If you guys have been keeping up with my posts, you’ll know that a few weeks ago I did a report on Disney Channel’s newest addition to the wildly popular Descendants universe, Descendants 4: The Rise of Red, (a.k.a. the sequel no one asked for since the third movie was supposed to be the last one in the series, but this is Disney we’re talking about). In that post, I mentioned that the original trilogy (and the spinoff animated series) was based off the Isle of the Lost book series by Melissa de la Cruz, a book series that I was a big fan of when I was a 10-year-old. Now, with the random sequel, The Rise of Red coming to Disney+ here soon, I figured I should probably re-visit the Isle of the Lost and give my critique of it.
#1: Originality
I think I mentioned this is my last post regarding Descendants, but this series isn’t exactly the most original now that I look at it a few years after I was a fan of it. The idea of the sons and daughters of public-domain characters doing stuff at a school isn’t new at all. I mean, just look at Monster High or its sister-show Ever After High (yes, those two universes are connected). However, because this was Disney distributing the Isle of the Lost series, de la Cruz took it a step further. While the main premise of the story is pretty similar to some of the stuff we see in the aforementioned Monster/Ever After High T.V. series (they both involve teenagers going to high school while trying to find themselves and carve out a different destiny than what their parents expect them to have), de la Cruz used characters that were specific to Disney and fall under their copyright. People like Maleficent, Cruella de Vil, Ursula, Scar, Aurora, etc. All fall under the Disney logo as they are characters from that specific retelling of the public-domain story, making it so that people like Matel can’t use those characters in their shows.
Unfortunately, while this did help Disney beat out its predecessor, Ever After High, it didn’t help de la Cruz in making a truly original story. Does The Isle of the Lost have some original elements? Yes. But the main premise of the tale remains the same. In some ways looking back on it, it feels like a fanfic that directly ripped off another fanfic, but to avoid claims of plagiarism changed up a few events and changed the characters.
The best example of this that I can think of offhand is Mal (daughter of Maleficent). If you have watched Ever After High, she acts and even looks a lot like the character Raven Queen (daughter of Evil Queen). While Mal seems to lean more into the badass biker girl/Micheal Jackson look, both her and Raven share a very similar dark purple, burgundy, black, mauve, and indigo color palate with quite a few spikes. They both are kind of sarcastic and sometimes off-putting, join with the good guys and try to rewrite their own destinies despite their parent’s wishes, both of their parents are locked up somewhere, and – to top it all off – they both fall for a good-guy prince who’s a bit dorky and is totally head-over-heels for his girlfriend.
Coincidence? I think not.
#2: Leans too much into the movies
The first Isle of the Lost book came out in 2015, just a month or two before the movie. Though it serves as a prequel to the movies, with each book taking place between films, it would’ve been just fine as a standalone series. However, because of its status as essentially filler for the movies, it relies too much on you having seen each movie to know what’s going on. For example, the first book ends with Mal having found Maleficent’s old wand and learning the power of friendship, but still being stuck on the Isle of the Lost. Then you read the second book and all of a sudden, she’s in Auradon as King Ben’s girlfriend and is attending Auradon Prep. Unless you saw the first Descendants movie, you have no idea what the heck is going on, why Mal is there, how she got there, who Ben is, or anything that is really important to the plot. The book basically ends up becoming a massive question mark that can only be answered if you have Disney Channel, and this continues for the entire series.
This also does a disservice to the movies, too, to some extent, since they never really needed a book series to explain anything. They were fine by themselves. Throwing in the books to explain something that was vaguely or never even hinted at in the movies just seems like a bit of a cash grab on Disney and de la Cruz’s part.
#3: Plot Hole
Other than the glaring question of how all the heroes are still somehow alive (the books mention Camelot and King Arthur being alive even though he lived in the 1000s and yet Tiana and Naveen from The Princess and the Frog are ruling Bayou de Orleans even though their story takes place in the 1920s. We also meet some of the characters from 101 Dalmatians which takes place in the 1970s), we have the question of why/how they brought the villains back.
I mean, just think about it for a second. The books try to answer this question by saying that King Beast wanted to give them a punishment worse than death which was by putting them on a cramped island where they didn’t have any magic and human rights seem like a myth, but have you seen some of these villains’ deaths? Scar gets eaten alive by hyenas, Ursula gets speared to death, then zapped by lightning, Maleficent falls to her death after being stabbed in the heart, the Evil Queen also falls to her death, and I could keep going on and on. Sure, I suppose being trapped on an island run completely by evil megalomaniacs would suck, but still, death seems like the better option. Not only did these villains not want to die in the first place but keeping them dead would’ve ensured the safety of the people in Auradon.
Then there’s the whole question of how did they raise the villains from the dead? I mean, wouldn’t that technically be a form of dark magic that we even see condemned in movies like The Princess and the Frog? Is it now okay if it’s used for “good” purposes?
Honestly, the entire series never seems to answer this question and while it does take strides to try to help the situation, it really seems like some of the “heroes” are just as messed up as the villains.
#4: Societal Questions
One of the redeeming things about The Isle of the Lost series is that its main premise circles around the question of “Can people change even if they were raised in a terrible environment with terrible morals?” I think de la Cruz’s answer to this is that they can if they truly want to. We see this with the main four characters, Mal, Evie, Carlos, and Jay. Each one has been raised by obviously horrible parents who only care for themselves, but they each have redeeming qualities. Each person is capable of change and once they learn that and embrace it, they do change (though that change would’ve been better if it didn’t lean so much on the movies). It’s the characters who don’t embrace their capacity for change and work towards it that continue the cycle started by their parents.
We also see on the flip side of that coin that even if you are given the best conditions to be raised in, you can still become a villain if your entire world starts to center around yourself. We see this all the time in the West and it’s an important thing to point out.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 
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