Elena of Avalor S3 E11

## Plot

The episode starts with Elena playing with an olaball ball with Jiku in a place we've never seen before. Suddenly, Jiku sprouts peabunny tail feathers, and the ball defies physics by flying around a tree twice and then flying away. Elena goes after it and sees that she's on a giant floating island that looks like a tiara. Oh god, was that foreshadowing for the emotional climax of this episode taking place on a far more chaotic floating island? Why do the dreams/nightmares of Disney Channel's Latina characters hit so much harder for me? There's Elena here, Camila from *The Owl House*, and Violet from Ultra Violet & Black Scorpion. Plus I relate to Mirabel from *Encanto* a lot. Anyway, the flowers can talk. Elena follows the ball to a tree that grows more olaballs, jewels, tres leches cake, and paper Carnaval crowns. Speaking of Carnaval crowns, she finds her mother's tiara on one of the branches. Before she can take it though, an annoying creature with poofy hair steals it. He's a cross between a squirrel and a toucan. He throws cake and jewels at Elena. She gets angry and her dress turns orange. She starts climbing the tree to get the tiara back, but her anger causes the tree to shake, and she falls off, and wakes up because the whole thing was a rather surreal dream. Isabel tells her that she overslept and missed breakfast. While eating, she tells Isabel about the dream. She's impressed at Isabel's sketch of herself. Isabel shows her sketches of Francisco and Luisa, as well as Esteban. Elena asks why she drew him, and Isabel says she did it before they found out about his betrayal. Elena sees the peabunny Noblin from her dream in the hallway, and wants to chase after it, but Isabel tells her that peabunny Noblins aren't real, and she doesn't see it, and assumes that she's just seeing things from a lack of sleep. Isabel tells Elena that she's been thinking about Esteban a lot lately, and wants to talk to her about him, but she doesn't want to talk about him or even hear his name ever again. Meanwhile, Ash and Zopilote are trying to train Esteban, who is doing poorly. Zopilote says that it's because he wants his old life at the palace back, but reminds him that the only thing he'll find there is a princess that wants to banish him to a deserted island, and the only way he can avoid that fate is if he masters his magic. Isabel draws another sketch of Elena, this time with a frown. Elena comes in and apologizes for earlier. Isabel doesn't understand why they can't talk about what happened. Elena is worried that if she does, she'll lose control of her new magic and cause terrible things to happen to the people around her. She's convinced that she has to keep her feelings locked up inside for the greater good. Isabel promises that she'll never talk about Esteban ever again. Suddenly, they see the tree from Elena's dream appear in the garden. Elena calls Zuzo to ask about it, and tells him about the peabunny Noblin she saw earlier, and the annoying squirrel-toucan creature that stole her mother's tiara. Somehow her dreams are coming to life. Zuzo has no idea what could be causing it, so he decides to enter her dream to find out. Elena sees the annoying creature again and chases after it, even though Zuzo tells her that it's not real. When she sinks in quicksand, she gives herself a pair of jaquin wings. She and Zuzo go on a rainbow slide that looks more like a roller coaster, and I love it. The creature continues throwing things at Elena. She gets mad again and wakes up. Zuzo tells her that her emotion magic works in her dreams too, and it's bringing things from her dreams to life, like the annoying creature. Elena tries and fails to catch him. Zuzo tells her that dreams are the mind's way of working out problems we have in real life. Her dream is trying to tell her what that problem is. She goes back to sleep, and thinks that her only problem is the annoying creature and goes after him again. She gives herself her scepter, but then it changes into a crystal tamborita, and then a spatula. Dreams are weird. She makes it rain olaballs, which distracts the creature long enough for her to finally catch him. However, he throws her mother's tiara on the ground and destroys it. Elena gets angry and her dress turns orange again. She asks him why he did that and yells that he ruined everything, and he turns into Esteban. She wakes up and gets dressed. Zuzo tells her that her problem is really what Esteban did to her parents. She doesn't want to talk about it, but bottling up her feelings isn't making them go away. They're just showing up in her dreams. They hear Isabel shout outside, and Elena takes her real scepter with her. The creature took Isabel's sketchbook and is ripping pages out of it. Elena gets angry again, which causes the ground to rise up. She jumps onto it and tells Isabel that it's Esteban's fault that her dreams are coming true. Her anger teleports Esteban to them, and Zuzo confirms that he's real. All of Elena's conflicting emotions rapidly changes the color of her dress and causes a storm that almost sends Isabel flying off the platform. I was hoping that Esteban would save her to prove that he's not evil, that he does care about his family, and that he still has a shot at redemption, but sadly, that's not what happens. Zuzo tells Elena that she has to let her feelings out to stop this. She thinks her magic will go haywire if she does, but he points out that it already has. Bottling up her emotions only caused them to come out in her dreams and create this mess. If she lets them out, she can let them go. She walks towards Esteban, and when the wind causes some things from the dream tree to come at her, she wordlessly blocks them by creating a crystal barrier. Her dress turns orange. When she sheathes her scepter, the wind stops and the leaves freeze in place. Oh, that brings back painful memories from early 2014, when I first saw *Frozen* in theaters. Isabel climbs back up onto the platform. Esteban claims that he'll do anything to make things right between them. He can tell Elena where Ash and Zopilote are. She says that it's time for him to listen to her now. What he did to their family and their kingdom makes her feel furious, and hurt, and disappointed. She still misses him though, and she's angry at herself for missing him, but mostly, she's just so, so sad. Her dress turns blue and the leaves fall to the ground. She starts crying. They both wish he could take back everything, but she says that he can't, and when he apologizes, she tells him that as far as she's concerned, he's no longer family. She takes a deep breath and her dress turns light blue, which sends Esteban back to where he came from as he calls out Elena's name and reaches out towards her. Her newfound calm also returns everything else to normal. She hugs Isabel and promises that everything's okay now. No! That's what she said to baby Esteban in season 1! Okay, now I feel the tears welling up. And as we all know, you shouldn't make promises you can't keep, because things are most definitely *not* okay. I haven't felt okay in quite a while. How has it been less than two weeks since *The Magic Within* aired? It feels like a lifetime. Ash and Zopilote ask Esteban where he went, but he says it doesn't matter anymore. He's ready to put the past behind him and continue training. Now that he's finally accepted the fact that his family will never forgive him and he can never have his old life back, he's become fully evil. No… This can't be happening… Later on, Elena is looking at the sketch of him in Isabel's book. She can say his name now, and tells Isabel that she can too, and she can keep the page in. Elena just has to share her feelings instead of locking them inside. That way they won't trigger her new magic. She's finally ready to talk to Isabel about Esteban.

## Review

This episode might just be my new favorite. Who knew the Elena of Avalor crew was so good at making such compelling minimalist stories? I loved everything about this episode, from the little details in Elena's dream, to the backgrounds, the setting, the sound effects, the art style, the animation in general, the facial expressions, the body language, the song, the score, and obviously the writing, directing, and voice acting. At this rate, Aimee Carrero and Christian Lanz will never stop impressing me with how they convey their characters' emotions and inner conflict and turmoil. Seriously, ***how*** have I not cried yet? I really need to stop spoiling myself on Twitter. Basically, everyone listed in the end credits deserve all of the praise (and hopefully awards) that they get. However, I am a little upset that, like in the season 3 premiere of Tangled: The Series, we see the lead up to the talk about the main character's feelings about the betrayal of a close friend/family member, but we don't actually get to *see it*. At least Elena's emotion magic makes it clear how she feels, as did what Luisa said during Esteban's trial, but Isabel, Naomi, and even Francisco's feelings are much harder for me to pin down, both initially and afterwards, and while Gabe seems angry, Mateo's thoughts on the matter are never alluded to. Did he even know during the latter half of the episode? He does live at the palace now, so he could've been told offscreen as well, or have been present at the trial to help Elena keep her emotions in check, or make sure that Esteban didn't try something ridiculous, like escaping. Also, while I loved this episode and others this season, like Spirit of a Wizard and Día de las Madres, I would've loved a flashback or therapy episode that went into the day Shuriki attacked in more detail. I probably would've cut out Sweetheart's Day to compensate for it. Seriously, almost every single character on this show could benefit from some form of therapy, especially in season 3 with all of the (possibly unintentional) backsliding, regression, and lack of character development, linear or otherwise, for some of them. So back in season 2's PTSD/trauma episode, Naomi told Elena that she understands how she feels, and she actually does, due to the sirenas being responsible for her grandfather's death, but she doesn't take her own advice and can't forgive them, move on, or trust them at first, which might help explain some of her and Elena's behavior this season after finding out about Esteban's betrayal. His absolute refusal to either face the consequences of his actions or even try to make up for it like Victor, Carla, and the sirenas were willing to do doesn't help, not to mention becoming an antagonist and then teaming up with other antagonists, which is an example of non-linear character development, like Zuko from *Avatar: The Last Airbender*.