"Emerald City" treats the audience to a little bit of backstory in "beautiful wickedness" as we get flashbacks of the Wizard’s life before he came to Oz and discover his connection to Dorothy. Lucas also learns more about his own past.
The Wizard knew Karen in Kansas
Considering that last week’s episode ended with the Wizard recognizing Dorothy, we can’t be too surprised that he and Karen Chapman knew one another. What is surprising though is that back when the Wizard was a normal guy named Frank, he actually worked with Karen in Kansas. The two worked in a facility trying to create energy from wind.
While that’s something that we see as an environmentally friendly alternative to the use of oil today, in the flashback, Karen and other scientists basically create a cyclone.
Dorothy is just as surprised as the audience when the Wizard reveals that he’s known her since she was born, and that she was born in Oz. He also offers up his protection for her since he loves her mother, which is a nice change of pace from sending people to kill her. In opposition to what some of the audience might have theorized though, he’s not her father, but one of the other scientists was.
Mother South is out there somewhere
In an interesting twist, West reveals through an attempt to break a magical spell placed on Lucas that the not only is the block on his memory magical, but that it was placed there by Glinda.
Glinda has been raising young witches bred by Mother South. Up until now, we were all under the impression that Mother South died during the last encounter with the Beast Forever.
The Wizard might not have trusted West all this time as Glinda provided him council members and took meetings with him while West openly criticized him, but that was his mistake.
Glinda has been quietly cultivating a group of young witches in preparation for taking Oz back and allowing magic to reign once again.
Having Glinda as the “villain” of the Wizard’s story instead of the Wicked Witch of the West is an inspired choice. West has been upfront about who she is. Instead, Glinda’s poise and cold exterior hides who she really is and what she really thinks.
With the reveal that Lucas was carting young witches across Oz to Glinda though, I do have one question: did all of those other little girls make it to Glinda? We know Sylvie ended up stranded until Dorothy and Lucas saved her, but what about the rest?
The Wizard makes a choice
He decides to put a little faith in Dorothy, allowing her to travel across Oz to Glinda with Lucas and Sylvie. Dorothy even trades him her gun for assistance. This doesn’t mean that he’s just going to let things happen though. In a show of force to get Lady Ev on his side, he demonstrates just what a gun can do - by killing Anna, the one person in Glinda’s employ who is actually on his side. With the Wizard being so quick to act, it’s likely that it doesn’t even matter what happens to Dorothy when she makes it to see Glinda.
Whether she can stop the impending conflict or not won’t matter if the Wizard is dead set on going to war with magic.
The Beast Forever
The point was made by the Wizard repeatedly in “Beautiful Wickedness” that the Beast is flesh and blood in this generation and can be killed by a gun, provided Lady Ev will make more for him. He might be expecting a monster to drop out of the sky, but Dorothy is the most recent flesh and blood addition to Oz that came from the sky. How has the thought not crossed his mind that she could be this generation’s Beast, ready to bring about an end to this version of Oz?
The verdict and what’s next
This episode handed us a lot of information to digest, but it seemed to move much slower than the previous batch of episodes.
As a result, my feelings on it are mixed.
3.5 out of 5 stars.
Next week in "They Came First," the Wizard will launch a witch hunt as his power is threatened, calling on West for help. Dorothy and Lucas will make their way to Glinda.
