Amerilla

I frankly think there were a number of interesting pairings beyond Hook/Emma that would have worked ok but not this one. All three actors/characters have their fans, of course, but I don't think them interacting without the rest of the old cast is going to be at all entertaining.

I don't begrudge the actors who decided to stay, but cutting 67% of the regulars is a HUGE slap in the face to those in the audience who invested years in Snowing, Rumbelle, CS, even Swan Queen. Who, in any of those fandoms, are going to walk away satisfied?

Could be his kids. They're still school age, and maybe he felt it was better to be bored and well paid in Vancouver than pulling them away from their schools and friends to move back to Scotland for good.

It's a tough situation. There was really no good option. On the one hand, I'm sure it feels really crappy for CS fans because the wedding turns out to be, in essence, the end of their story. On the other hand, Jen leaving is going to be a promotional opportunity in the lead-up to the finale. And announcing it before last night's episode might have dimmed what little enthusiasm the musical/wedding managed to generate.

Very good point. I'm terrified we might run into one when kayaking. The mute ones you can't even hear coming.

He would have so much chemistry with the swan that it would end up coming across a little creepy. We'd have to constantly remind ourselves that the swan really was Emma. Only if it were a CGI swan. In real life, swans are often aggressive little devils.

I will hand A&E this: their superpower is clearly their ability to disappoint EVERYBODY. Seriously, as a Rumbelle fan from S1-S3, as a Neal/Swanfire fan, as a Sean Maguire fan, I used to think our fandoms were singled out for suffering. We're not. At the end of the story, not one single fandom is going to walk away satisfied about a story well-told.

Personally, I'd take that over a kale smoothie ANY DAY. :-)

For the main characters, I've always felt that the actors' ages are supposed to roughly approximate their characters' age in the present moment. Taking that as a starting point, you can sort of backtrack to where they would have been without curses and portal jumps and various acts of immortality. Take the whole Rumpel/Milah/Hook grouping. In real life, Carlyle just turned 56, Rachel Shelley is 47 and Colin is 36. Roll those ages back to when the characters are introduced in 2011-2012, Carlyle is about 50, Rachel is about 40, and Colin is about 30. So, if we go back to the Early EF, we can sort of use Bae's fixed age to make some guesses. If we assume Rumpel is 49-50 when Bae is 14/15, that makes him about 34-35 when Bae is born, and Milah 27-28. From the backstory in 'Manhattan,' it seems like they'd already been married for a time. Hook and Milah don't meet until Bae is about 6, so Milah would be about 34 and Hook about 25. How long were they together? It seems like Rumpel runs into them after Bae's been gone for just a couple years beyond his last fixed age of 14-15 -- Rumpel hasn't quite hit Peak Imp yet, he's still looking for the straightforward path of a magic bean, etc -- so we can assume they've been together about 9-10 years, putting them at mid-40s and mid-30s when Milah dies and Hook goes to Neverland. While it doesn't work perfectly, it easily puts Gold's visual age in his early to mid-50s and Hook's in his early to mid-30s during the Storybrooke part of the story. Plus or minus 200-300 years. A less extreme example: Jennifer, Ginny and Josh are all about the same age in real-life. In the S3 opener, Emma tells her parents they can't pull the life experience crap since they're the same age she is. It's also plausible that Belle matches Emile's real age of 35...making her about 30 when the Curse breaks, and, assuming she was in Regina's prison for a couple of years and with Rumpel at the Dark Castle for a year or so, would have made her mid-20s in 'Skin Deep.' This is why, in my Thread for All Seasons post, I posited that, no matter how old and decrepit one thinks MRJ looked in 'Tallahassee,' Emma and Neal were about the same age. Jen is 38, he's 39 The ONLY character this doesn't work for -- and you're going to find this SHOCKING -- is Regina. Lana is about the same age as Jen and Gosh...but in the EF, she was, what, 8-10 years older than Snow? We'll just chalk it up to good genes and monthly juice fasts.

They really have trouble with time, space and gestation on this show. Timestamps in Tallahassee and the S3 finale put Emma and Neal's meeting in 2001. Adam said at some point it was basically a summer romance, so Emma would have been 17-going-on-18, since her birthday is fixed at late October 23, 1983 and would have turned 18 in October 2001. If it was indeed a summer romance, taking place in the second half of 2001, then Henry couldn't have been born until the first half of 2002 even if he was conceived immediately. But that also means Henry can't *already* be 10 when he finds Emma in the pilot in October 2011 or 11 in Manhattan in the spring of 2012. Most show wikis give Henry's birthday at August 15, 2001, based on the easter egg that Regina uses his birthday -- 815 -- for all her passwords which fits him being 10 in Oct 2011, but which can't be true if Emma and Neal meet in 2001, unless they met in early January, got pregnant immediately, and Henry was somewhat premature....and which would make Emma 17 when he was born, not 18 as she said. That also means he can't be 11 when he meets Neal in Manhattan, unless the time jump from the S1 finale to Manhattan was waaay longer than we thought, and Manhattan doesn't take place until the summer of 2002. So I'm not sure I buy the "they paid more attention to timelines back then" argument.

I don't think it was entirely about the Shocking!Twist! They couldn't use Dylan Schmid and cast a younger Emma because Dylan back then wasn't old enough to play an older teen -- in the season 2 finale episodes, months after the filming on Tallahassee, his voice is barely done changing -- so you'd have to recast an older Bae and cast a younger Emma. Then you're inserting a third Bae into the mix. It's a lot for a one-off episode and a lot for an audience that skews young and/or doesn't obsess about this stuff like we do to keep track of. So they went with what they had. Could they have done it better? Sure. "We Could Have Done It Better" is the show's unofficial motto. Everyone came at it in their own way. For me, the fact that I didn't find Jen particularly convincing at playing a teen made it easier to just go with the idea that they were BOTH supposed to be in the same age range. On this point, I agree wholeheartedly.

I think any of this hinges on whether you think Emma's story is about destiny or fate. If breaking the Curse was Emma's destiny, then the conditions of her life before her 28th birthday don't matter so much. She could have been raised by Snowing as the all-American girl. She could have married Neal and raised Henry in Tallahassee. She could have left her graduate program at Yale to become the lesbian leader of a badass motorcycle gang called The Red Jackets. Destiny dictates that she ends up in Stoybrooke at age 28. How she gets there is irrelevant. If breaking the Curse was Emma's fate, the lead-up does matter. If the idea is that Emma has to be so broken and shut down by life that opening her heart to Henry creates an emotional shift big enough to destroy the Dark Curse, then bad shit has to happen to break her. Snowing dies in a car crash shortly after coming through the portal because Charming only knows how to drive horses. Snowing survives but Emma runs away as a teen because they're too protective. Neal gets nabbed by police and he goes to jail without Emma knowing it and she ends up giving up Henry. Fate dictates that all this has to happen to bring her to Storybrooke, and the details can only change in minor ways. Even though it sometimes calls it destiny, the show really leans towards Fate. Neal, Snowing, August, etc all believe that what they do at these pivotal moments is the only choice they can make to get Emma to where she needs to be to the savior (which I refuse to capitalize at this point because it's become so lame.) In a show with stronger worldbuilding, that complete belief in fate, even when it causes pain, is one of the ways these characters are truly other-worldly. IF being the operative word. Since we know most of what's on the Wanted poster beyond height and eye color is a lie, why assume his age is correct? Knowing how this show rolls, I'm sure the prop person that designed the Wanted poster didn't really get any guidance on it. It's one of those things that's always irked me: A&E investing less than the bare minimum in characterizing Neal created this vacuum where people who just hate Swanfire can latch on with cries of statutory rape and how he was sooooo much older than Emma he should have known better than to do what he did. But there's really nothing in the story that confirms Neal was somehow much older or more mature. Indeed, there are no details of his life AT ALL. If you take it from the opposite end and say that, like the actors that portray them, Emma and Neal were a couple years apart in their LWM age, he couldn't have been out of Neverland all that long. If he's 19-20 to her 17, he's only been in this world 4-5 years when they meet, assuming he was still 15 when he arrived in Neverland and began to age at a normal rate when he arrived here. Then we get into the big unknowns about how he learned how to navigate this world with no download, no frame of reference, and as far as we know, no support. But we'll never know, will we?

They're probably just trying to cover their bases. If they get canceled, the "final chapter" closes it out. If they get a S7 pickup, they just pretend it's "new chapter" in a "new story."

Because the proper response to your kid being kidnapped, tortured, and controlled by a malevolent being -- all experiences you yourselves have had -- is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ? I'm not saying the story is good, or that Emma is wrong, just that Rumpel and Belle could hardly act otherwise under the circumstances.

Possibly historic moment in the promo pics: Belle is wearing pants. Like, slacks. I think that's a first. At least Emilie avoided Ginny's fate and the costumers didn't go Full Frump on Belle's wardrobe after she spawned.

I don't see his story ending with Rumpel dying as the Dark One, so I still think it's on track for Belle to break the curse with a TLK in his dying moments so he can go to The Good Place with Baelfire. Plus, that's the scenario that would really twist the metaphorical dagger into the kidneys of the last dozen or so Rumbelle fans, because it's the weakest form of romantic payoff.

Movie vs Show comparisons, like questions, are pointless. These are two very different genres and the stories have very different functions. 1) Movie-Belle has a simple Point A to Point B plot confined within a standard story structure over the course of two hours. Show-Belle's story has no clear Point B to travel to, no clear overall story structure, and is being told over the course of six or more years. 2) Movie-Belle is a co-equal protagonist. She has the same or more narrative weight as the Beast. Show-Belle is a supporting character. Her story will always be subsidiary to Rumpel, the same way Hook, Charming and Robin are always subsidiary to Emma, Snow and Regina. Then you get into OUAT's unique writing problems. You can't actually categorize her as either independent or dependent. She's just "there" or "not-there." Like all the characters, Belle is locked in her little story silo. Her character's purpose is to move Rumpel's story hither and thither. She might occasionally get to venture out of that silo in a centric or fairyback, and every once in a while she might interact with another character, but it's unsustainable -- because Rumpel doesn't do much at this point that doesn't originate, in one way or another, with Belle. But because she's a supporting character, she doesn't get to contribute meaningfully to stories even when she's invested. This season is a good example: Gideon is her son as much a Rumpel's, saving him from darkness is a meaningful emotional goal that calls back to her experiences with Rumpel, but she's been essentially absent from the story for, what, 3 of the last 5-6 episodes?** So you have a season where their son is the Big Bad, but neither Rumpel nor Belle is consistently in the story; Rumpel because they're probably saving him for big action at the end of the season, Belle because she can't get ahead or supersede Rumpel. ** Belle has had just under 2 minutes of screen time 6x12 through 6x15. She's had 75 minutes overall since 6x01, but that's lower than any of the regulars other than Zelena. It's also been a relatively low Rumpel season. He's had 115 minutes overall, about the same as David and Snow (108 and 106 respectively).

It's just weird. I feel like by now there must be little divots in the street there where everyone's been standing patiently waiting for Character A to smite Character B.

It's actually fairly amazing that after six years, it's somehow too hard for them to create scenes on Main Street that involve more than two people doing something and everyone else standing still on their marks. Is it really that hard for them to block out action scenes? Do they think their audience will lose track of the PLOT!!! if more than two people are talking/moving/interacting at a time?

Dead Is Only Dead If You're Neal. Everyone else is only ever just Mostly Dead. I can see them giving Rumpel and Regina sacrificial deaths because they could figure out a way to bring Lana back if they get a new season. But Regina has to end the series as a "hero," so sacrificing herself to save the town/Emma/Henry fits the repetitive pattern of arc finales.

You make some excellent points.

Fitting for a department whose slogan seems to be "To Protect and....eh, Whatever. We'll Get To You Eventually." Have they ever successfully solved a crime, caught a bad guy and held on to them, or seen anyone convicted? ETA: Nothing screams "Excellence In Law Enforcement" like hiring your husband - a known murderer - and then driving around "solving crimes" together in a stolen VW Bug. Sweet that they're throwing CS fans that bone at the likely end, but yeah, as an old-time Snowing and Rumbelle fan, sitting here after five or six seasons of huge nothingburgers: F**k you, Adam and Eddy. Even I'm a little surprised that Rumbelle isn't at least on set for the "Final Battle."

I think Hank and Wu will be brought back. I actually think it's Adalind whose going to get the short end of the stick (so to speak) and end up being Really Most Sincerely Dead in the finale. I think the "fix" is letting Adalind die a martyr's death trying to save the kids. Adalind and Nadalind fans get a bittersweet ending. Nick doesn't have to make a choice between the two women, and Adalind doesn't have to make a choice between children. Nick and Juliette can take baby Kelly and ride off into the sunset in a new and improved Grimmabago. Diana stays with Renard.

See, I don't think they did want to write a romance, or at least no more romance than was necessary to make babies. For the most part, the first two seasons, and well into the third, were focused on parents and children. Emma and Snow. Emma and Henry. Emma and Charming. Regina and Henry. Regina and Snow. Regina and Cora. Snow and Eva. Rumpel and Baelfire. Even a lot of the secondary stories had a heavy focus on parent-child relationships: Gepetto and Pinocchio, Hansel and Gretel and their father, Cinderella and her baby, Ruby and Granny, Archie and his parents, Cora and her father, Zelena and her father. Flashback Whale and his father and brother. Even freakin' PAN turns out to be a father underneath. But in Season 3, they start to shift Emma and Regina into romances, exile Snowing to new parenthood, and kill off Bae. Emma and Regina aren't focused on being moms as much, Snow and Charming are mostly absent or focusing (offscreen) on Snowflake, and Rumpel simply has no emotional core without Bae. It was a radical shift in they story's emotional equilibrium that even good writers might have had trouble navigating. These are not good writers. One of my lingering behind-the-scenes questions is: was it A&E's choice to move away from this parent-child focus, or was it the network?

The original Bae is 18 now, and 18 in a way that can't pass for 14 anymore.