challenge of the brave might be THE best episode outside of season 3 for understanding cassandra’s power-keg betrayal in season 3. the way that she trains in secret for this competition that is, to her, THE be all end all of whether or not she’ll be a person worthy of respect, but doesn’t talk to raps about it at all. when rapunzel decides that she wants to do this competition together as a friendship outing cassandra sends up some indirect signal flares saying “no! bad! do not!” but since rapunzel is not well-versed in subtle communication or reading feelings, she does not pick up on this indirect style of communication.
cassandra just sort of drags her feet and gets madder and madder, and then lets some of the anger seep out but doesn’t talk about it until it comes BOILING OUT when she’s literally fighting raps for real. while i totally sympathize with cass because that would have really sucked to have your more successful friend come in to this competition you trained for months for and do fantastic without any training, and be completely tone-deaf about how that might hurt your feelings… it’s also really hard to be rapunzel who gets no clear communication that makes sense to HER until cassandra is already blaming her for crossing boundaries rapunzel didn’t know existed.
and the two of them not taking this situation and communicating further to see how to work better as friends in the future most certainly set the framework for their relationship continuing like this and cassandra exploding like a shook up soda
