Emerald City - 'Mistress - New - Mistress'

"We've been thinking about putting in solar panels."

Destiny looms, in the next episode of the latest Oz adaptation.

Dorothy continues towards Oz, but a near-miss with Eamonn the Unspeakably Rowdy reveals that the Wizard wants her found and killed, although she still has no idea why. In search of answers,she and Lucas travel to East's palace, where Dorothy's possession of East's jewelled gauntlets - known as the Elements - convinces her major domo Suleiman that Dorothy was secretly trained as East's successor.

Elsewhere, there are witches committing magical suicide and the weather is going cray cray, as weather was what East controlled. Anna, the new girl on the Wizard's Council of Nuns, is the only one to realise that this is messing with the omens of the Beast Forever's return, and that all of the Council's calculations are therefore off. This wins her favour with the Wizard, although she kind of blows it by realising that one of his supposed powers - command of an army of giant automata - may have been a teensy bit exaggerated. She is banged up, but not before - correctly - predicting snow in midsummer.

Witch stylin'.

Also exaggerated is Dorothy's degree of being a trainee witch, but she agrees to try to tame the weather, intending to leap into the Witch of the East's control tornado and whisk herself back to Kansas. First, however, she has to be purified, which involves having a bath and putting on a floaty red dress. Then she has to walk on water and tame a giant snake - essentially the magical equivalent of username and password - to enter the tornado and end up in... midwinter beside a river full of shopping trolleys. It's not what she was expecting, but even less so is she expecting to find evidence that her mother was here. Returning, she sparks a brouhaha with Suleiman when it becomes apparent that she isn't the trainee and that the Witch did not die peacefully, but by her own hand. He does reveal, before they cheese it, that her mother was an interloper brought to the tornado to be got rid of, and should have stayed in the land of trolleys.

In our final thread, Jack and Tip travel to the city of Ev in search of more of the medicine which apparently stopped Tip becoming a girl. They find an apothecary, but he won't make more of the potion. He tells them that what Mombi was dosing Tip with is a black elixir; illegal magic that keeps the drinker from being what they truly are. Tip may only remember being a boy, but his 'real' self is the girl.

Which is... a hell of a thing, and I think the series does very well here. Tip wants to become a boy again, while Jack tries to kiss him, because Tip still identifies as male, while Jack is... pretty shallow really, and more to the point has immediately redefined Tip by apparent, biological gender.

Jack: Not an ally.

I'm not saying that Jack deserves to be pushed off a roof, but it was a dick move, and accidents happen.

So, Dorothy seems to be a witch, but nevertheless, Tip is by far the most interesting thing in this series so far. I don't know how contemplative the genderswitching in Oz is, but Emerald City appears to be looking at more than just his biological sex. While a boy is what he was made by Mombi, it is also the only thing he has ever known himself to be, which is why I'm going to continue using he until the character indicates otherwise.