Diksha Sundriyal
In Disney+’s ‘Descendants: The Rise of Red,’ we are introduced to Red, the daughter of Queen of Hearts from Wonderland. Red feels suffocated by her mother, who seems too invested in their future as villains rather than focusing on what her daughter wants for herself. Her evil plans blinded her mother so much that she saw nothing else. Red hates her even more when the opportunity presents itself for Red to forge her own path, even if it is hijacked by her mother and turned into something else. In order to save Auradon Prep, Red, joined by Chloe Charming, gets back in time, where she sees a different side of her mother. Back then, she was not the evil Queen of Hearts but the kind and loving Bridget. What happened to that young girl, and how did she turn into the evil queen? SPOILERS AHEAD
Bridget’s Kindness was Used Against Her
Red’s mother had been so cruel her entire life that she was shocked to discover that she had a completely different personality when she was a kid. In the past, when Auradon Prep was Merlin Academy, Red meets her mother’s younger version, Bridget, who is the kindest, friendliest person on the campus. At first, Red wonders if this is a facade her mother has put on to fool others and unfold her evil plans. But it soon becomes clear to her that this was her mother at her core, and something terrible happened to change all this.
The older Cinderella told Chloe that when they were young, someone played a dirty prank on Bridget, a follower, and she was never the same. In the past, Chloe figured that they should stop that prank from happening and prevent Bridget from turning into an evil version of herself. It doesn’t take them long to realize that in opposition to Bridget and Ella’s goodness are the evil schemes of villain kids led by Uliana. While everyone tries to avoid her, Bridget tries to befriend her. Her relentlessness frustrates Uliana, and she acts even meaner towards her.
Things escalate when Bridget bakes cupcakes with a magical feather. She warns Uliana not to have more than one feather, but Uliana doesn’t listen and has to pay the price when she turns into a bird, albeit temporarily. Angered by the humiliation, Uliana decides to take revenge and do something similar, preferably worse, to Bridget. After much thought, she calls upon the evil spirits of her home to guide her, and they give her a way forward.
The plan is never spelled out for the audience, but a sequence of images from the fire in Uliana’s house reveals her real plan. She means to bake a cupcake and make Bridget eat it. Of course, she will offer it as a mark of their friendship, which an unsuspecting Bridget will gladly escape. However, the cupcake would be hexed, turning Bridget into a hideous being, like Uliana was turned into a bird after eating the feathers from her cupcake.
In the original timeline, this prank worked. On the day of the school dance, Bridget ate the cupcake, was transformed into an ugly creature, was laughed at and humiliated, and transformed by this experience. But now that Chloe and Red know what Uliana is planning, they decide to stop it and save Bridget from losing her goodness.
The Prank Turned Bridget Into Queen of Hearts
One of the reasons why Red finds it hard to imagine that her mother had once been a good person is that she never ever saw her mother as one. She was only ever Queen of Hearts, never Bridget. She never told Red about the prank and never talked about her feelings, which convinced Red that she didn’t even have a heart. But all of this was because her mother had lost the ability to trust others. The prank didn’t just turn her into an ugly being (which was a temporary thing) but also showed her how naive she had been to trust Uliana. This experience ingrained in her the message of never trusting anyone, and she took it to heart. This is why she stops Red from eating a macaron at Auradon Prep’s welcome party in an earlier scene.
More heartbreaking for Bridget was that no one came to her aid that night, not even her best friend, Ella. Of course, at the time, Bridget didn’t know about Ella’s abusive stepmother, who had grounded her, which was why Ella couldn’t come to the party. Because everyone else laughed at Bridget, she thought Ella, too, had abandoned her. But she never talked about it with Ella, and Ella never told her about why she couldn’t come to the party. Due to this, a fracture appeared in their friendship, which could never be repaired. The women went their separate ways.
Ella ended up with Prince Charming, while Bridget walked the path that led her to turning into the evil Queen of Hearts. Because she was shown that her kindness was a weakness, she was never kind to anyone ever again, not even her own daughter. Because her friend didn’t come through for her and she was stabbed in the back by Uliana, Bridget convinced herself that she couldn’t trust anyone ever again, and this defined her actions for the rest of her life.
Read More: Descendants The Rise of Red: What Happened to Carlos?
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