








“You made a promise. Live by your word, or die by it."
I genuinely think that Arbitus either doesn’t realize that the Sultan wasn’t being the least bit malicious, or the plucking of a flower is just so important to him that he HAS to treat the Sultan just as he would a person that’d come into his kingdom and harm his plants deliberately.
This could have helped to create a fascinating dialogue around themes like respecting personal boundaries and cultural differences, revering all forms of life, etc.
Meanwhile Aladdin is not even paying attention and is just trying to hit things with swords. Who wants to bet he won’t learn anything from this experience, either?
Since, y’know, he’s a secondary character in this episode.

Also Arbitus finds you totally incidental, Aladdin.

"It’s art."

Couldn’t resist.

And this is his reaction:

Let’s talk about this for a minute.
This is a character who is the central part of at least a fewepisodes that were built up to show that Aladdin and his friends shouldn’t infantilize him as much as they do because he may be an old man, but he is not completely useless or incapable of handling himself.
His reaction here is completely justified. He knows that he made a mistake in his youth and his daughter is about to pay for it. He doesn’t know what Arbitus will do to her, and if the head canon mentioned before holds true? This is a reminder to him that he can’t be a hero. He tried to do something heroic for his bride and wound up making a contract with a monster, and he can’t be a hero now because nobody believes he can be one.
And guess what? In about five minutes he’s going to pretty much fade into the background because while this is his fucking story it’s going to be handed off to Aladdin to finish.
One of the best one-offs, yes. But it still has its problems.

Production Code Episode 46 – Garden of Evil
And with this I’d like to kick off a semi-regular event on the blog known as One-Off Wednesday. Once things are less hectic and my job stops kicking my ass I intend to do a few episodes per week, but on Wednesdays I’d like to focus specifically on episodes of Aladdin that feature a character that only appears once.
And this is, by far, one of the best one-off episodes in the series.

“Love you, too, Iago."
I adore Jasmine’s relationship with Iago in this episode. In fact you really get to see her develop more with a lot of the more minor characters in the group.
I think Iago actually likes spending time with her, and this is something that stuck even in that horrid Disney Princess spinoff thing that came years later. It’s not just that she has more money or anything like that. He genuinely seems to prefer her company over Aladdin’s at times. She doesn’t make fun of him when some of his more foppish tendencies come out, and they’ve actually had time to bond, separate from everyone else. (I will cover "Do the Rat Thing” soon, promise!)
Part of this is because I think Jasmine already really likes birds (she’s pictured more often with birds than any other Disney princess and she’s not one of the ones that can summon and command legions of them by singing) and that just works out in Iago’s favor. Iago has also displayed more than once that selfish and materialistic though he is, he also seems to really get her, and vice versa.
So when he says he’s shopping with her because the boys are shopping for sugared dates, she knows that’s just a cover and he doesn’t want her to think he’s too attached or anything, but he so is.
These two are bffs.

Production Code Episode 68 – Eye of the Beholder
Here by popular request! I remember thinking this episode was really cool when I was a kid, but beyond the basic premise and Mirage and Fasir’s involvement, I didn’t remember a whole lot about it. Rewatching this episode was a joy, and I think it’s one of the stand out episodes of the series. We’ll explore why.
Once again, if there are any episodes or specific characters you’d like me to cover, drop me a line!
I like that they give the Genie limitations but I wish I knew what their parameters were. Sometimes he either knows everything he needs to know because he’s a Genie and he was once all powerful, or he makes a book appear that knows everything when he doesn’t, but then on a rare occasion, he’s just completely stumped and his magic doesn’t give him any clues.

This is where Iago comes in. Iago, who worked with Jafar, and conceivably knows a lot of the stuff Jafar does. To a degree. Iago knows exactly who Mirage is, because he knows what Evil Incarnate is, and here’s where we get to some of the semi-religious stuff.
Evil Incarnate appears to simply exist to destroy goodness in the world. While the term is never used to my knowledge, this is a concept that compliments some tenets of Zoroastrianism quite nicely. With good and evil existing as distinct, living forces, there stood the belief that all living creatures took part in a cosmic battle between good and evil, the prize for which was all of creation. By living your life in the most good way that you can, you do your part to battle evil. For a figure like Mirage, as Evil Incarnate, it would make sense, then, that her function in life is to tip that balance in favor of evil. It is also why, in a world such as this, you can nod toward certain villains who play up to the notion of “being evil” for the sake of being evil as though that’s a thing. In this setting, it totally is.

Genie seems to remember a time when Evil Incarnate was someone else. “A hyper-intelligent wombat with a forked tongue,” to him. Things change, Iago informs him. This suggests that the mantle of Evil Incarnate is something that Mirage earned, establishing that she had a life before she took the role (which is further developed upon in “Eye of the Beholder,” hence why doing this episode and the last one was so important).
Once again, interesting questions raised. What was she like in her previous life? All to be discussed when the time comes.
Other things we know is that she’s not herself a goddess. There are other beings that appear in the series that she’s clearly subordinate to. She’s high on the totem pole when it comes to power (and would have to be considering that while she hates Genies she’s not the least bit afraid of them) but absolutely not the highest.
I can’t wait to see more.
My last question: Iago knows who she is. HOW does Iago know who she is? In what situation did Jafar come across her?
Is that where he got the snake staff from, maybe? (That could be interesting. But it was vaguely Egyptian in design.)

Perhaps this is because so far we’ve addressed largely comical villains, or in the case of Sadira, villains who are quite normal to begin with.
…No, I think that’s it pretty much. This is one of the first non-mortal villains we’ve come across, and she sounds it.

“I grow unsettled, here in Morbia. I await my pets’ return from a simple task. Are the peasants destroyed, I wonder? Surely, we have at least broken their spirit? But with my own eyes, I witness the unthinkable. You bowed down. You inflicted bruises. I ordered lacerations! But from the ashes of your humiliation, I will forge sweet victory."
This is so different from anything that’s come forward as a contender before.
Here’s a last bit, though, that left me with questions:
"If it were not for this defiant one, those farmers would be mine.”
What does she want the farmers for? Now we see her at other parts of the series clearly considering the creation of misery to be all in a day’s work for her, but this implies ownership of some sort. Why? In what way do they become hers? How does this system work?

Production Code Episode 43: In the Heat of the Fright
Mirage’s first episode and by this counting one of the first more serious villains to appear that wasn’t simply a one-off character. This one’ll be coming at you slowly, because I’m about two scenes into it and I’ve already found I have a million questions and thoughts.
Remember as always that I accept requests. Just know that if it’s a later episode for a recurring character I will have to cover their intro episodes first.
(Pertinent to series events, of course!) Reblog or send an ask my way.