The Looking Glass is a mirror featured in many Disney projects, primarily found in those centred around the world of Wonderland. It has the power to travel between the user's current world to the Looking Glass side of Wonderland. We are first introduced to it in its original state in the TV-series Once Upon a Time.
This magical item is based off of the item of the same name in the story Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There written by Lewis Carroll. It is also the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
In this sequel, Alice again enters a fantastical world, this time by climbing through a mirror into the world that she can see beyond it. There she finds that, just like a reflection, everything is reversed.
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In the original tale and most media, the mirror is portrayed as a large piece of decoration which is simply used to travel between our world and Wonderland. However, it is also depicted as spectacle glasses and portable hand mirrors in other fictional projects.
In the eighth episode of the series, Through the Looking Glasses, the Cheshire Cat gives Rabbit a pair of rose-colored glasses - an iteration of the Looking Glass, and convinces him that they magically make everything beautiful. Eventually, everyone but the Queen realizes that the glasses were a hoax. They learn that it's not how you look at things, but how you think about them that counts.
Regina uses the looking glass to banish her mother, Cora, to another realm. This happens in the episode "We Are Both", where Regina pushes Cora through the mirror to be rid of her. As a consequence, Cora is banished to Wonderland and becomes the Queen of Hearts.
In the 2016 fantasy adventure film and sequel to the 2010 film Alice in Wonderland, Alice spots a butterfly to be Absolem, and follows him to a magical mirror in Lord Ascot's old office. Alice goes through the mirror and ends up in a mirrored office in Underland to then fall through a door in the sky to the White Queen's Castle.
The Looking Glass is present in "The Looking Glass Leap" and is the first segment of the thirtieth episode of the series. It premiered on July 1, 2023 alongside "Backwards Buttercake" and is the first segment of the fifth episode of Season Two. Here, Alice goes through the mirror, where the Silver Queen helps her with a bake.
The Looking Glass is depicted as a hand mirror rather than a giant decorative one and has the ability to see into the future instead of travelling realms. It has been passed down the royal family of Wonderland for decades; it eventually was given to Bridget, the young Queen of Hearts, who kept it in her room at Merlin Academy during her time there - she then kept it with her into adulthood in hopes of giving it to her future child.
The Queen of Hearts kept The Looking Glass with her as a reminder that it would tell her that she and her daughter Red would rule Wonderland together in the way that she wanted. Upon finding herself in Auradon after Red was invited to attend Auradon Prep, the Queen showed contents to Red to remind her that one day, she too would be Queen and rule Wonderland despite Red's objections.
Once Red and Chloe found themselves back in time, they eventually found Bridget in her room when asking for the Sorcerer's Cookbook where Red noticed The Looking Glass on a set of drawers, when Chloe asked what it could do, Bridget answered that it was capable of showing the future but insisted she did not wish to see it claiming that she wanted the future to be a surprise.
Red then later used it with Chloe to go back to Auradon in the present day only to see the Queen of Hearts taunting King Charming where the latter questioned where his wife was, Red and Chloe watched as the Queen threw Cinderella's glass slippers on the ground in front of the King where they then shattered.
