Speakeasy

Lots of baddies get their comeuppance-Ingrid, Hades, Pan (twice), Arthur, The Black Fairy, Jafar, Gothel, a bunch of others. Villains only get to dodge the Hammer of Karma (or in some cases come back even after getting their heads smashed) if they're particularly charismatic and popular.

I was never 100% clear on what the Elders were in the original. I thought they were supposed to be angels or something. Same as you I definitely prefer it to be people all the way up and down trying to navigate their way through a dangerous world. I would have liked the Elders to stick around a few more seasons to be honest, exploring the dynamics of these three young, powerful and idealistic but ignorant heroes with an ancient, cautious and knowledgeable power structure. But that isn't how the show is working. Yep. More where the heroes need to make a plan and think on their feet, less of this other stuff. That's definitely a legitimate concern, sadly. I would say they just need to write Mel better and more consistently... BUT... Hmm. Maybe change my answer to 'i wouldn't mind them putting them together IF they remember to put the focus on the one who is 1/3 of the show's title'. Bit optimistic I know.

This show has a lot of good ideas but it always ends up putting them into practice in a way that feels very rushed, which is sad. This episode is a good example. The baddies creating remote control ultra-monsters is a neat idea, but it was kind of rushed, the girls need to get their Triquetra Mojo back and getting it back in a moment if crisis is a good idea, but it seemed kind of rushed. The actual Darkest Fears were pretty solid and I love Darkest Fears episodes, but these were kind of rushed. I will also say I can clearly see that the writers DO have a solid idea about the characterisation they are going for here. When Harry says their greatest fear is losing each other, sadly it comes across as just telling the audience "these characters have a strong sisterly bond, look how strong their sisterly bond is!" Which is unfortunate because what they were going for was that each of them really fears being alone: Macy has terrible impostor syndrome and is terrified that she doesn't really belong in the family and that the others will boot her out and replace her*, Mel is afraid of losing her support structure and being unable to control things or fulfill her responsibilities, Maggie is terrified the people she loves will dismiss her or abandon her or turn her into a magical slave. So they are all constantly afraid of losing their family not just because their sisterly bond is so powerful but because it would leave each of them alone and helpless in a hostile world. But I don't think that was really explored as much as it could be. Not sure if this is a time thing cos I've seen Darkest Fears episodes with less time than this that work better. I do feel it was a bit crowded. Elder Celeste is pretty cool too. *OK Just my tuppence-if I were to have done Macy's nightmare in this episode is actually have Dream Abi be totally sincere and Macy actually get so angry her demon powers resurface and she accidentally fireballs one of the others. Because that works better with her impostor syndrome thing. Her deepest darkest fear is that No She is the Demons. In fact keeping with what I said above I'd have the nightmares be basically: Macy accidentally kills one or more of the others. Mel has to watch them being killed and can't do anything to stop it. Maggie is told that the others are going to handle something, without telling her what it is, and then they just leave and never come back, or maybe she then has to ID their bodies or something.

So I started ranting in the 'Shoulda happened this way' thread and it reminded me of another rant I wanted to post here. The Camelot arc had some really good ideas-the whole idea of Arthur being driven to become a tyrant because he was obsessed by the idea of being hero, the idea of Camelot the perfect kingdom being a lie he forces on everyone because he wont accept an imperfect reality, the question-through Merlin- of what lines you can cross while being one of the good guys and whether noble restraint can do more harm than good, there's a bunch of great stuff in there even if it could have been handled better. But it makes me SO ANGRY And the reason it makes me angry is because it takes every opportunity to demean and disempower and belittle Camelot and it's characters. I must hate Monty Python and the Holy Grail, right? No, I love it... It's possible that's totally inconsistent. I love lots of stuff that mocks King Arthur but I always think that the idea of something like Python is that you KNOW the original is an epic hero myth and the humour comes from the dissonance between that and the ludicrous actions in the movie. The original myth and its power are indirectly referenced through that. Maybe that's nonsense. But to me there's a difference between that and OUAT - in a comedy farce you mock the entire setting and the entire concept. you turn the world of magic and heroes into one of nonsense. In OUAT Camelot wasn't a joke and the greater world of the show was one of magic and heroes-its just that the heroes of Camelot were second rate ineffectual losers. Which was pointed out. Repeatedly. When the Camelans arrived Regina said she could kill them all with a wave of her hand. We got Merida's flashback where she finds Arthur stabbed her father in the back - and rationally that's just something that happens in a battle but you're clearly MEANT to see this as evidence of his inferiority as a man, warrior and king - and wanted to steal the magic leadership helmet from the brave Scots cos he can't lead his men without SPECIAL ASSISTANCE. We get a knight cut down by Charming in the first half of an episode and the only impact is that he poisons Robin, poison being a coward's weapon - this knight being Percival the Perfect Knight. There's a clear parallel there in how Excalibur kills with a single cut and how Hook almost dues from that the implication being Arthur needs special assistance to take him... I mean hes only the archetypal hero-king in British mythology, he's clearly nothing next to Sexy-Ahab-by-way-of-Inigo-Montoya... When they lock him up Emma actually says 'he's NOTHING,' So I'm basically left with the understanding that the has all been a big exercise in making Team StoryBrooke look good by making King Arthur and his knights look like useless, duplicitous, cowardly losers with a good few metaphorical jibes at Arthur's manhood thrown in for good measure, with the aim of making the men the writers approve of look more manly and virile by contrast. Maybe this wouldn't have irked me so much if Guinevere and Lancelot hadn't suddenly become Sir and Lady Not Appearing in this Film before their arcs had a chance to finish. I contrast it to an episode of Legends of Tomorrow which is also about Camelot, in which So that's pretty different from any traditional version of the story. And the main cast have to save the epic heroes who are not up to dealing with supervillains from the future. BUT the knights are still treated as capable people who's story is worth something in its own right, at least one Legend gets really fanboyish about fighting alongside the Knights of the Round Table, and even though they couldn't beat the baddies alone they contributed. And there's none of that in OUAT's version of Camelot. At most Merlin kind of points them in the right direction to fixing their problems then dies. They are weak, useless people who mainly function as obstacles. They are failures in their own context meant to make the main cast look better by contrast. And it frustrates me far more than it should because I shouldn't care, indeed no one should care because the show has been over fir years but what's a forum like this for if not to scream into the void?

I'll admit to that up to a point, I don't think having to stick to Disney canon is a good thing though, I think that the first season was based on Fairy Tales more than Disney - with a few nods to general Disney concepts everyone associates with fairy tales (like True Love's Kiss, I haven't found ANY written fairy tales that mention that idea). And that was the one that roped people in because they were unique takes on the ideas. I personally think the show got weaker the more it became Disney fanfiction and the characters they imported direct from Disney were weak characters with none of the charm or strength of the animated originals. (It's almost as if trying to translate a bombastic children's animated musical number into 'serious' live action stuff that is 'weighty and dramatic' enough for adults doesn't really work-isnt it Disn... Oh who am I kidding you aren't listening) Ok I mean look at the characters that did work: it was all characters that veered way off from their original version. Rumplestiltskin is very different from the original, Regina is very different from the Evil Queen in pretty much any other version of the story, Charming is-well he actually IS a character. Killian Jones has nothing in common with James Hook besides a hook, a ship, and a catchphrase but he still works. Eh... That bit was only possible because they forced a parallel by A) bringing back Emma's magic... I don't remember if they explained how she got it back and B) deciding that Emma's magic was an X-Men Puberty Metaphor Power so that it was uncontrollable like Elsa's and making her family all wary of her like Elsa's parents were. That came off as forced to me. I actually remember that originally they were talking about how Elsa was similar to Ginikins and then switched to how she was similar to Emma, which made it seem like someone from corporate said 'No, Elsa is nice and a hero she is not bonding with a classic villain - SILENCE!- we do not care if your version is an antihero or antivillain or whatever you're calling her, she is a classic fairy tale villain and she is not going to be friends with our hero. Make Elsa friends with your hero, what's her name, Amy? -SILENCE!- we don't want to know, just do it!' I mean they were having fun at least I guess. But honestly I get disproportionately upset when you see one character or group getting beefed up by knocking another set down and making them look like idiots. The fact that Ana's arc was the writers shitting on their own world and characters to put on a display of corporate fealty just made it that much more cringey.

Well fortunately cooler heads prevailed and instead we got the wonderful story of how Anna taught Charming to swordfight in one afternoon and bitchslapped Rumplestiltskin the omnipotent magical master manipulator by accident but would never do anything to abuse her power over him because she is just too pure and nice. Pure as the driven snow one might say, oh the delicious symbolic irony. Genuinely the best things in season 4A WERE the things the writers came up with themselves with the story of Ingrid and her sisters. The worst things with that nonsense about the hat were also their own ideas though so I guess it evens out, with their corporate-required kowtowing to the perfectness of Frozen being the axis on which those things spin. I do wonder whether it would even be possible for Once to have done their own take on The Snow Queen without having to tie it in to Frozen since Disney would want to make sure people remembered Frozen was out there -as if anyone had a chance to forget at that point- and what that might have looked like if they had.

The use of daemons in this season has been especially great in terms of using them to show the state of the characters. Coulter's abuse of hers always freaks me out because it shows she is basically beating herself into submission so she can do get her shit done. It makes me think she's attempting to follow some kind of stoic ideal about subordinating her passions to reason, but in a massively toxic way that just ends up as intense self loathing and general rage powering a tremendous force of will. The Wolverine Vs Monkey fight was intense, wow. Brilliantly similar to what the monkey did to Pan in season 1 and both... Vindicating to see Lyra able to stand up to Coulter but disturbing to see her acting so much like her. Also great thing you can do with daemons is have a battle of wills be an actual battle.

Does anyone think it was funny that Mel ended the last episode saying they should take advantage of their freedoms as modern women before going over to flirt with the cite barmaid who was hitting on her earlier-then presumably she didn't rejoin her sisters til the next day- and one of her 'confessions' is that she slept with the cute barmaid? I mean I think the word there is 'boast' really. 😉 (Edit: maybe a better confession would be 'I broke my own no relationship rule because I'm really afraid I'm a female version of dad and that I can never have a healthy romantic relationship I mean remember Niko...' 'Ooh-has it been long enough that we can say how fucked up that was? Cos Mel you're my big sister and I will always love and admire you but that was pretty fucked up,') I actually thought that whole sequence was pretty funny, the magic computer seemed really sassy somehow, and everything they said just made it worse. I think it was meant to be a blend of humour, tension and pathos but I only thought it was funny. Ah well. It's really strange but before we got a good look at the Ghost Charmed One me and my wife wondered if it was Holly Marie-Combes doing a cameo, the voice sounded kind of like her. My heart was briefly lifted with the idea that the OCO and the newbies had made up, apparently not. I did like the visual of the upside down tree, that was nicely bizarre. I'm also going against the grain by saying I liked Harry and Abigail's Bogus Journey, I thought it was pretty tense and I actually liked the not of character development for Abi at the end: here she does something genuinely brave and good and Harry-who you will recall thanked her for shanking her brother-gets all freaked out. I fully empathised with her anger at the end of the episode, really, it also kind of points out she's genuinely not only about getting power or advantages over people: fundamentally she wants someone to like her, she's just accepted that demons won't, because everything is transactional for them.

You know to give the romance subplots their due-the fact I want to smack Harry in the mouth after the end of this episode for suggesting he magically remove his love for Macy shows that I'm engaged with them as a couple. How do ratings from people who watch the show to grind their teeth in frustration look? Remarkably similar to the ones from people who watch it and love every second. I'm being well and truly played here. Nonetheless FOR CHRISTS SAKE HARRY HAVE YOU NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION TO THE VERY OBVIOUS THEMES OF THIS SEASON? Daaaaahhhh 😛 You are this close to losing your OTP sticker young man. Elder Celeste did not explain how the marble worked. It was also not very cool of the Elders not to inform retiree witches about how the marbles worked. The Elders, incompetent as they were horrible, they had it coming. Except for the Indian doctor-Elder Bari, I think, she was nice and it was a shame she got killed. 'We need to find a witch who will give up her marble' -giggitus giggitus Why did Jimmy need to use the big board to escape rather than orbing away? I notice also how the Charmed Ones just kind of stood there looking bewildered while he made a break for it and they needed a supposedly de-magicked Ruby to bail them out. So Maggie was having panic attacks because of her daddy issues a few days ago and now she's able to give instant claustrophobia treatments with the new power she got a few days ago. On that point Maggie is at this point objectively the best one, she's got the best control of her powers, she's actually made the useless power of prophecy (I always felt so sorry for Phoebe, basically defenceless and getting interrupted by visions of death all the time) work for her with her RDJ-Sherlock Holmes technique, she's honestly shown the most decisiveness and intelligence of all of them... I mean her plan for dealing with Abigael without murder? That was a good plan. That plan should have worked. If there needs to be a leader Maggie should actually be it, is what I'm saying. That interview @Camera One posted... It's kind of frustrating when writers try to obfuscate like this 'Jordan and Maggie have an interesting friendship'- bro you are clearly setting them up. I know you don't want to go into details but seriously. It might be nice to have a romance with less secrets and lies and stabbing (well probably some stabbing but neither of the lovers stabbing each other). I have to disagree with them about Abi being an interesting villain, she's a potentially interesting character but as a villain shes not especially intimidating or compelling. I think she'd be a lot more interesting as an ally or antihero of some sort so she has to go through some character development. edit: wait, this is the season finale?? What? No! You can't end a season with everything up in the air like that wehere they don't even know if the baddies are going to get into their base. No! Shenanigans!

My wife and I just watched episode 17 of season 2 and she commented on a difference between this version and the original, which is that all the characters seem very isolated, both as individuals and as a group. In the original it very much seemed like the Haliwells were in touch with their family history, they had their ghost granny in the attic, their mother had left helpful stuff for them, the Elders were a magical government but they weren't an obviously evil magical government, just one that sometimes seemed distant and arbitrary-but they also provided a support structure. Then they had friends and jobs and they went on dates and generally had lives outside of fighting demons. They met other witches and magical people and there seemed to be a magical community out there that they were part of. There's not so much of that here, it doesn't seem like the Vera family extends beyond Marisol either vertically or horizontally- there's no mention of any aunts or uncles or grandparents or cousins who might be part of their witchy legacy (and there's Ray, but Ray sucks). The Elders were as incompetent as they were horrible and even more horrible than they were incompetent. We started season 2 by ditching the whole mortal life context in exchange for a new one which was pretty quickly shown to be a front for something creepy. We know a lot more about the demonic community than about the witch/non-evil-magical one and the main characters essentially seem completely on their own against All the Powers of Hell. One would think they'd pick up some allies from the people they've been helping but apparently not. It's a bit depressing really. I still generally enjoy it because I love trashy urban fantasy TV, apparently. I do hope that in the next season there's more world building and just the sense the girls have more people they can rely on than one or two love interests and Ray (who sucks). I mean frankly if you give them a Command Centre with a big board, I want them to have staff. Maybe that's not the kind of show this is but season 1 ended with the idea they would become the new magical government. They should have bodyguards. They should have researchers. They should have an extraction team they can send in to help witches in trouble so it doesn't always have to be one or more of them at risk. They should be hosting diplomats from the Seelie Court and the Dragon King of the Western Sea. They should be building a worldwide network of contacts and allies beyond Ray (who sucks) and his offscreen friend (who probably sucks since he's friends with Ray). I'm ranting and I don't think abyones reading this bit of the forum since this season was over in the US months ago but still... There you go.

The Elders were horrible, and all the shitty things they've done seem to be part of their horrible policies, the random witches they save seem to be fairly normal people who are just getting hunted by two groups of arseholes. Then there are magical creatures like the dryads who got murdered and the pixies in the last season, who seem pretty benign and are just getting abused by people/demons out for their own gains. Of course they aren't using their powers for the benefit of mankind but it really looks as if mankind would probably respond to the offer by abducting and vivisecting them, so I think that's fair enough, really. I really liked this episode. I don't know if the remaining episodes are like this but I hope so and I hope season 3 is more tense, fun magical adventures and less idiots whining because they don't know how to feel about their feelings or about the feelings that are being felt for them and who is feeling them... I know, this is an urban fantasy melodrama and that's part of the whole thing but I think in this season it's gone a bit overboard. This from someone who happily watched 'Shadowhunters' and 'The Originals' 😉 I hope Abi makes it to the end and gets into season 3, she's easily my favourite at this point. Also the times they've been working together has provided Mel's best parts this season-i agree with the comment in another thread that I don't think the writers know what to do with her and I think they are really nervous that they might make the 'bossy and judgemental' lesbian character come across as obnoxious-so more of that. And if they go this way I'd happily move my OTP sticker over from Hacy to Abimel because Harry and Macy have been so insufferable. Edit; I wonder about Julian's employees. Do none of them watch their 12th kidnap victim get liquidated so their superpowers can be transferred into their growing slave army of super mutants and think 'hang on a minute, are we the baddies?'

Oh my god Harry, Harry, oh my God, Oh my God, Harry, you're do dumb. How are you this dumb? How have you survived 60 years of demon fighting when a pretty demon girl can make a sad face at you and you just take her at her word for everything? How are you this dumb? How have you or any of the witches under your protection survived at all? This episode just aired where I am, so that's why this is out of continuity with the rest of the forum.

You know I had a thought about Wish Emma a little while ago: in 4B with its stupid Darkectomy and Eggnapping plotlines, the idea was that Emma would have no darkness if she was raised by nice people-but since she wasn't she still had the capacity for darkness like everyone does. Is the implication that Princess Wish Emma is what a person with no 'Darkness' looks like? Like... Is the implication that when they say darkness or evil they are actually talking about, ultimately, the idea of being active - trying to impose your own will on the world around you? And that's why Emma had to express her light magic by letting herself get stabbed and why Blue never really did anything? And even when light magic was useful it was for stuff like blocking Cora from doing something horrible to someone. Light magic is a passive principle and at most it kind of allows the world to do its own thing without interference from dark magic. And a person who is all light lets things happen and... Maybe they kind of encourage others to be themselves or do what they were going to do or what they wanted to do anyway but they don't really try to do much themselves? I doubt there was that much thought going into it, but maybe?

Raffi and 7 are a masterclass in maximum viewer reaction for minimum writer/director/actor effort.

In the All Seasons thread there were a few mentions recently of how this show had the victims of former villains coming back to get revenge on their tormentors and how odd that was. To me it seemed natural and a good plot hook, but thinking about it, that's because when I was a kid there was a show which did this and did it really well: That show was the irreplaceable 'Xena, Warrior Princess'-Aiyeeyeeyeeyeeyeeyai! In that series, Xena's greatest for was Callisto, who had been a child when Xena's army destroyed her home and murdered her family. She responded by essentially deciding to become Xena But Worse- and she made good on it, she was terrifyingly good at fighting and utterly merciless. She was great. So how does this relate to OUAT? Well with the sole exception of Captain Hook, the villains whose villainy stemmed from their abuse by former villains were pretty underwhelming in this show-actually even Hook was fairly weak as a villain. But in season 3 we had Zelena, who was effectively Regina But Worse-... Or at least Regina But With Stronger Jazz Hands and an Antagonist. Zelena, of course, wanted revenge for nonsense reasons that were all about her own abandonment issues-would things have been better if she had been Regina's Callisto? We'd already seen her massacring peasants by then-if Zelena had been a young girl who survived a massacre during the war between Regina and Snow and had fled, found herself in the land of Oz and learned magic, and then come back looking for revenge? For one thing this avoids this bizarre idea that the whole fictional multiverse was apparently frozen in time along with StoryBrooke and the Coradome, second it does also give her reasons to beef with everyone on Team Hero: Snow was fighting Regina and a young Zelena might have blamed her for not doing enough to stop her (and if season 2 stays as was then, well, she has a point...). Maybe she's been thrown out of Oz by Dorothy and so she ends up coming back to the Enchanted Forest just in time to find the Evil Queen returned and this sets her off. Why is she green? Could be anything- my explanation would be that she's part troll, as in like the ones from Snow Falls, but obviously gets most of her looks from her human parent. In the MGM movie she has an army of green cossacks-i don't imagine the copyright on them is too tight, so she could have a troll army in addition to however the flying monkeys work. I just think this explanation works because Zelena is a troll. There might not need to be any kind of prophecy or vague magical rules to bring Emma back into the plot, either, of Zelena is really determined to punish Regina for killing her family and friends she could find out where Regina's son is living and be like 'ok then, see that's what goes around but this, your Majesty? This is what comes around' And then they need to go protect Henry and Emma and also maybe drag Emma back and use her Light Jazzhands to defeat Zelena. And Rumplestiltskin stays dead.

I've never particularly seen the appeal of Swan Queen besides I guess wanting queer representation in a prime time fantasy show and/or to see pretty ladies making kissy kissy faces. I didn't think Parilla and Morrison had any trace of romantic chemistry. I found it hard to buy they were friends, honestly. But there are some really good Swan Queen fanfics, the characters there might not really match up to the ones on screen in a lot of ways, but they're very engaging in their own right and they have intense chemistry.

They clearly never meant Regina to be Just Bad, though, for me the most powerful moment in the first season is 'The Thing You Love Most'-this isn't a monster incapable of love; if anything she's something worse, a person capable of intense love but who is so full of rage and resentment that she'll sacrifice it in the name of revenge. Right off the bat that's something interesting and compelling. Emma always suffered in S1, in my view, because she was meant to be solidly down to Earth, and spent most of her time being confused and frustrated in the understated real world setting while everyone else got a flamboyant magical alter ego-except for Henry, but he was this kid who ran around insisting everything was fairy tales, which is whacky enough on its own. I mean also... Emma was there slowly figuring out that Everything is Fairy Tales... I don't think anyone ever doubted that Everything was Fairy Tales, so she was essentially doing all these investigations to play catch-up with both the villain and the audience. I did find the villains more fun in general but they went through what I think is a common problem with villains that are too popular and became less and less interesting as they got integrated into the main cast. By the time we got to the two Reginas neither of them was fun, interesting, menacing or sympathetic. And I really got to hate Rumplestiltskin by the end... But I've been thinking about that and I honestly think that might be a testament to Robert Carlyle's portrayal of the character. For all his bizarre magical eccentricities he's actually fairly believable as a nervous, embittered man with an addiction who really wants to be better but isn't strong enough to say 'no' to the needle, no matter how much he has to lie and how much pain he causes. I think it's a very credible story, it's just frustrating and depressing to watch. Snow in season 1 is a very different woman to Snow in season 2 and onward. You see her in 'Snow Falls' and she's determined, she's bitter and she's gone out of her way to get a weapon to take out her enemy in a way that neutralises her many advantages. Even when she apologises and grovels to Regina in... I forget the episode... But even then, Regina is holding the man she loves hostage. If you say you'll do anything for love sometimes that means facing a dragon in badass single combat, sometimes it means swallowing your pride and grovelling to someone you hate. Snow in those flashbacks is the kind of woman you can see successfully toppling a tyrannical witch-queen. Later on... No.. not so much.

Emma being boring is very much a subjective point-ypu can point out ways in which the character has an interesting background and interesting viewpoints but - in my case and apparently in your friend's - the execution never made her particularly interesting. I mean to me she was ok but she got less and less interesting as the show went on and other characters always stole the limelight. Snow is dumb, that's an objective fact and I defy you to show me a consistent pattern of her being smart.

She's cool, attractive, powerful and dangerous but also vulnerable and emotional. She has the power that you want and you can understand her desire for love and acceptance. You might say you don't want to abuse power like she does but honestly how much you focus on the pain she causes is just a matter of where you focus your empathy; no one is ever entirely fair when they're deciding who they empathise with, and when you're talking about poorly written characters in trashy live action Disney Princess fanfic then you don't have to be, really. Plus most people might not want to be supervillains, but they'd like to have the option. You don't want people to fear you on sight but you'd like the option to make them afraid, if the situation called for it.

Cora ditched Rumplestiltskin because if she was his lover/apprentice she might have more power than a queen but she's always be beneath him and he'd always ultimately be in control. He is older and more powerful than her and he could stop her by force if he didn't like what she was doing, and while he isn't as smart as he thinks he is, he has very clear personal goals and priorities, she can't bully him and she can only manipulate him so far. Moreover, the story works better if she has actual feelings for him which she fears he could use to manipulate her-which the later series confirms that, yes, is precisely his MO. If she's with Henry she doesn't care about him, she can push him around by force if personality and threaten him with violence if he starts to grow a spine, and even if she comes under attack from his family, she can defend herself with magic. They provide wealth, status and legitamcy, she provides magic it's an actual tradeoff where she has something they want and can't get on their own. That's the thing about Cora, it isn't just that she wants power compared to her starting point, she wants power without oversight. She's grown up knowing she was near the bottom of the feudal pyramid and she won't be happy unless she knows she's at the top with nothing but clear skies above her. That's why she and Rumplestiltskin connected, they're very similar in that way. Now this dies fall down on one point: why wouldn't Rumplestiltskin try to get back at her for jilting him? And why wouldn't she anticipate him doing so? As far as I remember she wriggled free of their deal, but didn't have any guarantees to protect herself or her child from his spite afterwards. Cora always assumes people can't be trusted, see 'love is weakness', and it turns out in this case she'd be right, Rumpykins does not handle rejection well. I'm prepared to believe Rumple wouldn't hurt her because he loved her-genuinely, I buy the love story between Rumple and Cora shown in half of one episode as far more legitimate than his series spanning... um... romance (I guess-apparently a romance needs a happy ending, I don't know if this counts...) with Belle. But I don't buy Cora would trust in his feelings for her for her own protection.

Maybe his idea of giving her power was letting her marry his son-and maybe she really didn't understand she was getting a prince from the bottom of the barrel. Maybe she was supposed to have extra titles besides being Enriqote's+ wife, maybe Xávier* was going to be giving her a place on the Small Council or something. Looking at her in that episode, she's not especially subtle-she outwits Rumple but not by doing anything especially clever-and that whole 'my daughter's name is Queeny because she will be Queen!' thing, as wife of the 5th in line to the throne that's basically telling your 4 brothers in law 'I'mma coming for you'. Besides which-i don't know if the Enchanted Forest does this obviously, but British official documents refer to Her Majesty as 'Elizabeth Regina'... Were Regina's documents signed 'Regina Regina'? That'd look like overcompensation to me. I can imagine a King who knows how politics really works keeping her distracted with shiny but meaningless titles while she continues to spin gold for him for at least a few years. See to me it would make a good deal more sense if heart control rather than mere heart ripping was a really advanced form of dark magic, maybe one even Cora didn't know until after her time in Wonderland. If I'd been making the show I would (would I? I say all this with the benefit of hindsight and having spent far too much of the last eight years thinking about this stupid program) actually have it be exclusive to Cora and something she learned or even invented as the Queen of Hearts. Otherwise it makes all the villains who could do it but didn't look thick: 'Fruit of the Poisonous Tree' is a really good episode and shows our girl Reggie being chillingly manipulative and cunning-but she looks retroactively stupid if she was relying on a gullible, horny Djinn when she could have heart-controlled Snow White into stabbing Leopold and then killing herself or giving herself up for execution (or even 'accidentally' giving her heart back and letting her go-running with Goodwin and Parilla's desperate attempts to make sense of their character arcs) any time she wanted. Very much so-you can come up with all kinds of cool stories to explain how Cora went from Princess to gentry: were they banished after she got too greedy? Did Prince Henry renounce his title to stop her trying to kill his brothers-which even if unsuccessful might well get his innocent daughter murdered in the ensuing crossmurder? Did Xávier's kingdom collapse because Cora caused catastrophic inflation by spinning all that gold? Who knows! No one, because no one thought about it and it's entirely possible she wasn't meant to be a princess and Enriqote wasn't meant to be a prince. Again, that's a good 10 years after she got started-sinve Snow was around the same age when she met Regina as when Eva died, maybe a years difference, then we can assume she was already out of Castle Xávier-her chance to climb to power on a pile of dead princes was gone by then. I would blame the flashback format for this. By the time you're seeing Regina killing indiscriminately it's technically I'm the past but you've already seen her killing people for more understandable reasons so they need to be more shocking. It's not a good system if you keep reusing the same characters for the flashbacks. *Wait a minute, 'Xavier'... And Disney owns Marvel... If there's been a season 8 would he have ended up in a wheelchair 😛?

I actually think that there's a pretty reasonable arc from The Miller's Daughter to The Stable Boy to season 2 in Cora's brutality. At the beginning she's only just got her powers and murder is still a big step ethically-even if she doesn't feel anything for her in law's she still has the habit of following the laws of society, besides which, suspicion will immediately fall on the common-born sorceress and she probably can't defend herself too well at that point. By the time she kills Daniel she's a lot more brazen and confident but still wants to put on a mask of respectability. And even though she kills Daniel, it comes after a heated argument and she seems to see it as her only option to keep Regina in line. That's even though killing a servant is something she can handily cover up. Finally by season 2 she is totally confident in her powers and has no reason to hide anything from anyone unless her plans specifically demand it. At this point she's been a Wonderland Warlord for decades and she's fine with ruling through terror, so it really doesn't phase her to kill randoms just because it suits her. Even when she kills Eva, which I like to pretend didn't happen because I really didn't like the whole Cora Vs Eva sub plot but whatever- it's in secret with a ridiculously circuitous plan. And that's not too long before she kills Daniel so again you can see at that point she's still not up for wholesale massacres.

That one scene changed my opinion On Brec Bassinger's acting, up until now I thought she was, you know, good enough as a teenage superhero in a fairly light-hearted story, but the weight of emotion she put across in a fairly small change of expression-so you could actually believe Douchetube Sam wouldn't notice it at all-was very impressive. You could see her little heart breaking in that moment and it was great because I am an awful monster. The point where she went back in to hug Pat is the best payoff for that heartbreak, I think, any punishment you could dish out on Sam doesn't change anything, but it's very cathartic after that to see that she does have someone who'll act like a real father.

@CCTC regarding Rumple's characterisation. I think I read an interview where Carlyle said he thought of Rumple as a solid baddie and didn't think he should get a happy ending. Is it possible there was a bit of dissonance between the writing and the acting?

Quick question for those paying more attention than I was; I seem to remember someone saying they didn't know if Shiro Ito could be killed-hence he's still very spry even though he must be over 100. So what is the likelihood of him not being really dead?