Mother Knows Best (song) own gains. Falco continued, "The audience knows what Gothel wants with Rapunzel, but the fact that we are unable to protect the naïve princess results in further hatred for the witch." Falco also concluded that Gothel's "sinister reprise at the end of "Tangled" allows for these horrifying undertones to emerge, which makes 'Mother Knows Best' one of the most sinister villain songs in the Disney library." Similarly, Elissa Smith of Paper Droids wrote that while the audience is fully aware of Gothel's evil intentions, Rapunzel is denied "the outsider's point of view." Glen Chapman of Den of Geek wrote that
Mother Gothel the very best of [Stephen] Sondheim's crazed heroines". IGN's Jim Vejvoda penned, "Mother Gothel nearly steals the show, with her overprotective tyranny being made to seem almost rational". Dubbed Disney's "first passive-aggressive villain" by Helen O'Hara of "Empire", the author reviewed, "the fact that [Gothel] is entirely bereft of superpowers and reliant on her considerable wits to keep her going makes her strangely admirable". Writing for the "Milwaukee Journal Sentinel", Cathy Jakicic called the character "a great contemporary villain" who "many daughters (and mothers) will find ... funny and a little too familiar". In "The New York Times" A. O.