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Selina committed murder. A slap is nothing compared to that.

We don't know if the actors actually had contracts for recurring roles with guarantees for X number of episodes or if they just had discussions with the EPs about their availability for the rest of the season and the possibility of coming back. Actors are not always reliable reporters about such things in interviews. It's part of their job to talk up and make the most of every bit role they have so they get press and in doing so they sometimes overstate the facts to promote themselves. The network has to approve bringing back expensive guest stars and if the people holding the purse strings don't feel that they would be getting sufficient bang for their buck they'll veto the idea and scenes with those actors will be cut or not even written. Networks veto or "request" changes to story arcs all the time. A&E may have pitched some ideas and someone at the network said "Our data shows that this character/story line is not resonating with viewers so please drop it." Or the usual thing happens that everyone agrees that, for sure, the actor will come back later in the season and then the actor takes on other work and the window of opportunity to bring him back closes. They had to literally put Marion on ice for just this reason because Christie Laing was filming another show and Sean Maguire also had a movie commitment during season 4 production. My impression of the scene between Belle and her father was that Maurice was physically preventing Belle from going to her mother because the ogre had left Colette's body mutilated and probably in pieces, maybe with parts missing, and he wanted to spare Belle that as her last memory of her mother. That is the natural and understandable action of a father and there's nothing shady about that at all.

When push comes to shove, continuity sometimes needs to take a back seat to business. Continuity is important but not necessarily a high priority. This show is a business. That impacts every decision from casting and costuming to script writing and story arcs

The reason is most likely that they needed to be good corporate citizens and promote other Disney brands. The show is, after all, a for-profit business in the Disney concern. Merida is no doubt appearing on the show this season for the same reason. An awful lot of creative decisions are driven by business decisions made by people higher up in the abc/Disney organization.

"Can't say" means it would be a big spoiler if we answered.

If the decline of Theo's family occurred several generations ago it would explain their present-day obscurity No one but local historians would remember the 19th century families that have all but died out.

We've seen on more than one occasion that while Emma may call them Mom and Dad and accepts that they are related she treats them as peers. She even said explicitly during the Neverland arc that they were equals. From their interactions they appear to have settled into something similar to a close sibling relationship. I would not characterize them as having a parent-child relationship.That is not surprising and consistent with real life when adults meet their birth parents.

Some parents neglect their children and some people pretty much keep their significant other's children at arm's length. What you are describing is the exception and not the rule. It takes years and sometime it never happens that a child accepts the SO, even the live-in one, as a parental figure, especially with older children. Henry is pretty much past the age where he will form a parental bond with either Hook or Robin. He'll probably become close to them but that is different than an parent-child relationship. With Roland it's a toss-up given his young age.

No, Regina is not "basically" being a parent to Roland. Acting protective and being a regular presence in a child's life and being an actual parent with all responsibilities and obligations that entails are very different things.

My point is that the whole idea that just dating someone with a child makes one a parent to that child is ridiculous.

No she won't. Henry is her only child. Regina's relationship with Roland is that she is his father's girlfriend, Dating someone doesn't create a step-parent relationship and it certainly does not create an adoptive parent relationship. Only a court can do that. Regina will be the aunt of Zelena's child. Regardless of what Regina said last season to Zelena, I wouldn't assume that Zelena will not be keeping her child.

Ad sales is just one revenue stream for this show. Revenue from Netflix, Amazon and foreign distribution probably exceeds ad revenue at this point. These are very good reasons to keep the show on the air as long as possible. Once is also a Disney brand that can be integrated well into the theme parks. They have already begun doing so by add Mr. Gold's shop to one of the parks in Florida. The show just needs to visit maybe two more lands to have enough material for an engaging Pirates of the Caribbean style theme park ride. From various things mentioned or hinted at in interviews, I have no doubt that is coming.

The standard TV contract has been 7 years for quite a while now. It's also usual that actors who join a show later get the standard contract. It's not necessary for all contracts to expire at the same time. Actors negotiate their contracts individually not as a group. Industry standard is also to bump up salaries at the end of a successful first season and then periodically after that for some or all actors, based on how their contribution to the success of the show, among other things, is perceived by the network. The Friends group negotiation back in the day was an industry anomaly. Abc went through negotiations last year for the two Castle stars and the show is now in its 8th season. There is no reason abc would have shorter contracts for this show if their standard is 7 years. From everything Robert Carlyle said to the British press at the Edinburgh Film Festival last June, his family loves it in Vancouver, he likes having steady work and making a lot of money and in general is happy with his current situation and has no plans to change it. Danny Boyle also said something in a recent interview about his newest film that he has to work around RC's and JLM's TV contracts next summer or wait a few years until they run out to begin filming.

A agree about Emilie's annoying voice. She always sounds like she's about to cry with her quaking voice, and she does weird, distracting things with her mouth. I don't see any great friendship between Hook and Belle. Working together and having a few civil conversations is not a friendship, unless we're talking about Facebook-type pseudo-friends.

It's not unfair at all and no different than constantly projecting onto the writers that they "can't be bothered", or "don't care" or "only want to do X", etc. Actors are not a protected class. They carry significant responsibility for the quality of the final product. Bad acting can ruin good writing and kill a scene or a whole show as effectively as bad writing. I always assume that some amount of acting is going on during public appearances over and above the obvious hamming it up on stage at ComicCan and similar events. Outsiders don't know how much or little respect individual actors have for the people they work with and are not in a position to speak objectively about it. It's all just opinion. I form my opinions from what I see on screen, just like everyone else. Robert Carlyle has to carry all their scenes together. It gets old really fast to always have to carry coworkers who can barely do their jobs. I've been in that position more often that I'd like. It has nothing to do with how much one likes them as people.

That's not how it went down. Disney had nothing to do with the decision. ABC executives voiced their displeasure so Adam and Eddy decided to change it. http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/s181/once-upon-a-time/news/a432961/once-upon-a-time-prince-charming-originally-killed-in-pilot.html#ixzz3nc7t9uB1 The animated Disney moves are targeting a younger audience. The little girls who love all things pink and sparkly and are really into Disney princesses are not watching this show. The characters on this show are not the same as the characters in the Disney kiddy cartoons. The children watching the show are old enough to understand that and from my firsthand experience they are not at all confused that this Belle is not a Disney Princess with a capital P, but just another fairytale character on a show that presents a very different take on fairytales, and that all the little references such as the chipped cup, the dance, etc are just nods to the movie and not a retelling of that story. Adam and Eddy would do well to use this opportunity to write Belle out of the show. Belle is a millstone around Rumple's neck as far as character development is concerned. It limits what they can do with him if they have to keep the love story going. Rumple is a tragic character so it would in keeping with that to have him lose Belle, too, so that he eventually finds redemption in a heroic death, not in a happy ending with wife and child and perhaps a while picket fence. The Rumbelle scenes have become tiresome mostly because of Emilie's bad acting. One can practically see the thought bubble over Robert Carlyle's head saying "Fuck, do I have to do all the work here?" Emilie's portrayal of Belle as a grown-ass adult behaving like an awkward teenager is irritating, not believable and too close to how she behaves in interviews and other public appearances and pretty much every other role she has ever had for me to buy that she is actually acting and not just being herself with a toned down accent.

This might be the season that Belle dies a tragic but heroic death. I doubt her pregnancy will be written into the show unless it is to bring Rumple full circle of being a single father and gets a second chance to do right by his child. Emilie said a couple seasons back that she would go back to being blond when she was done with the show and now within the space of a week she went back to being blonde and announced she is pregnant. That does seem auspicious that this could be her last season on the show.

All the interviews and promotional materials are on the internet waiting to be googled. Emma was a plot device to move the story along for all of season one and still is. "Most kids and adults" would be a number in the millions. I have not seen any data to support that and mining and analyzing this kind of data is what I do for a living. This has gotten off topic so I will stop now.

Regina has been a tremendously popular character from the get go and has always been the main character. The tag line of the show, before the pilot even aired was "Evil is not born, it's made" and then not 5 minutes into the pilot we met a character called the Evil Queen. The kids I watch the show with had it figured out right away what and who this show was about. Adam and Eddy said in interviews at the beginning of season 1 that the premise of the show was, in a nutshell, "What if the Evil Queen got her happy ending". The have repeated this in various ways in several other interviews that this is Regina's story, it is the story of Regina's (and Rumple's) redemption, etc. Furthermore, Paul Lee was explicit, on more than one occasion, that this is a family show for parents to watch with their children. They were always upfront about what kind of show this is. No viewers were misled. If some fans misunderstood and thought the show was about something else, then that is on them.

The most important viewer segment for this show is not even reflected in the rating numbers everyone loves to quote, namely children. There are more viewers under 18 than online fan girls. Since Paul Lee and Disney classify this as a kids show I doubt they are worried. The show has about 10 million viewers when one looks at the live +7 numbers and is one of the top shows on Netflix. And that is just the domestic market. It is also doing very well internationally. The online fans who make so much noise represent only a tiny percentage of viewers. abc and Disney care about viewers in households with significant discretionary income who will watch the show, buy the merchandise and hopefully visit the theme parks and book a Disney cruise or resort vacation. As long as the show helps drive consumers to the theme parks and resorts it will stay on the air.

Adam is promoting the show. That's part of his job. He posted an exciting and intriguing image that will generate interest. That's how promotion works for pretty much all TV.shows. These are a few grown-ass adults carrying on like overwrought teenagers. Nobody at the show or at abc cares about them.

They said in interviews four years ago that they pitched a 5-year high-level story arc to ABC. It is normal for this kind of serialized show that the producers have to demonstrate to network executives that they have a long-term plan so they have a chance at getting an order for a pilot. Season 1 was a setup for the entire series and lots of things casually mentioned or shown in season 1 have been referenced in the following seasons.

Mermaids can swim great distances between realms. That would require either great strength and endurance or magic. Ariel possessed one or the other, either of which would no doubt be sufficient to wrangle a man onto the ship and into his bunk, plus ropes, pulleys, nets and crew members still loyal to Hook.

Eddy said what I paraphrased above. Video of that interview is on YouTube.

Eddy answered that question at Comic Con. As he put it, the Dark One is "the ultimate you." The dark curse takes away the internal filters and inhibitions that we all have to keep ourselves in check. In the Season 4 finale the Apprentice, who is evidently the resident expert on the subject, always referred to the dark flubber as the darkness and not as the dark entity. The phrasing is important, I think. He said that Rumple was the Dark One for a long time, not that he was a host to an entity possessing some sentience and able to influence or control his behavior This is consistent with what we saw in uncursed Rumple. Before the curse Rumple was an average guy who managed to keep a lid on his less noble side. But they show a few instances where he was not such a nice person.