Winnie the Pooh: The Black Cauldron

The Black Cauldron is one of the concluding episodes to the first season of the Pooh's Adventures Reboot franchise. Because of the grand scale of the episode, it is split into two parts; the first part is pretty much the first act of the original movie with a few changes added, while the second part is the second act of the original movie with the addition of a cliffhanger leading into the final episode of the first season, Nightmare on Bald Mountain.

Part 1
Following the defeat of the Horned King at Maleficent's now abandoned fortress, Pooh and his friends manage to escape the castle and free the princesses of heart in the process. Once all of the heroes regroup back at Merlin's cottage in the Hundred Acre Wood, they resolve to stop the Horned King once and for all before he finds the Black Cauldron, which was released from its hiding place following Pooh and Tigger's destruction of the Soul Reaper. Although Piglet opts to stay behind out of fear of what the Horned King could do to them, Rabbit and Tigger manage to convince him otherwise due to their creedo dictating that they stay together no matter what. And so, our heroes prepare for the final journey into the heart of Annuvin.

But first, our heroes must stop by at a cottage in Caer Dallben, where Merlin explains that the owner of the cottage, Dallben, can provide them with something to help them find the Black Cauldron and prevent the Horned King from conquering all worlds. Once there, our heroes meet a young boy named Taran, who is Dallben's apprentice and assistant pig keeper. He dreams of being the great hero who is foretold to end the war against the corrupted darkness and bring back balance to the universe. Unfortunatley, his own overconfidence and inability to keep to his duties prevents him from achieving his goal. However, he soon gets his chance to prove himself when the young pig he watches over, Hen Wen, proves to be the very oracle that Merlin was talking about, and thus she must be taken to the hidden cottage at the end of the Forbidden Forest to keep her safe from the Horned King. Pooh and his friends vow to help aid Taran in keeping Hen Wen safe at all costs, but they're not so sure about Taran's ability to keep his promise...

Meanwhile at Castle Annuvin, the Horned King, slighty battered after his defeat at the Grand Hall of the Forbidden Mountains, vows to destroy Pooh and his friends for meddling in his affairs for far too long, assuring himself that in the process, he will finally find the Black Cauldron and open the Door to Darkness which will make him a god among mortal men. To help him achieve his goal, the Horned King uses the powers of the reconstructed Keyblade of People's Hearts to reawaken the slain and deceased souls of many of his followers. These include Maleficent, Jafar, Hades, Ursula, Shan Yu, Scar, Dr. Facilier, Frollo, Shere Khan, and Cruella De Vil.

Meanwhile, out in the outskirts of the forest, Pooh's doubts are realized when Taran's own fantasies of herohood distract him from Hen Wen's wandering off, forcing him and the others to search the forest for her. All the while, the wolf pack and various evil trees prove to be very challenging for Pooh to overcome. Suddenly, our heroes are confronted by a furry critter named Gurgi, who wants to be Taran's friend and help look for Hen Wen...in exchange for an apple to eat. But he immediately runs off the very instant that our heroes hear Hen Wen's frightened squeals. The source of Hen Wen's distress turns out to be a flock of gwythaints and wolves, ridden by Maleficent's Goons, and sent by the Horned King to capture her. They manage to succeed in their mission despite Taran's failure to stop them, and everyone heads to Castle Annuvin to rescue her, ignoring Gurgi's warning to stay away from the castle.

Soon our heroes try to get in the castle without being spotted by the various goons and guards stationed around the corridors. They manage to get past the villains, but soon discover a party held by the evil henchmen in celebration of Hen Wen's capture, hosted by the Creeper, the Horned King's head servant. However, the party is soon interrupted by the return of the Horned King and his generals, who order Hen Wen to be brought before them and reveal the location of the Black Cauldron. Unfortunately, Taran accidentally slips off the balcony and reveals the prescence of our heroes to the villains. The Horned King inquires Taran to persuade Hen Wen to show the whereabouts of the Black Cauldron, revealing the identity of his generals in the process, and only manages to convince him when Hen Wen is nearly executed by the Heartless. As Hen Wen uses her scrying to show the Black Cauldron's location, the Horned King's greed to see more of the vision causes him to lunge out at Taran, forcing our heroes to run away from him and try to escape the castle. After battling a pack of wolves and the Creeper, our heroes just barley manage to escape before they are all captured and thrown into the dungeon.

But our heroes don't have long to stay there when a scullery maid named Eilonwy breaks them out, claiming to be a princess although Tigger and Rabbit don't believe her. As they head through the dungeons and hidden sewers of the castle, our heroes face off against Fidget and several of Ratigan's Goons before landing in a hidden tomb of the original king of Castle Annuvin. Taran soon discovers a strange object found on top of the tomb, a glowing and powerful sword named Drynwyn, and grabs it, hoping it would make him a powerful warrior. Our heroes soon discover a glimpse of what the Horned King is planning when Creeper hauls a load of objects into the Grand Hall of the castle, slipping past some guards. They soon free an old prince/bard named Flewdder Flam, but then wind up face to face a Guard, where, in the process, Taran uses the sword's now revealed magic to defeat the villain. Taran is soon overjoyed once he puts the pieces together about his sword, but doesn't have long to celebrate when the entire castle becomes alerted to the escape attempt.

As our heroes run past the hordes of villains sent to capture them, they soon manage to reach the castle drawbridge, where they are immediatley confronted with an entire army of dark ones, goons, grunts, and monsters, led by a ghostly Dark One, Garrett Krebbs. Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, Rabbit, and Eeyore soon draw out their weapons, and engage in a long battle against the villains. But just after all the monsters are destroyed and our heroes have completely exhausted themselves from the fight, another large army of villains, led by Creeper, soon appears to destroy our heroes in their weakened state. Thankfully, they are saved by Taran's magic sword, which he uses to cut the chains of the drawbridge loose for all the heroes to escape, leaving a guard dog with only the seat of Flewdder's pants (don't ask).

A little while after, Creeper, Fidget, and Voort reluctantly go up the stairs to the throne room of the Horned King to tell their master the bad news: that Taran and the Heroes have escaped from the dungeons. At first, the Horned King is furious, but soon calms down once he realizes that this could prove useful to his plans, thinking that our heroes would soon find Hen Wen and lead his minions right to her. So, he orders Creeper and the goon squad to send the Gwythaints to follow the heroes, to which the goblins reply all too willingly. Once Creeper and his fellow goblins leave the room, the Horned King then turns toward a magic mirror and begins speaking a strange tongue to someone he calls "master", telling this strange being that it is only a matter of time before the Black Cauldron is found, "and soon", he explains, "every light must fade and every heart return to darkness!", laughing in anticipation of the event to come.

Part 1 ends with a credits sequence featuring the various Disney Villains at their worst with music from Kingdom Hearts playing in the background, before finally ending with a chilling laugh made by a pair of glowing, yellow eyes.

Part 2
Part 2 opens with Creeper heading into the animal pits, and setting loose the Gwythaints and Wolf Pack in order for them to find Pooh and his friends within the outskirts of the forest. Speaking of which, our heroes are currently sharing a moment of peace after the hectic chaos caused during the scuffle at Annuvin. However, Taran and Eilonwy are not getting along due to the fact that they can't decide what it was that saved them from the Horned King's forces. Taran claims it was himself, while Eilonwy argues that it was the sentient sword's magic that saved them. Thankfully, the two manage to put aside their differences and make up...just as Flewdder is ambushed by Gurgi. Taran orders the creature to shoo, but Gurgi reveals that he saw the tracks of Hen Wen just today, and he can lead our heroes to where they land if they just trust him.

Reluctantly, our heroes agree, and follow the creature towards an underground cave, which leads into a cave pool. Gurgi investigates the stone steps of the pond, but ends up causing all the heroes to be sucked deep beneath the pond into the realm of the fair folk. Once there, they meet the king of the pixie-type fair folk, King Eiddelig, and his grouchy servant, Doli. The two try to make our heroes leave due to them having seen enough and under suspicion of working for "him", going so far as to deny the prescence of Hen Wen in the fairfolk lands. But the lie is immediately caught, and Taran is soon reunited with Hen Wen. Although Eidelig is unconvinced of Hen Wen's powers, Taran proves it to him by allowing the oracular pig to finish her earlier vision of where the Black Cauldron can be found. The location is revealed to be that of the swamps of Morva, where Taran proclaims that in order to save the entire universe, including the fairfolk, he would destroy the cauldron the moment he obtained it, and he would do so with the magic sword, identified by Eidelig as Drynwyn, the sword of King Gwydion. The fairy king tries to warn Taran of the dangers to be found in Morva, but the boy refuses, saying he's not afraid. But Eidelig does insist on Doli tagging along to serve as the group's guide, reminding the boy also that Hen Wen will stay with the Fair Folk until our heroes return from their journey. And so, the Pooh Gang takes the fariy dust method of leaving the caves, driven alone by the thought of ending the Horned King's rule on the worlds with the destruction of the Black Cauldron.

Meanwhile, back at Annuvin's Castle Chapel, the clueless villains not in the lich king's apprenticeship murmur and plot with one another about the Horned King and what exactly he was planning all this time. After all, he must have brought them back from the darkness for a reason. So, they elect Shere Khan to find out what he's been planning, but once the tiger reaches the front doors to the Horned King's Grand Hall, he finds that he can not enter, most likely due to a magic spell that was cast to prevent almost anyone from entering. However, the tiger does overhear the Horned King talking to a large group of something about how he will make them Cauldron Born and make himself a god among mortal men. The tiger, fearful about what he has overheard, runs back to the Chapel to warn the other villains about the Horned King's treachery at hand.