the return of many characters from the first three Descendants movies, and explains the plot holes in the previous film.
== Plot ==
We open on the title sequence, followed by a short recap of the entire Descendants storyline, from movies 1-4, told by Mal (Dove Cameron). The first scene in the movie shows what happens directly after the dance number that ended “Rise of Red”. When the song finishes, a giant, glowing blue portal appears in the middle of the courtyard, and pushes everyone back like a forcefield. Suddenly strange things occur: we see Uma (China Anne McClain) and Cinderella (Brandy) melt, the sky glitches, 4 versions of Mal suddenly appear, Carlos’ ghost (a deepfake of Cameron Boyce) appears and seems to be stuck in a loop, aimlessly floating around the courtyard faster than the speed of light in a blur, and the young and old versions of Maleficent (Kristin Chenoweth, Mars), Hades (Cheyenne Jackson, Anthony Pyatt), Captain Hook (Cillian Murphy, Joshua Colley) Ursula (Whoopi Goldberg, Sofia Wylie) and Uliana (Halle Berry, Dara Reneé) appear. Every version of every character in the Descendants franchise and the extended Disney universe shows up, and acts erratically - melting, vomiting magic, disappearing, getting caught in a movement loop, freezing and the like. The strangest thing of all however, is that while the rest of the now expanded crowd of Disney heroes, princesses, villains and fairies are being pushed back, a terrified Red (Kylie Cantrall) and Chloe (Malia Baker) are slowly floating closer to the portal. Eventually they reach it, and after a sudden flash of light, everything goes black.
Red suddenly wakes up in her old bed in Wonderland, tired and confused. Chloe is nowhere to be seen, and Red instantly jumps out of bed to look for her. She calls her name and travels all over Wonderland, desperately trying to find her. She is so distressed she bumps straight into her mother, the Queen of Hearts (Rita Ora) while in the Royal Plaza. Curiously, she has her evil maroon dress on, instead of her new white dress. She scowls and warns Red bitterly to look where she’s going before calling her an imbecile, then shooing Red and strutting away. Red was frightened and wondered why the Queen of Hearts was acting like her evil self. Didn’t they make her good when they went back in time with the pocket watch? Did something go wrong? She looks around her, and realises that the dictatorial posters instructing residents to follow the curfew were still up. Confused, she carries on looking for her all around Wonderland.
We cut to Chloe, who is in the same situation. She wakes up in her bed in Cinderellasburg, and instantly jumps out to look for Red all over the kingdom. When she asks her parents where Red is, they are confused and ask who is Red. Chloe is shocked that they don’t know who Red is, and tries to prompt their memory about Red and the incident at the recent welcome ceremony that happened at Auradon Prep. Cinderella says that’s happening tomorrow, there won’t be some horrific incident and that she’s very worried about her daughter, thinking she may be sick. Chloe protests she’s not sick, and that Red is missing, before anxiously walking away - knowing her parents won’t be of any help. A split screen of both Red and Chloe appear when they realise they must have somehow reverted back to before they altered time. Chloe thinks of going to Auradon Prep to catch the Queen of Hearts before she captures Auradon but then remembers she must have traveled to the day before the welcome ceremony. She thinks about where Red would be the day before the welcome ceremony, and realises she would be in Wonderland. She suddenly comes up with the idea to go to Wonderland to look for her, but she couldn’t ask her parents as she knew they would definitely not allow this - besides, the rabbit hole was closed anyway. She had to do it on her own.