The Santa Clauses season 2, episode 4 recap “Miracle on Dead Creek Road”

With the Easter Bunny out of commission, it’s up to Santa and his family to save the holiday. In The Santa Clauses season 2 episode 4, Santa must hide the fact that they are covering for the Easter Bunny while Magnus Atas prepares to face Santa.

The Santa Clauses season 2, episode 4 recap – Easter Bunny training

Unfortunately for Santa and his family, the Easter Bunny remains an actual bunny, which means he, his family and the North Pole will be doing Easter. Although this sounds disastrous, especially for Noel who is struggling to keep his stress levels down, Magnus Atas’ power AKA: Santa magic, is now showing up on the radar.

The elves continue to hide who Magnus Atas is and that he’s returned, however Santa seems to be randomly seeing the Mad Santa in visions only he can see and hear. As Cal tries to recover from his heartbreak, he and Santa begin training to be the temporary Easter Bunny, when the Sandman shows up.

He and the holiday legendary figures, want to see how Cal’s Santa training is going. To avoid more trouble, they are able to get him to fall asleep for the time being.

Mrs. Claus and Sandra are tasked with finding the Easter Bunny’s basket is trick eggs and find his home in disarray. However, neither of them realizes his home looks destroyed because he was previously kidnapped by Olga.

As they search for the basket of tricks, Sandra expresses her frustrations for causing this mess due to her inability to control her powers. Mrs. Claus offers some motherly advice, which leads to them wrecking more of the Easter Bunny’s house.

I’ll admit this scene confused me greatly. I understand it was for comedic purposes, but the show is literally implying that women have a lot of pent-up rage that can only be safely released when destroying private property.

All the same, this works and the two find the basket. Thankfully for Santa, when the Sandman does awaken he is easily tricked into believing Cal was able to fly the sleigh without issue.

With that issue out of the way, Cal and Santa, who can now transform into Scott Calvin thanks to an elf made device, start their Easter mission.

The Santa Clauses season 2, episode 4 recap – Magnus Atas finds his footing

While all of this is going on, Magnus Atas now has his magic back, impressing Kris. He decides to give Kris’ Santa theme park a magical makeover, in the hopes of attracting the current reigning Santa.

In the process Kris feels a little left out, as he had wanted to bring joy to the crowds and guests as Santa. It seems for the first time that as much as Kris likes Magnus Atas and Olga, he’s starting to see the cracks in the magic.

Now that he’s ready, Mad Santa wants to set a trap for Santa where he last sensed Santa magic: near Cal’s, now ex-girlfriend, Riley’s house. As Cal and Santa go house to house, using specially made hats to appear invisible, the elves and Mrs. Claus track their progress.

Although Cal has a slight hiccup by mixing up the Easter eggs, thus making the evening extra-long and tiresome, they arrive at Riley’s house. Even in the midst of their Easter mission, Santa wants to help his son and suggests he tries talking to Riley.

It is here that all the alarms go off at the North Pole, signaling that two types of Santa magic are dangerously close to each other. In a panic the elves finally confess to Mrs. Claus what has been going on with Magnus Atas.

The Santa Clauses season 2, episode 4 recap – The two Santas meet

As Cal and Santa arrive, they immediately fall victim to two harmless Christmas-themed traps. Thankfully Mrs. Claus arrives to free them.

But then Magnus Atas arrives, able to see Santa even with the invisibility hat. Upon meeting, Santa realizes that Magnus Atas is the Santa he had been seeing and hearing in his visions.

As Santa and his family flee, Magnus Atas gets one good throw of a magical and harmful snowball. Santa gets hit but he and his family still manage to flee, enraging Mad Santa.

The Santa Clauses season 2, episode 4 review

This is the first episode of season 2 that left me feeling a little underwhelmed. It felt as though everything and nothing was happening, just so that we could get to the end of the episode where the two Santas finally meet.

Honestly, their first meeting was really epic and sort of chilling. Although we’ve seen Mad Santa at his worst and most unintentionally hilarious, he does appear quite threatening compared to the jolly and sweet Scott Calvin Santa.

I’m guessing whatever that magic snowball was that he hit Santa with, isn’t good and with only two episodes left this season, I can’t decipher if this will affect the season finale or possible season 3 opening episode. The bigger issue I found with this episode, outside of the bizarre way Mrs. Claus and Sandra got all their rage out, was how calm Cal seemed after the breakup.

Cal was utterly crushed last episode, to the point where I feared he was going to sabotage his own father out of spite. But here, he just seems to mope around and not really fight with his father about it.

In fact, the whole Riley breakup goes mostly unnoticed by everyone until the end of the episode, when Santa decides to try and help his son get Riley back. Even though they don’t make it to Riley’s house, because of Mad Santa’s arrival, this seemed to come out of nowhere when we’ve seen Santa have an actual heart to heart with both Sandra and Cal earlier in the season.

Maybe Santa will talk with Cal about the breakup next episode, but that really should have been a focal point this episode. Even though Santa didn’t like Riley, he still cared enough to help them with their relationship.

Overall, the episode was good, but it remains my least favorite of the season so far.

What did you think of The Santa Clauses season 2, episode 4? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

The Santa Clauses season 2, episode 5 will air on Disney Plus on November 29.