LizaD

Well I do think that was the "end game" they had in mind for Rump. It sounds exactly like what Robert prefers too. But I think they let that scenario play out so early because they were already plotting Neal's death and that scene only works with Neal and for Neal. Because they need Rump as the mover and shaker. No one else can fill that role, of moving plot, for them like he does. The other complication is if they have Rump outside of Storybrooke for several episodes, other characters would need to be there with him and there were no candidates. The QoD were pegged for Snowing, Woegina and author plots. They're clearly not interested in Robin outside of being a prop for Woegina. Zelena was their "shocker" reveal. They already have too many new characters to give Rump a separate group to play with. They can't fit in a real story for Rump with what they chose to do with 4B. Presumably they'll do that exact scenario of a stripped down Rump for 5A.

I thought that was only for the finale? As in no new characters in finale like we did with Elsa or something? But 5A is a free for all. There's no way they'll do without a bunch of new characters. How else are they going to fill out 11 episodes? I mean there are ways but it ain't the A&E way.

I'm waiting to see who they cast as Merlin. That could tell us a bit more. I was thinking that if Robert is really going "see ya suckers" at the end of this season and they want to keep going for 7, then possibly Merlin could be set to take over Rump's role. If they manage to get a "biggish" tv name, it'd be a good sign. That or one of their Lost buddies. It would also mean he can't possibly be a good guy cause no way in hell they put so much focus on a guest star that's a good guy. They couldn't even the story on Elsa or Anna and they had help from Disney! That Frozen arc was all Ingrid.

I know in the spoiler thread we were thinking Rump made himself Charming due to the clothes and knight thing but he actually made himself The Light One. That's technically Emma. Another thing that stuck out was a throwaway line that Emma told Henry. She said Rump was punishing her by letting her keep her memories and taking away her power. Why would he want to punish her? It just sounds like a dumb move on his part. Wouldn't it be safer to write away her powers and memories to keep her from traipsing around trying to break his story? Or write her in as his servant that would be forever loyal to him? The other thing that doesn't make any sense is why the hell the Apprentice thought the hat would contain Dark Flubber? He specifically said the ONLY thing Merlin could do to it was tether it. That hat belonged to Merlin. If dark flubber could be contained by the hat wouldn't Merlin have done it already by now dumb ass? Oh and then he dramatically tells them to go look for Merlin who is so so so far away and in the meantime? The thing was going to kill everyone in like 5 minutes? He doesn't even give them a location or way to contact the guy.

I hope they give a better reason for the quest for Merlin. As far as they know all he can do is attach the thing to some other schmuck. I still say he's the big bad. He's probably locked up somewhere and the idiot heroes like usual release him, thinking he's going to help and voila the reveal is the dark magic is all his and he'll just take it back from Emma. Problem solved.

No because traditionally the split has been Emma and Rump in the fall and Woegina and a pretense for Snow in the spring. Also if it's his last year they're going to want to use him as much as they can before he heads for better pastures. What I can see, if he needs a lot of time out is he's not going to be in those group scenes but he hasn't been anyway. They can easily have him tape 1 on 1 scenes with Emma, Merlin, other guest stars, or Belle in some weird spirit state. Or have him set out for Merlin on his own. I guarantee there will be a time jump. They are allergic to writing fall-outs. I can see them thinking coming back immediately to the fall-out and Emma initially waking up as the Dark One is too challenging for them.

I'm calling Terry O'Quinn as Merlin. Is he currently unemployed? You just know it's going to be another Lost person. He's about the only major name left that I can think of from there. Unless they want to go younger? Pass. He's about one of the rare, almost extinct breeds left that hasn't been sacrificed on the altar of St. Mary Sue Woegina. And that's due to sharing minimal contact with her. Please keep the plague+rabies away from him! They have to give Rump something to do. Those 2 plus Charming can go hitchiking to Camelot together. And they'll probably give Rump some sort of special connection to Dark One Emma to do so since he's the ex. Or maybe while he's in stasis he can communicate with her like the sleeping curse thing. No because I think A&E have an aversion to using TLK kiss now because they put more stock into a "surprise" move they pulled out of their asses. See last episode with the Henry author blood thing.

I wasn't clear on that. Was Rump actually going to die? I thought what they were saying was he still had a little bit of "ability to love" in him ergo the Dark One-Rump we've seen is actually a bit tame. But if that last bit was gone Dark One Rump was going to go all nuclear on them but it would still be Rump no? Just one without the last bit of humanity left.

Are they deliberately referencing Lost with this story? It sure feels like it to me. The Swan station-Hatch on Lost was built to contain all the electromagnetic waves and here a Swan is containing all the dark stuff.

This AU just proves Ginny is the best actress on the show. She made a way better evil queen. Too bad she's stuck in such a thankless role. Her and dork Hook were the best things about a lackluster AU. They could've had so much fun with it and only those 2 got to play. The way I understood it, Emma is as powerful as Merlin cause she was able to tether Black Flubber. Only Merlin's smarter cause he found some other schmuck to tether it to. I don't think the flubber was going to stop at any one person. It was just going to keep going and eating up all in its path. The solution was to tether it, it wasn't stopping itself. Why would it self-contain? If it did, Merlin wouldn't have needed to tether it in the first place, if it was going to do it by itself. I still say Merlin is going to be the real big bad. Dark One Emma is a red herring. You're seriously underestimating A&E's ability to rewrite fuckery over and over again. I say rewrite cause they keep repeating the same stories and lines. Nothing is really new.

I doubt any of the Dark One rules that we know of so far will hold just based off of the fact that Emma clearly didn't stab Rump to get the job. I'm guessing Rump makes another grand sacrifice and Rumbelle shares a TLK, curing him. There was a spoiler from filming that said something like Emma says they have to do what the Apprentice said right? Which means she and everyone else knows that she has to take on the Dark Curse? So she's the only solution available or she's fated/meant to take over the Dark Curse. I wonder if they're going to rip off Buffy again with that spoiler about how Emma's role will be revealed at the end of the first hour and it's a surprise. I think the stupid "savior" thing was created as a result of there being a Dark One and there's been a line of them to match up with the line of Dark Ones. The Sorcerer was either the very first savior or first Dark One or both. And the new 5A villain.

We'll see come upfronts time, as that'll be the true story. For the last couple of years ABC has been sitting in 3rd place behind CBS and NBC when it comes to selling their inventory at upfronts. And before people claim the sports thing, sports related ad times are not counted in those figures coming out of upfronts. They're usually not sold then. I'm interested to see what Empire does for Fox too. Yeah like Rose McIver. I liked her as Tinkerbell and even if people don't think her show is better than Once, she's the lead on there which is infinitely better than being a supporting player with nothing to do but play prop duty to Mary Sue Victim, 10 minutes a season. David Anders also got a better gig. I'm waiting to see a project with Robbie Kay and the Frozen crew. I also think Socha could do way better. Maybe they'll be nice again and let him out of his contract like they did with Ory. They obviously have nothing for him to do like they did with her. Does Jane's tweet pretty much settle the contract length debate now? It sounds like most, if not all the cast has a 7 year deal.

No. "Switch" and "heroes get unhappy endings" were words never said anywhere onscreen about Rump's plan, either by himself or the QoD. Because it was never his plan. His only plan has always been to get the author to rewite a happy ending for villain(s) which is exactly what OM is. What happens as a by-product, happens but it was never his direct plan. Ursula told Hook that for Rump to get the author to write a happy ending for villains, Emma needed to go dark because otherwise the author couldn't rewrite anything. And she's the moron who left the ink with the Author and let him walk around town all free and clear knowing Rump was out there wanting to get the author. It's a direct consequence of her actions. You know something Ms. Hypocritical-Self-Righteous Holier-than-thou-I'm-the-only-one-allowed-to-be-a-victim, should think about considering she loves to go around lecturing others and pointing fingers.

Rump's plan is to get himself, a villain, a happy ending through author magic sorcery. It had nothing to do with switching people. That's never been his goal. How it ends up being so? No clue. So Rump's plan is OM. The OM plan was to get the author to magically write a "villain" slash biggest victim, a happy ending because the 2 original morons thought villains were written to never be able to have one. Rump just hijacked the exact same plan for himself cause Idiot 1 told him her plan. He didn't change anything except for the WHO, the author is mainly writing for. It's kind of appropriate. Woegina cast the Dark Curse for Rump and she did most of the work for Rump here too. The only reason I thought "Heroes and Villains" would be the better title here is because that's the title of new book. The Once Twitter also changed its name to it. They're using that phrase-book title as a marketing tool so common sense tells me it should've been the episode title too.

Well out of context it's not really a spoiler. In the promo it just makes it seem like Snow and co. turned evil from the rewrite and the baddies are now good. Emma looking like a crazy duck fits that one selling point better than normal looking Emma in the EF. Besides I don't think what happens to Emma is the big event anyway. I think her sucking up Rump's darkness screws up something else that affects everyone else. Cause we all know Emma isn't allowed to ever do anything useful or smart since she's not the Mary Sue in this fanfic. She only destroys lives people! Maybe trying to suck up Rump's darkness sucks up all the darkness in town period. 5A is everyone stuck in a Pleasantville like existence and thats the changed "condition." And the moral of the story of course is that Evil is necessary and a good fun thing to have around! Except for the Charmings' brand of evil. Their kind of evil is the bad kind, like egg stealing and telling truths, and the only kind deserving of punishment.

I'm almost positive that crazy shot is post dagger and the reason she looks so crazy is Rump's Darkness. It'd be a redux of Rump adsorbing Neal and went crazy. I think Lily still has all the darkness, she's just now Snow's kid. Emma's blue vest outfit is the main AU stuff and she looks pretty normal. Maybe since her "darkness" is being used to write the AU she's unaffected. Which would make the obvious solution be using her normal light blood to un-rewrite the AU. The thing that sucks the most about the swap is that they literally could've written any crazy thing they wanted to and really have fun with it, with some wackadoodle characters in a random wackadoodle world. Instead it looks like they got lazy and just dusted off old scripts and gave them to different actors. This way they don't have to come up with any new stories. Still the same old Woegina vs Snow crap. Literally. It's the height of laziness or uncreativity or both.

A straight up swap is less fun. Did they run out of money? They can't make new costumes? My guess is Emma is unaffected by the "swap" or Emma and Lily swapped making Lily, Snowing's kid and Emma is Mal's. Snowing's kid would now be the evil one and Mal's is the light one. Didn't Agnes post a picture of her in the finale in a black outfit that looks like evil Charming's? Also why the hell did they use the title "Heroes and villains" for the end of 4A instead of here?

I don't know if they're actually interested in having Rigby/Ana back. I'm not sure I want her back either. It'd be hard to watch the superior character get shafted in the service of the absolute trash of a character that needs an entire show and cast of characters to prop her worthless butt. And there's bound to be comparisons and Ana is likely to be destroyed for their pet project. A quick look on IMDB tells me Rigby is moving up in the world. She's in the same movie as Idris Elba! That's life right there. Their history also says if a story keeps getting "pushed" back it's more than likely never going to happen. I'm almost positive they canned Will's story sometime in 4A while they were plotting 4B. He had some nice scenes in 4A with the main cast before they stuck him in Rumbelle purgatory. It says a lot that they don't even bother throwing a bone to his character by giving him a centric. Remember how the writers basically told the Belle fans to shut up cause she got 2 centrics-flashbacks in 4A? Because that of course makes up for her character standing around picking her nose with no lines for the other 9 episodes. They probably think giving him the "grand romance" with Belle is seeing much more of him.

I don't think it's all Rump's work. I think the only thing that is his mandate is his and Belle's story and the rest he's leaving up to the author to do whatever he wants. Rump's never given a second thought to anyone else. So the Snow and co. swap is all the author's work. If it's a swap then I don't think Emma's evil. She's probably just locked up. Could be a loop hole because Emma never lived there so doesn't have a "fairytale" anti-persona.

Well let's be fair, I think all writers love the character they center their fan fiction on no? Or else they wouldn't write a fanfiction about them in the first place. "Characters like Woegina" simply means the centerpiece of my fanfiction.

I think it just proves that they actually don't plan things too far ahead that are written in stone or that they are bald faced liars. Or both. As late as 4a interviews they were still claiming that Will's and Will and Anna's story was going to be explored in 4B. It also proves that these clowns, given enough time, will RUIN any and everything. How is it that they managed to turn the most fun character on Wonderland, played by a charismatic actor into a block of useless wood? How? I guess it isn't too shocking considering even Carlyle's level of talent can't save this dreck. I hope Rigby gets enough work to stay away from this show.

Please. Let's be honest. Most of the "notorious" anti-adoption accusations were from rabid Woegina stans who believe she's the most perfect saint biggest victim ever. Even the writers know this but they want to cater to that psycho crowd so no sympathy for them. Also the same faction that cries homophobia all the time too probably. The writers admitted it. They said at Paleyfest that they specifically made sure to write lines about how loving Woegina was too Henry. Why only them? There are tons of other adoption-foster examples. Does that sound like a general problem about portraying social issues being fixed? No it was pandering to the crowd who eats up their Mary Sue Woegina fan fiction. And after they make fun of every other "social issues" calling it fantasy and therefore doesn't matter? Yeah no, the only social issue they care about are the ones that make Woegina a bigger victim or a bigger saint. Anti-adoption BS. None of the blood relations on this show are any better. See Rump/Pan. Is that anti-biological family? Or anti-single fatherhood? It's called soapy drama. Everyone must have a miserable childhood, adoption or not. Just a soap opera rule.

Yes. But every show has an element of soap in it. Even shows like Walking Dead, Breaking Bad or straight up procedurals like CSI have some soapy element to them. The problem with Once is that, it's turned into a full blown pure daytime soap opera with nothing else going for it. Shonda Rhimes shows are basically soaps disguised as a bit of this and bit of that thrown in. Once doesn't even bother doing that. They just let the Disney fairytale stamp "disguise" it for them but nothing on the show itself bothers doing anything but stealing plots from Passions. It's the degree of soap say 50% vs 100%. GoT is on cable and doesn't rely on ad revenue but more than that, GoT is the perfect example I'm talking about. Soap elements out the wazoo but not a pure soap. The soapy element vs pure soap difference between GoT and Once? Cersei slept with her brother and had incest babies but what was the point of that soapy plot point? To trigger a war across multiple kingdoms that affected hundreds of lives which we saw. Now that's not a story that can be found on daytime soap. Zelena disguised as Marian sleeping with her sisters' ex-lover? What's the point of that? Angst for poor Woegina and angst for her relationship? Eh that's a story ripped straight from any of the daytime soaps. GoT have elaborate battles that span an entire episode or multiple episodes. Once's "battles" involve people throwing up their arms in the air and over and done in a minute. This soapy comparison can be elaborated on another thread. Once's 5 million viewers are exactly like Y&R's 5 million viewers and Once is on primetime Sunday with a way larger potential viewer reach. The most telling thing is, somewhere posted on this board that Once and Blacklist were the most popular shows on Netflix and yet Once's current ratings are only going down. I have a feeling that number is due to people wanting to watch Frozen:Once but that tells you a whole lot. There's also rerun values to be considered. People might binge watch a show once but are they going to watch it 5 times more? Blacklist got a Netflix deal of 2 million per episode respectively. The closest figure I could find for Once was 400,000 an episode by an article on Vulture. I'm sure if it got a blockbuster deal ABC would have their PR department screaming about it at the tops of their lungs like NBC and CBS do.

Once is a soap opera which means the target is somewhat invested fans to die hards, not casual viewers or trying to lure in newbies. It's the type of show that has a small audience that 10 years from now will still argue about stupid crap like which couple had more chemistry. It's literally Young and Restless, Disneyfied. Frozen was an anomaly that will never happen again for Once in terms of picking up new or lapsed viewers. "Casual" fans and new viewers just won't pick up soap operas. They just won't. It doesn't make any sense by definition. Casual viewers will and can drop in and out of a show at will. Shows that pick up newbies make it EASY to pick up the show at any point in time. That's not Once or the soap genre. That's procedurals or shows with a strong episodic-standalone element like case of the week while people wait for the longer serialized stories to resolve. S1 had an element of this but they've gotten rid of it completely. Look at Grey's, an 11 year? old show, up against Big Bang Theory, still has better ratings than Once on its 4th season. They managed to blend in the procedural stuff with the soap. This is also partly why heavily serialized dramas don't do well in syndication, see Lost. So while ABC is bleating about Once winning demos on Sundays, CBS will take their old audience and old tired procedurals to syndication and make about 10 times more money.

I don't remember the July part? I thought he sent Ingrid in 1982 which was a year or so earlier than Emma's birth. 3 months before her birth doesn't make sense because the whole Frozen stuff was placed before Snow and Charming's first meeting. Anna met David then Rump and Belle before Rumbelle happened. Anna met Belle then literally a day later all of Arendelle was frozen by Ingrid. She then went to find the Sorcerer to make the hat deal and he sent her on her way. Unless they're saying Ingrid sat around twiddling her thumbs for at least 9 months trying to get Elsa back from Rump, before approaching the Sorcerer? It didn't seem that way to me. It looked like as soon as Rump took Elsa, Ingrid went off to the Sorcerer. Which makes this story wonky because Emma was always destined to be the savior before Snowing got rid of her supposed "darkness." And it couldn't be that Snowing was always destined to do some babynapping and voodoo because it was the rogue author that set them and the Apprentice on that road. Unless it was always destined that the author was going to go rogue, mess with Charmings and Apprentice, so that Emma would end up as savior. See how convoluted and crappy it gets when sucky writers start messing with stuff like destiny, magical authors, free will and swapping fetal lightness and darkness? The stupid. It burns.