KingOfHearts

I'm actually a little surprised they didn't just name Cruella's mom "Anita", since at that point, shameless namedropping was ubiquitous.

The Blue Fairy being sort of a "nega-Rumple" - being a world-hopping "good" character secretly involved in a lot of stories - would've been a cool concept. I know it's been talked about before how much of a mistake it was to bring magic to Storybrooke at the end of S1, but you couldn't really break the Curse without doing that. Rumple and Regina would be dead as doorknobs. It made too much sense for Rumple to bring magic over with him somehow because there was no way in hell he was going to live in a land without magic. Having his cake and eating it too was true to his character. Regina would have to sleep with a knife under her pillow even if every main character came to like her because she displaced entire kingdoms and dethroned rulers. That's not even counting all the mass murdering she did in the Enchanted Forest. It really doesn't make sense the citizens of Storybrooke weren't constantly plotting to kill her. There's got to be a ton of Percival's, Jefferson's, and King George's. Lessening her crimes or redeeming her doesn't really fix that either. Could I believe the Charmings might eventually forgive her? Maybe. But the entire town? Yeah, no. Wouldn't the Charmings be crucified for supporting Regina? There would've been riots and wars in the streets. You can't tell me the Enchanted Forest was war-torn between a billion different small kingdoms and then everybody just lived peacefully on the same street in Storybrooke. If I were royalty reduced to a member of the middle class I'd be pissed. They were never given the choice to move back to the Enchanted Forest until the end of S7.

And sometimes that didn't even seem like it was scripted.

While I wouldn't say Blue had to be evil to be interesting, it would've explained why the writers held back so long on revealing her backstory. The way she was treated as a character was a little bizarre because it was always seemed like more was there than what was shown. The writers really didn't like working with "good" characters. The Charmings were the few good characters that got stuff later but it was always bland and phoned in.

It probably would've been humorous if he still referred to himself as a pirate yet wore jeans and plaid or modern leather jackets. He just needed to keep the guyliner and jewelry.

It still makes no sense to me that Regina wouldn't put herself back in pantsuits or the more comfortable "hero attire" we see her wear in later seasons. She hated people seeing her as the Evil Queen, so why did she continue to wear what people associated that title with? That's something that kind of annoyed me about the show - characters wearing their fairy tale outfits so often when they're in EF even when they didn't have to. That whole thing about Philip and Aurora making a deal with Zelena was interesting. Too bad all that came of it was the two of them becoming flying monkeys.

I accidentally let my Disney+ subscription auto-renew, so I've found myself rewatching an episode here and there. I can't bring myself to do a full rewatch. Today's episode is "Witch Hunt", which is one of my personal favorites of S3. It does a good job of formally introducing the villain, dealing with the fallout of being brought back to Storybrooke, and integrating all the new and old characters. Some of the better episodes of the series were not centrics, and this is one of them. You see a bit more of Regina but that's because she's the one initially going after Zelena and working with Emma to find the witch. There isn't quite as much time devoted to her moping and doping, which is nice. The episode is more about the overall plot than her. The scene where they're all outside Knifington Palace talking about Oz being a real place is still one of my favorite scenes in the series. It's funny to me that only Belle and Regina knew about it while everyone else just knows the movie from the "Our World 101" download. It's an interesting bit of worldbuilding. Do most people in EF know other worlds exist? Like, is Wonderland common knowledge but Oz is more obscure? The show doesn't necessarily need to answer these questions, but they're still intriguing to think about. This scene also has some great lines from a variety characters. A moment I think gets forgotten quite a lot is when Regina saves Roland from the flying monkey by turning it into a stuffed animal. We really should've seen her do more random acts of kindness like that to buy into her redemption arc. There was no possible ulterior motive or want for glory, she just reacted like a good person would and was nice about it. Was that really too much to ask for the Good Queen of the Universe? The dwarves mention people in Storybrooke were randomly disappearing, which turned out to be people being turned into flying monkeys close to the edge of town. What if it was happening all over? What if Zelena threatened to pick someone off every day until she got what she wanted? That would've been a very suspenseful "Who's going to be next?" sort of thing. Maybe they'd even have to find a way to cure people and turn them back. (If Zelena didn't just "die".)

I don't know, Jacinda's story was so good I don't think we need another Cinderella adaptation ever again. Nothing can really top it.

The Missing Year was a good concept in of itself, but there was too much going on to make it all work when the writers throw in Oz. You needed a strong antagonist to come in to instigate the external conflict that would bring everybody back together, but did it really have to be the Wicked Witch of the West? The flashbacks would almost certainly need to be in Oz to make it worth it. Oz was not something you could just namedrop or borrow a character from if you weren't going to explore it more in-depth later. Heck, an entire "Once Upon a Time in Oz" spinoff could've happened. That's not to say Oz was so good it needed more time, but there was way more to work with there than in Neverland yet we stared at potted plants for a dozen episodes or so. This brings me to an interesting question - was 3B actually a good time for the Missing Year, or should it have occurred later? I agree that 3B needed to be more Storybrooke-focused. There was potential for good Missing Year flashbacks, but half of the flashbacks ended up being pretty pointless. We did NOT need THREE episodes to explain Zelena's backstory. She's green with envy. We get it. Even "Kansas" was more about Zelena than any of the Ozians or Dorothy. The writers didn't want Oz, they just wanted "Wicked vs. Evil." The flashbacks for "The Tower" and "Jolly Roger" seemed really filler-y. More time needed to spent on explaining things like how Hook out-ran the Curse, the methods the heroes used to stop Zelena before being so desperate they needed to cast the Curse, how the heroes were managing the kingdom, and some semblance of a romance between Regina and Robin Hood so it didn't feel so forced in present day.

They ended up making Cruella a completely different character from 101 Dalmatians for the live-action remake? "Prequel"? (Or as Disney calls it, a "reimagining") I thought it was funny they used "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones at the end of the film, since that was the name of Cruella's episode on Once Upon a Time. Slightly spoilery...

Oddly enough, I do think a lot of ideas in S7 could've worked, just not for the original main characters except maybe Zelena. Ivy/Drizella could've been a great gray character if they hadn't made her "muahahaha evil" halfway through the first half. She had real chemistry with Henry. The Rapunzel/Lady Tremaine melodrama made for a very strong and understandable character motivation. It's a shame it gets wasted on a rip-off of Devil Wears Prada. Zelena dating a muggle boyfriend wasn't even a bad idea if the writers had taken the time to develop their relationship. However, the stuff with Regina, Tiana, Henry, Rumple, Jacinda, and Lucy was so dead on arrival. Those characters were either horrible from the get-go or really had no reason to be there at all. The only stuff that had a good concept and was executed well was the stuff with WHook, Alice, and Robyn. There were interesting concepts mixed in there (like WHenry and WRumple) but like everything else with the show, the execution kinda ruined it. I still don't absolutely hate everything about S7. S6 was definitely more disappointing. There's plenty of things to hate in S7, but it was harder to take seriously. S6 was just suffering and character assassination for every single character we ever loved. I don't think S7 "ruined" characters like Regina or Rumple (there were actually improvements some of the time), but it didn't do a service to them either. Like, does Regina having some weird fling with Facilier destroy her character arc? No, but it doesn't really make it more compelling either.

Wouldn't Roni assume she was doing some sort of drugs?

This show is kind of hilarious when you watch scenes out of context because YouTube recommends them to you. It's not as if context would allow them to make any more sense, but... I love how the writers wanted Ivy/Drizella to be this "mastermind" manipulating everyone. She wanted Roni to be more suspicious of her mother so she would feel like something wasn't right, making her susceptible to the memory potion. Check. But the random photo Ivy planted of Regina and Henry in Storybrooke was so out of place. Why the hell would Ivy's mother leave this random photo stuck in the door of an electrical panel that had nothing inside? It's not exactly as thoughtful on the writers' part as Henry's camera was in 3B. Every time I watch these scenes I remember how atrocious the dialogue is in this show. Victoria's dressing down of Ivy was so generically mean and over the top. Yes, we get it - Victoria loves Anastasia more than Drizella. There's nothing in the dialogue to really foreshadow the why, though. She just finds Ivy's doting insufficient because... reasons. It's like the writers had no idea what the story of those two was until Victoria's later centric episode. Cora's treatment of Regina was much more believable and while it was extreme, seemed less cartoonish in earlier seasons. You sort of understood from the start why she treated her the way she did, even without the whole Miller's Daughter backstory. The "critical parent" trope shouldn't be difficult to make relatable or organic.

I think it's interesting no one can agree on the time period Cruella exists in. The animated 101 Dalmatians took place in 1958, the live-action remake in the modern 1990s, in OUAT it was the 1920s, and now in the new "Cruella" movie its the 1970s. As flamboyantly iconic of a character she is, it's weird how well she fits in various decades. I'm actually curious how the new "Cruella" movie will compare to OUAT. I'd say there's a decent chance I'll prefer OUAT's version of the character, as what happened with Frozen 2. OUAT's Cruella was actually a really cool reimagining of the character even if she was nestled inside of a garbage story arc and set adjacent to some awful worldbuilding.

Wouldn't be surprised if we thought it was an anthology series, only for the twist at the end of the first season to be that it's actually all part of a single multiverse and Rumple The Author The Seer has been the one pulling the strings in each story. This sounds so much like OUAT. It's like they just wanted to keep doing OUAT but with different actors. It's still a very broad concept, though.

I don't think repeating iconic characters was a bad idea per se if the alternate takes were interesting enough. This show is about reexamining fairy tales, after all. It probably would've better if they had done that before they had run out of ideas so people would think they were creatively bankrupt, only for the writers to pull the rug out with a whole new batch of characters. The Wish Realm wasn't even that horrible of concept, it just wasn't executed very well until an entire season later. The problem with S7 wasn't seeing Cinderella again but the fact she was just so awful no matter who she was. Being "iconic" did nothing to elevate her. In my opinion, the worst instance of rehashing old characters for their value as icons was Hansel and Gretel. They made the least amount of sense and had no actual plot relevance.

It would seem they'd have to whitewash her story like they did with Maleficent. I can't see them doing an honest to goodness villain backstory where she becomes the unapologetic puppy murderer we love to hate. Disney has become pretty allergic to straight-up villains that aren't "complex" or "tragic." They can't make Cruella too evil and they can't make her too sympathetic if this meant to be a prequel to 101 Dalmatians. This movie really isn't something anyone wants. I personally like what the live action remake of 101 Dalmatians did with Cruella and even the OUAT version where she was just flamboyantly evil. I don't really need to see her background because there was never meant to be a lot there to begin with.

I feel like either the Witch of the East or North or both would've been a good choice. Imagine Zelena screwing them over in the past then having to deal with the ramifications of that in the present with them instead of Hansel. As much as I hated those kinds of plots with Regina, it would've been good to see Zelena deal with that because she actually had time to redeem herself beforehand. It would've been less contrived than throwing Hansel and Gretel in Oz and far less messy than having alternate fairy tale characters in Oz Prime instead of some Disenchanted variant. Really didn't need to see Zelena torch a kid either in the same episode we're supposed to feel bad for her.

Also Madam Mim, Yzma, maybe an alternate version one of the Oz witches, Morgana Le Fay, and the witch from Brave we never thought we'd see again.

This seems like it would've been the most logical explanation. In the scene, Ingrid makes a remark about feeling like someone in a previous life cursed her, which would've really set Regina's suspicions off. It makes Regina look pretty dumb for thinking it was all hunky dory. I can normally handwave a lot of stuff because Storybrooke to me was "enchanted" like the castle in Beauty and the Beast, and nothing everything had to be explained, but that scene was written so clumsily. I'm not surprised they axed it. The Storybrooke curse itself was an interesting concept. Part of me wishes they played with it more instead of breaking it and treating 28 years like no big deal, but the other part knows whenever the writers did mess with it, it didn't make any sense. Everything with Kurt/Owen, Snow and Charming waking up mid-curse, Ingrid, and adopting Henry was really janky. Some of the worst stuff in the show post-S1 had to do with cursed Storybrooke flashbacks. This I find really hard to believe since her redemption was so fast-tracked later. Did it really take her 18 years to decide to adopt a child? To realize she had a "hole in her heart"? How much of a haze was she herself in? How she would've dealt with living in her own "happy ending" should've been really interesting. That would change a person. She went 28 years without change, but then like in 5 years she goes from Evil Queen to Good Queen of the Universe. It would've been more interesting if we just assumed she was still evil in S1, but she actually changed a lot as a person and was trapped like everybody else, only with memories intact. Then we'd realize Rumple was the one keeping everyone cursed for his own purposes. As important and great Regina was a main antagonist in S1, it doesn't really fit her story or what the writers wanted to do with her character in the first place.

They equated "realistic" with closeness to the source material. It would be "unrealistic" for Pan to be evil because he's not evil in the source material. But by that logic, Regina redeeming herself would've been unrealistic too since she's meant to be the Evil Queen. (Random side note: until Once Upon a Time, very rarely was the "Evil Queen" really named. The title was just a placeholder because she had no name. Now it's like, "Guys! It's the famous Evil Queen!™")

Because his mom and his dad liked to kidnap children and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Seriously - that's as close as the show gets to an explanation.

I stop thinking about this show for a while, then I come back to it. Thinking about Zelena and her relationship with Regina, she isn't a bad idea on paper. Giving Regina a platonic bond with someone she hasn't terrorized actually serves her character well. She always had this "happy ending" ideal where she gets the dashing husband and is loved by all, but forging a passionate platonic relationship would've shown good character development. It's like S5 of Buffy where instead of giving Buffy yet another love interest, they decided to give her Dawn as an anchor and reason to live. It was less weird for someone like Zelena to hang around Regina because she too had a villainous past than it would've been for someone like Robin Hood. If the writers had committed to giving Regina a sister earlier in the show instead of retconning Zelena in later, I think it would've been a really good idea. They just needed to work the story around it and throw in some foreshadowing. Because they didn't do that, Zelena felt very tacked on. Of course, I also think Zelena needed to be a different fairy tale character and not the Wicked Witch of the West. Any ideas on any famous characters that would've fit her better?

I guess Belle and Rumple were realistic as a textbook example of an abusive relationship? Of course, a tyrannical mass murdering dictator becoming a hero without as much as an apology is "gray" and "complex" and would totally happen. I actually thought Camelot was one of the more grounded arcs in EF because characters like Arthur acted like you'd think they would. There were magical shenanigans going on but the character motivations (when characters weren't mind controlled) made sense.

OUATIW worked well in (mosty) purely magical settings, but it wasn't meant to be especially complex, much less realistic. However, the characters were pretty relatable and the writing was tight.