oliverwendell

I just watched it, and I'm kind of loving Hyde, gross bloodshot eyes and all. I'm hoping he turns out to be the good guy, and Jekyll the bad guy. Maybe he wants Storybrook because he's actually trying to help the people from the Land of Untold Stories finish their stories and find their happy endings, while Jekyll wanted to come to Storybrook to be all eeeeevil and such? One way or another, I'm pegging Hyde for Regina's new love interest. I don't think you hire Sam Witwer just to talk in a really low voice and rock Victorian outfits.

I'm actually intrigued with the direction they're taking Regina. Most of the villains who've been redeemed (like Hook, Maleficent, and even Zelena) were depicted as ordinary, decent people who were twisted into a dark version of themselves by tragedy or the villainy of others. Once they find their way back to the light, it's like they recover their true selves, and are much happier being "heroes" than they were being villains because doing good just feels better than doing evil. What Regina's saying here is that she may be someone who isn't a decent person at her core, that being good in and of itself doesn't make her happy. It's only the benefits she gets in trade (Henry, Robin, the love of a newfound family) that made it worth it, and with Robin dead, she doesn't see the point anymore. Maybe it's just grief talking, but I think it's the most interesting she's been in a couple of years.

That makes a certain wacky kind of sense.

I didn't really think they'd kill Robin, but now I can sort of see it. The final linchpin that unites Regina and Zelena in sisterly true love: they both lose their boyfriends. For the first time in their lives, they're on equal footing in terms of a happy ending (or lack thereof), so no more jealousy. They'll have to support one another in their grieving. It's kind of sweet, but if they do it, I'll be annoyed that they killed off Robin just to push Zelena and Regina together.

I'm not so sure that's Emma's heart. What if it's Hook's? Maybe when you're dead, Hades has your heart in a bag. Now there's a sentence I'll never type twice.

Zelena looks gorgeous in that sneak peek. I want that blouse. I'm also feeling really bad for her, thanks to Mader's performance. Zelena is utterly self-sabotaging, and brings all her misery on herself by the way she treats others, but I still find her sympathetic. That's how you make a redemption story work, IMO.

The Author is a terrible writer. Gah!

We did?

I thought that at first, too, but on rewatch I see that it was Hades' taunts that changed his mind. Hook was happy to be rescued until Hades started threatening to keep the people who'd come to save him trapped in the Underworld, and then to hurt them as well. Now he thinks it was a mistake for them to come and risk their lives for him. It was how Hades fucked with him, taking away his hope and joy at possibly being saved.

Wow. That whole interview, just, wow. They don't even realize how irredeemable they made Rumple when they had him toss Milah in the River of Souls. Are we really supposed to root for this "deep love" between him and Belle?

My immediate reaction to that promo is to want to smack Killian Jones upside the head. Emma flipping went into the literal Underworld to rescue him and now he's all like, "Nah, bitch, I'm movin' on. Good luck finding a ride back to earth"? There are only two possible explanations for that in my mind. One, he's so torn by his love for Liam that he actually wavers in his commitment to Emma. Or two (and this is the one I'd rather see), he's decided he needs to push Emma away and move on without her for Emma's own good. Maybe he thinks there's no way he can be saved, since the heart thing didn't work, and realizes that the longer she stays there in the vain hope she might get him out, the more dangerous it is for her, and he'd rather sacrifice himself (again) for her. I'm kinda thinking it's option one, though.

I'm just hoping we get some explanation for why Hook (and Meg for that matter) got locked up in the torture dungeon while everybody else's dead self is shuffling around Underbrook and eating kiddie-gingerbread at Granny's. But I'm not holding my breath.

I will never stop being amazed by how much Bailee looks like a young Ginny. It's uncanny.

In the finale he alluded to the Underworld being a place of misery: "Speaking as one who's already been there....the Underworld is worse than you can possibly imagine. It will make you wish the old stories of fire and brimstone were true. It will make you wish for death. And then you'll realize that death has already come, and this fresh torture is all that's left." Since the Underworld doesn't seem to be all that torturous for the average dead soul, I'm betting the Underworld has a special dungeon for Dark Ones.

Also, I took it as a fairly typical spoken hyperbole. We all do that all the time. "I will kill somebody if I don't get my Diet Coke by 10 AM" is a sentence I say often. Am I going to kill somebody if I don't get my Diet Coke? Probably not, but what I mean to say is that I will be very, very cranky, and that's what everyone who hears it understands me to mean. Jen saying Emma would die without Hook is just that sort of statement to me. She doesn't mean that Emma would literally kill herself, she means that Emma would be emotionally devastated if Hook died. And I don't think that makes her weak or an anti-feminist. Can you imagine what would happen to Hook if Emma died? Take what happened to him when Milah died, and multiply it by about a thousand. It would be epic emotional wreckage. And what would most viewers think about that? I'll tell you what they would think. They would think it was romantic, and that it proves how deeply and truly he loved her. So why, when a female character feels the same way about her lover's death, do some people think that makes her a fainting Victorian lady in a corset?

I agree. Not happening. They'll find some loophole shenanigan that will get him out some other way. But I'd like for Hook to know she was willing to do it. :)

I don't know why this is an issue, other than for the sake of drama. Nobody knew it was possible to go to the Underworld and get somebody back from the dead when Neal died. I hope that's what Emma tells Neal, generously leaving him to assume she would have gone for him had she known she could. (And who knows? Maybe she would have.)

I'm also one of those who thought Neal and Emma were endgame as soon as Neal was introduced. He's Henry's father, and this is a Disney show, and I just couldn't see a Disney production going in any direction other than reuniting lovers who've had a kid together. The "I love you's" at the end of Season 2 clinched it for me, and I was surprised to see a triangle developing in the beginning of Season 3. I hated Hook when he first appeared (so smarmy!) and I never warmed up to Neal at all (so douchey!), so I wasn't invested in either leg of the triangle for a while. I finally, to my own surprise, became a Hook fan in "Good Form," and now I think the way the writers and Colin have slowly redeemed that character over three seasons is one of the better redemption stories in recent TV history and a great reversal of the whole first love = true love, family-first Disney trope.

I'm almost afraid to ask this, but what does that hashtag "SwanQueenBelongstoSwen" mean? Who (or what) is Swen?

I can't help it, I'm already shipping Zelena and Dorothy. If you listen to A&E about wanting to treat LGBT relationships exactly like hetero ones, theirs is the perfect setup: Two adversaries! Both hot! One of them is super sassy! The other one probably is, too! They fight fight fight fight and sparks fly! Against their will, they fall for each other! It's Buffy and Angel! Buffy and Spike! Emma and Hook! Plus the added bonus of completely f*cking with literary canon and making Dorothy fall in love with the Wicked Witch of the West! How could A&E possibly resist? It's not like they couldn't have two queer relationships on the show. And this one would be even better than Mulan Rouge because Zelena is much closer to being a core character, especially when you consider her relationships to and conflicts with the other core characters, than either Mulan and Ruby. No, do tell!

I'm surprised, too. But I also get the sense that the episode was already crammed to the gills and there just wasn't room for it. They're planning to handwave it later, or ignore it entirely. I'm not sure how much time passed between Hook's death and Emma confronting Gold in his shop. More than a day, at least, because Belle had already returned and re-consummated her marriage to Rumple (ick). Where was Hook's body during that time? In the morgue? I may be overthinking this.

I'm completely confused, too. I need them to explain how Hook's soul is going to get put back in his mouldering body and not have it look like a refugee from the Walking Dead. I need them to explain how Emma is going to put half her heart into somebody's soul, rather than their body. Or can she wait and bring his soul with her then dig up his body, stick half her heart in it, then his soul gets sucked back in there and revive it? Because -- ew, mouldering. I have the feeling Hook's just going to resume his corporeal form when they bring him back to Storybrook, just like Nimue and all her horde apparently did, and then Emma will need to split her heart by midnight or some such thing to keep Hook from being sucked back to the Underworld, just like Nimue and her horde needed to mark the Storybrook gang by midnight so they could be sucked back instead of them. Or maybe she has to give him half her heart in the Underworld, in order to get him out? But again, how do you give a soul half a heart? And either way, there will then be two Hooks in Storybrook, one his dead self and one his new, reformed self, and I don't think they're ever going to acknowledge that in the story.

Good question. As a writer myself, I would hate to have my story told in weekly increments like television stories are told, for exactly this reason. Between spoilers and the massive fandom hive brain that can collectively guess almost anything, it's impossible to have any twist truly be a surprise to anyone other than the casual fan. Then, by the time the twist plays out on screen, fans roll their eyes and call it sooooooo predictable. Whereas if it had aired all at once, like in a movie, without the breaks that provide the opportunity for spoilers and spec, it might have been called brilliant, shocking, etc. I suppose most fans are just casual fans, but even they will get wind of spoilers or accurate speculation if the twist is big enough. Look what's recently happened with Game of Thrones, and you'll know what I mean. Though I agree with Shanna, the story should still be able to stand on its own even without the adrenaline rush of a storytelling surprise. Still, I get what he's saying. It's just so hard to really be surprising any more.

I'm really curious to see if Hook has his hook in the underworld. It really seems that he shouldn't, since he must be some sort of noncorporeal "ghost" self while his actual body is mouldering in its Storybrooke grave. Speaking of which, the cemetery spoilers confuse me. Everyone looks like they're mourning, as if they just buried him, but they have all their Underworld gear (bows, backpacks, etc.). Why would Killian Jones have a headstone in the Underworld? Why would anyone???