Something else I want to talk about in this stretch of Zenescope’s Wonderland is Calie’s complete reversal when it comes to the place itself.

Something else I want to talk about in this stretch of Zenescope’s Wonderland is Calie’s complete reversal when it comes to the place itself. For so much of her story, she wanted to get away from Wonderland. Get free of it. Keep it away from her daughter. After everything it had done to her family, that made perfect sense. Then she becomes the White Queen. She starts trying to change Wonderland. The Ace of Spades takes over, throws her and Cheshire out, and she loses access to her White Queen powers. Now getting back becomes a priority. The place she spent so long trying to escape has become somewhere she is desperate to return to. That’s the part I’m still trying to get my head around. Cheshire’s connection makes more immediate sense to me. Wonderland is tied to the creature he has become, and being away from it is starting to affect him. Calie’s attachment feels more complicated because I’m still thinking about how hard she fought to keep this place out of her life. The comic does give us something to work with. In #43, getting back is her first order of business, and she calls Wonderland home. Cheshire also points out that she formed bonds with its people. Some became her friends. By that point, getting away would mean leaving people and relationships behind, along with everything she tried to build as their queen. Then #46 goes further. Calie thinks about Wonderland as another one of her children. She can feel her connection slipping, and she responds to that through the same part of herself that refuses to let Violet go. She has come to see caring for Wonderland as part of being a mother. That’s a huge change in what the place means to her. Earlier, protecting her family meant trying to get them away. Now she has extended that protective instinct to Wonderland itself. The realm has become something she feels responsible for, even after all the harm connected to it. I can follow that explanation, but I still find the reversal striking. There’s a difference between deciding you have to go back to help people and feeling like you have to get home. Calie has reached that second point. I keep wondering how much of that comes from the people she cares about, how much comes from the hope of repairing what she started, and how much comes from who she became as the White Queen. Being thrown out also leaves everything unfinished. She didn’t get to decide that her work was done or that she could finally move on. Someone else took control, cut her off, and left her watching the consequences from outside. I can see how that would make walking away harder. That’s how I’m reading the urgency, anyway. And of course, Earth hasn’t become some clean escape where Wonderland can no longer touch them. Its horrors are turning up here too. Getting out of the realm hasn’t brought an end to the fight. What keeps this complicated for me is Violet. Calie has this growing sense of responsibility toward Wonderland, but she also knows what returning could mean for her daughter. In #46, she actually questions how she can expect Violet to go back after everything that’s happened to her. She can see the conflict herself. So I’m left with this question: how much of Calie’s need to return is about saving Wonderland, and how much is about being unable to let go of the person she became there? I’m still reading this last stretch, and that change is something I want to spend more time with. I understand why she would feel responsible. I’m still working through how the place she wanted out of became the place she calls home.