S04.E22: Operation Mongoose: Part 1 / S04.E23 Operation Mongoose: Part 2

[Donny Ketchum]

I asked the same question in another thread (I can't remember which one, too lazy to look it up).  I'm sure we'll get the explanation that makes the least sense from the show because that's how they roll.

My guess for this is probably totally wrong, but what the hell?  Here it is, anyway.

 

Perhaps Merlin saw this darkness as the ultimate darkness and needed to create the ultimate light to dispatch it.  But he didn't have the power yet, hence why, until he did have the power for it, he needed it tethered to someone for the time being until he was able to create a force of light powerful enough to douse this darkness.  Hence the Dark One cycle starting.

 

Otherwise, I don't know.

[SilverShadow]

 

My guess for this is probably totally wrong, but what the hell?  Here it is, anyway.

    Perhaps Merlin saw this darkness as the ultimate darkness and needed to create the ultimate light to dispatch it.  But he didn't have the power yet, hence why, until he did have the power for it, he needed it tethered to someone for the time being until he was able to create a force of light powerful enough to douse this darkness.  Hence the Dark One cycle starting.

    Otherwise, I don't know.

 

If Merlin in Once turns out to be basically Kami from Dragonball Z, I will laugh so hard.

 

ETA: It turns out I misread 'this darkness' as 'his darkness'. Oh well. 

Edited May 18, 2015 by SilverShadow

[RadioGirl27]

I'm on my phone and I can't quote, but that line about Regina's happy ending shows the bias the writers have for Regina, but it was also fanservice. The ILY was coming, so that line was their little present for the SQ shippers. That way they can ignore what happened after that (something they have absolutely done) and they can keep hoping for something they are never going to get.

[Sincerely Yours]

The thing about the darkness being tethered to human is a rough concept but at the same time there's the dagger. Whoever has the dagger can control the dark one and even though the history of the dark one (before rumple) wasn't all rainbows and stars there was a way to control the evil. The dagger just needed to be in right hands. Once Rumple became the dark one he managed to get hold of the dagger which meant that no one had him under their control and left him to act out as terribly as he wanted.

[kingshearte]

If the Sorcerer/Merlin could destroy the evil smoke of evil, why didn't he do it already instead of binding it to some poor schmuck? Perhaps he wasn't able to at the time but now can?

Add me to the list of people who had that question. I guess we'll find out...

 

Much of what I thought has already been said, especially about the nonsensical AU situation. Also, although Ginnifer Goodwin certainly was having fun in that role, I really didn't think she pulled it off nearly as well as Lana Parilla does. And I love how we still don't know what Charming's actual name is. Too bad he didn't become the Dark One. Then the dagger would tell us.

 

As for Emma, I seriously wanted to smack her for not telling Killian she loved him in the bedroom scene. I mean, honestly? I know they were saving it for the end, but I don't think they had to. I think it would have been really good there, and he could tell her he loved her too (Has he actually said it yet, or has he been waiting for her? I don't remember.), and then they could build on that for the end bit. Something about how she believes in his ability to get her back, or in the power of their True Love for same, or something. And he could tell her that he will always find her, and I just think that would have been better. The way it played out was just such obvious pandering that felt unnatural, and even less meaningful in a way, since there's that hint of her only having the whatever to tell him because she felt she had to, in case she didn't get another chance. Telling him earlier would have just... been better.

[Serena]

Charming's real name is David, we found out in season 2.

[kingshearte]

Did we? I'll take your word for it.

[SilverShadow]

Did we [find out David was Charming's real name]? I'll take your word for it.

 

It came up in "Tiny". Leroy was asking the particulars as they were running and David rather exasperatedly says that David is not just his Storybrooke name but his "name-name." It's a cute scene.

Edited May 18, 2015 by SilverShadow

[kingshearte]

It came up in "Tiny". Leroy was asking the particulars as they were running and David rather exasperatedly says that David is not just his Storybrooke name but his "name-name." It's a cute scene.

Thanks. I have no recollection of this whatsoever, but I'll have to watch for it next time I watch S2.

[Camera One]

I found it kinda funny on rewatch that when Regina realized the Author had gone over to Rumple, she gathered everyone, and they all went to the Sorcerer's mansion and started flipping through the empty books.  If they had stormed Gold's shop immediately, would they have succeeded?  Or would the Author be able to write stuff like "Emma cannot do magic", "Regina cannot enter the Shop", "Charming cannot use a sword properly.", etc. etc.   What if they all charged in?  Would he be able to write at lightning speed?  

[Shanna Marie]

It came up in "Tiny". Leroy was asking the particulars as they were running and David rather exasperatedly says that David is not just his Storybrooke name but his "name-name."

And it was verified when the Arendelle folks who met David in the past, during his shepherd days, knew him as "David," long before the curse. Plus, he introduced himself to Rapunzel as "David." I guess since that was a tacked-on cursed identity done in a panic to keep him away from Mary Margaret, Regina didn't have time to be creative with his name.

[Terrafamilia]

Next season, Emmastiltskin!

 

Eww, why would you ever do that to us (by that I mean me)?

Magic always comes at a price!

[kili]

I wonder what Blackbeard thought about the entire book thing. Here he is, tooling around somehwere (not on the Jolly, because Ursula plucked that out from under him) in the Enchanted Forrest and suddenly, he's in some bizarro world where his mortal enemy is his cowardly deckhand. Some weird kid knocks him out and the next thing he knows, he's back in the Enchanted Forrest. I bet he avoids whatever he ate for dinner for a few weeks after that.

[Rumsy4]

Heh--I was thinking about that same thing last night (don't ask). I wonder what all those random people who were thrown into the AU thought had happened once they were brought back to the "real" timeline. Did they think it was a bad dream? The people of Storybrooke probably didn't even bat an eyelid. They must be so used to being cursed back and forth by now...

[pezgirl7]

I wonder what Blackbeard thought about the entire book thing. Here he is, tooling around somehwere (not on the Jolly, because Ursula plucked that out from under him) in the Enchanted Forrest and suddenly, he's in some bizarro world where his mortal enemy is his cowardly deckhand. Some weird kid knocks him out and the next thing he knows, he's back in the Enchanted Forrest. I bet he avoids whatever he ate for dinner for a few weeks after that.

 

Elsa shrunk the Jolly Roger and put it in a bottle, after he used it to attack the waters around Arendale. I'm guessing he was locked up in prison, which makes it even worse for him to go back to! Unless he escaped, which I kind of hope he did, because he's a cool character, and I don't want to see him in prison forever.

[KingOfHearts]

I know it's AU and there's no rules, but the thing about having to break the book before the last chapter didn't make any sense to me. It makes my brain hurt just thinking about it. So Isaac and Henry entered the last chapter just because it had the illustration with the door in it, which had a hole that the key somehow magically fitted into. Was everyone else caught in some sort of time loop? Was the story transpiring this whole time, and if so, how does that correlate to the page Henry picked? How long were they in there? Why were they able to move around, while Isaac couldn't in the other book?

[Camera One]

Exactly, that made no sense to me either.  The page Henry chose was of some random hut in the Enchanted Forest.  So any door would do?  The key doesn't need to fit?  Why did the key spit the Author out last time, but this time, it pulled Henry in?  How did Isaac get into the book after Henry fell in?  If someone came into the room, could they have fallen in too?  Would Henry get kicked out of the book when the final bell tolled?  Or was he stuck there forever?  Would it go back to the beginning of the story?  If so, couldn't he try again to change the ending?  What the hell was the Apprentice doing inside the story?  Why was the story not set in stone, whereas everything else Isaac did was set in stone?  

[KAOS Agent]

I was randomly thinking about the end of the AU part today and I realized that lost in the wtf-ery of the "saviour blood" ink (which didn't it have to be dark too? Wasn't Regina hailed a hero at that very moment? Yeah, so a whole bunch of wtf?) was the fact that Regina actually had screwed everyone over. Emma had just told her that Hook, the man she loved, had died and the only way she'd get him back was if Regina broke up the wedding and told Robin she loved him. So right there we have dead guy v. possible rejection. Plus, Emma is fighting Rumpel for her and Henry's life so that Regina can go into the church and what does she do? She stands at the door and chickens out. And then she gets herself killed by walking in front of a sword. Like push the kid out of the way or something. Why would you just walk in front of the sword?

 

It only actually works out because the pen likes Henry and the complete and utter nonsense with Regina being the Saviour even though she'd actually just screwed everyone over due to her fear of rejection. Emma was the Saviour because there was a True Love potion on the curse that made it so she could save everyone. Hook died for these people too. Would his blood have worked? If they wanted Regina to be the Saviour at least create a coherent and plausible story wherein she actually is the Saviour instead of this random whatever that was. To me, it's not a problem that Regina was cast in this role for the story, but please have it make sense.

[Dani-Ellie]

To be fair, Henry did say that dark savior blood wouldn't have worked to make the ink in Bizarro World. Everything was backwards, so they needed light savior blood.

 

Within the construct of Isaac's story, there is no capital-S Savior. Regina's role in the story is not THE savior, but simply A savior. She did sacrifice her life for Henry's, which makes her Henry's savior. Hook's blood probably would have worked since he became a savior by this definition as well, but then there's the distance to contend with. Why would they go all the way back to where Hook was (if he was even still there ... who knows if Bizarro Snow and Bizarro Charming left the body there or what) when Regina was right in front of them? Henry didn't have the pen until Emma decked Isaac and it fell out of his bag, so it's not like they could have tried it earlier, even if Bizarro Snow hadn't been trying to kill them.

[Curio]

Within the construct of Isaac's story, there is no capital-S Savior. Regina's role in the story is not THE savior, but simply A savior. She did sacrifice her life for Henry's, which makes her Henry's savior. Hook's blood probably would have worked since he became a savior by this definition as well, but then there's the distance to contend with.

I agree with this interpretation. Although, technically, wouldn't Emma's blood still have worked? Why wasn't she considered a savior because of her heroic attempt to sword fight Rumple with no magic? They should have at least made a loophole where the blood had to be from a heroic sacrifice of someone's life. (Or maybe that was the loophole and I totally missed it.) But either way, I'm fine with them touting Regina as "A Savior" in the alternate universe because it just makes me giggle now whenever the writers feel the need to always verbalize how good or "how far" Regina has come on screen. I much prefer it when the writers take a more subtle approach to hinting at a character's heroism. Like, say—a character who began 4B admitting they didn't feel like a hero, made a sacrificial death in the alternate universe, was never trumpeted as a hero in that AU story, but then the character came to the self-realization that maybe they were heroic by nonchalantly saying "all in a day's work as a hero."

Edited May 26, 2015 by Curio

[YaddaYadda]

Like, say—a character who began 4B admitting they didn't feel like a hero, made a sacrificial death in the alternate universe, was never trumpeted as a hero in that AU story, but then the character came to the self-realization that maybe they were heroic by nonchalantly saying "all in a day's work as a hero."

 

this is why I will never understand the difference in writing between Hook and Regina.  I mean they're basically on the same path for redemption.  He is ashamed of the things he has done, her?  They both had set backs in 4A, but he acknowledges his, she doesn't.  He works hard at changing and to keep his happy ending, she tries to find the Author to change her fate.  He dies to give Emma and Henry a chance at writing the wrong with the AU which is basically the reason they managed to get to Regina in the first place and...they've given him self-awareness and all that it entails

 

I don't get why they're not following the same pattern with Regina.  It doesn't have to be the exact same thing, but at least, don't make her so obnoxious about tooting her own horn and whining about how she never gets what she wants or how life keeps kicking her in the teeth.   

[ImogenLeFay]

I didn't think too much of it during the episode - I was actually too busy rolling my eyes at "Hero" Regina - but what I understood was that in the real world they'd need the blood of the savior gone dark, so maybe in bizarro world they need the blood of a villaine gone light? Of course, that doesn't make much sense either, that would have fit Lily much better than Regina (if Lily would have gone light in the AU).

 

Or maybe I just made something up because it didn't make sense on the show. No idea.

[Rumsy4]

It was a rule Henry literally came up with, and somehow worked. They're all--the writers and characters--making it up as they go along. :-p

[KingOfHearts]

It was a rule Henry literally came up with, and somehow worked. They're all--the writers and characters--making it up as they go along. :-p

 

If it means Regina saving the day, they'll come up with anything to make it happen.

[KAOS Agent]

But isn't that undermining their premise? If you have to pull it out of your ass to make it Saviour!Regina, you're doing it wrong. It needs to make sense not just be well she's a hero and she died, so I can use her blood. That just screams of bad fanfiction. If you want to say it needs to be from a villain gone light, you can't use Regina's blood either because in the AU, she was always a hero. Not to mention, they're giving her all this hero treatment for saving Henry when she was essentially written as a hero, so wouldn't she have a compulsion to protect the kid as part of her character? Whereas both Hook & Rumpel overcame their characters' written traits of coward and hero respectively, Regina's actions were in line with her written persona which should make saving a child's life much easier for her than for someone like Hook who was fighting not only David, but also his character's written abilities/feelings.

 

I will say again that I don't really care that Regina was made the ultimate hero and saviour. It's pretty much what I expect from this show. What bothered me is that once again it was done with a complete ass pull because they don't seem to even try with making it make any sense at this point. Regina chickens out of the wedding break up which basically condemns Hook to a permanent death and leaves Emma & Henry stuck in this AU hell, but she ends up the ultimate hero due to circumstances. One easy tweak would be for Regina to stop the wedding with Robin admitting he too felt the love and then have her sacrifice herself for Henry. It's more meaningful because she makes a very unselfish choice to give up her happiness for someone else rather than the way it played out where she was a wimp and essentially consigned everyone to misery before random author and ink shenanigans fixed it for her. 

Edited May 27, 2015 by KAOS Agent

[kingshearte]

I think what throws extra wrinkles into the whole thing is that she wasn't really written as a hero. Correct me if I'm wrong, but did she really do anything heroic that we saw or were made aware of? It sounds like all she did was some Robin Hood-esque redistribution of wealth, and then was planning on just leaving when we caught up with her. Was there anything heroic at an earlier point in the story that we just didn't see?

 

It's like her real-world persona kind of messed with Isaac's flip-everything concept. She was a villain, so she should have become a hero in this story, except that by the time Isaac wrote the story, she was ostensibly more on the hero side of things, and he wasn't writing to do her any favours at that point, so no happy ending for her in the story. She couldn't be a story villain because she was a real-life villain, but she couldn't have a story happy ending because she was aplying for the good team, so she really just ended up a nothing of a character. Who somehow manages to save the day anyway.

[Shanna Marie]

One thing that irks me about this episode is that nowhere does anyone acknowledge that Operation Mongoose was a really bad idea and that they wouldn't be in this situation if they hadn't gone down that rabbit trail. After a whole season of Regina pursuing her happy ending by trying to get the book rewritten, she realized that it was up to her to write her own happy ending (duh), but the pursuit of her happy ending via the Author is what got them into this mess.

 

It seems like Rumple would have never had this particular idea if Regina hadn't told him (then again, later they were acting like it was something everyone knew about, so whatever).

If they hadn't been examining the book with the magnifying glass and obsessing over every page, they may not have noticed that some pages were different, Regina would never have berated Pinocchio and then apologized to Gepetto, and the door page might have remained safely in August's stuff in Gepetto's garage.

Even if they had found the door page, Snow and David might have destroyed it if they hadn't been so worried about destroying Regina's happy ending. Or Emma might have destroyed it rather than freeing the Author if she hadn't been so worried about ruining Regina's chance at a happy ending.

At the very least, even if all that had happened, if Regina hadn't taken Lily's blood to make the ink and given it to the Author to make him write her a happy ending, they wouldn't have been in danger.

 

And yet during the scenes when they were frantically trying to prepare for what Isaac might do, there was no sense of "oops" from anyone, and no apology from Regina for getting all this started. While trapped in the other world, there was no acknowledgement from Henry that maybe Operation Mongoose had been a stupid plan and at least partially his fault for egging it on. There was no agreement between Henry and Emma that maybe they shouldn't have been pursuing all this, no sense from her that maybe she shouldn't have freed Isaac. And there was no apology or acknowledgement of any responsibility from anyone in the aftermath. I guess it all worked out, so yay? But if I were in Regina's shoes, I'd have felt bad about what everyone went through because of me, especially when it all turned out to be pointless and I'd already realized that the quest was wrong. Even though it worked out, they apparently had the memories of what happened. What does Henry feel about Emma having memories of two years locked alone in a tower or Hook remembering being fatally wounded -- all because of Operation Mongoose?

[YaddaYadda]

Emma freed the Author so that she can get answers about herself, answers that she never got in the end.  So there goes that out of the window.

 

I thought the whole thing would just happen closer to the ending of the show and would happen over several episodes where the ridiculous QoD wouldn't eat up screen time.  I thought Henry being revealed as the new Author would be something done at the end of the series.  I'm assuming Henry will be playing a greater role next season.  

[KingOfHearts]

Wasn't Operation Mongoose about an Author making Regina a villain and having to be stopped? We never got any real evidence that there was something written against her. In fact we found the opposite - Isaac said he was fond of Regina (accuracy is debatable) and the Apprentice prevented him from manipulating fate past Best Laid Plans. Everything has been Regina's doing, and that makes the mission entirely pointless. If they hadn't gone on the goose chase for the Author, he could have stayed trapped inside the book and Team Villain wouldn't have even come to town.

[Curio]

But if I were in Regina's shoes, I'd have felt bad about what everyone went through because of me, especially when it all turned out to be pointless and I'd already realized that the quest was wrong. Even though it worked out, they apparently had the memories of what happened. What does Henry feel about Emma having memories of two years locked alone in a tower or Hook remembering being fatally wounded -- all because of Operation Mongoose?

It seems especially strange Henry never bothered to admit Operation Mongoose was a bust when you compare it to his reaction at the end of the 3A finale at the town line. There, he said that he felt like everything was his fault because he went off to find Emma and should have just lived under the curse forever with Regina. (Which is incredibly reaching.) The least he (and Regina) could have said about Operation Mongoose that was actually partially his fault is say, "Sorry, everyone. I thought taking a short cut to find happy endings would be the best option. I now know happy endings have to be fought for the hard way."

Edited May 27, 2015 by Curio

[YaddaYadda]

There, he said that he felt like everything was his fault because he went off to find Emma and should have just lived under the curse forever with Regina.

 

I hated that line and I wanted Henry away from Emma after that.  The things Regina does vs the things everyone does, two different measuring scales.  OM was the worst thing ever, the worst idea.  Yes, it was hijacked by Rumple in the end and it was his and the Author's version of things, but still.  I guess the only outcome that OM didn't change was the whole Dark One BS we got at the end there and the massive retcon to make it happen.

[Camera One]

It seems like Rumple would have never had this particular idea if Regina hadn't told him (then again, later they were acting like it was something everyone knew about, so whatever).

If they hadn't been examining the book with the magnifying glass and obsessing over every page, they may not have noticed that some pages were different, Regina would never have berated Pinocchio and then apologized to Gepetto, and the door page might have remained safely in August's stuff in Gepetto's garage.

 

If Henry hadn't asked for frosted donuts and if he didn't drop some crumbs onto the book, and if Regina hadn't been around to brush the crumbs off, they would never have thought of August.

 

The weird thing is Rumple ordered Maleficent to get Pinocchio without knowing any of what Regina and Henry knew.  

[KAOS Agent]

 

OM was the worst thing ever, the worst idea.  Yes, it was hijacked by Rumple in the end and it was his and the Author's version of things, but still.

 

But that still leaves the question of how Regina was going to have something be written for her that didn't involve writing other characters into her story. Rumpel had Belle written as his loving wife, but I've noted before that the Belle that was written was not Real!Belle. No, her life didn't suck and she seemed happy being a wife and mother, but it wasn't her. So no matter what Regina did, she would have had to have had at the very least Robin and Henry written into her happy ending and since it would be about future Robin & Henry, the writing would need to be fictional. It may even stay true to their character, but it would have stuck them with specific actions/decisions that they did not in fact make themselves. That makes me pretty uncomfortable. 

[Shanna Marie]

But that still leaves the question of how Regina was going to have something be written for her that didn't involve writing other characters into her story.

That's the other problem with the plot. They never exactly defined what Regina's happy ending was and what she was going to have the Author write, and yet everyone was on board with it. Given that she's yet to say she was wrong to blame Snow about Daniel and hasn't even specifically said she's through trying to destroy Snow, and given that she'd previously said that the only way she could be happy was to destroy Snow, wasn't it a bit risky for Snow to help even the tiniest bit with Operation Mongoose without clearing up what, exactly, was going to be rewritten? When it came down to the actual moment, it seemed she was going to either erase Zelena or erase Zelena's pregnancy, but what was she planning before she knew that Marian was actually Zelena?

 

If Henry hadn't asked for frosted donuts and if he didn't drop some crumbs onto the book, and if Regina hadn't been around to brush the crumbs off, they would never have thought of August.

Meanwhile, Henry spent all that time studying the book with a magnifying glass and obsessing over it and knew all along that August had altered pages, and it didn't occur to him that it might be at all significant until Regina pointed out that the paper was different.

 

But I think Rumple knew that August had altered the book, didn't he? Back in season one, when August briefly pretended that he might be grown-up Bae?

 

Wasn't Operation Mongoose about an Author making Regina a villain and having to be stopped? We never got any real evidence that there was something written against her. In fact we found the opposite - Isaac said he was fond of Regina (accuracy is debatable) and the Apprentice prevented him from manipulating fate past Best Laid Plans.

Yeah, that's another problem. There was all that talk about how the Author had written Regina as a villain and wrote all that stuff about her (that we've seen her do, but never mind), and therefore it was his fault that her ending was unhappy, and then it turns out that it wasn't the case at all. They never even slightly suggested that Isaac had ever encountered Regina to do any creative rewriting, so all of that was just a big, raging delusion.

[Camera One]

There was all that talk about how the Author had written Regina as a villain and wrote all that stuff about her (that we've seen her do, but never mind), and therefore it was his fault that her ending was unhappy, and then it turns out that it wasn't the case at all.

 

Rumple said something similar when explaining his Author quest to Cruella and Ursula: "His book harnesses a great power, one that exceeds anything you've ever experienced, giving villains and heroes what he deems just desserts. Our collective frustrations? They're because of his will, not our missteps."

 

None of this seems to be the case at all.  Of course, the writers could just say Rumple was lying to Cruella and Ursula.

Edited May 28, 2015 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

I'm going with mass delusion due to prolonged exposure to weird Storybrooke and constant memory tampering. Hook just went along with it because everyone else did.

 

As for Rumpel blame casting everything onto the writer, well there's always wishful thinking. There's also this show's tendency to have characters say things that they know are blatantly false to mislead the audience into believing a false narrative. They're pretty consistent with this which is why it's so damn hard sometimes to have a conversation about characters' choices/actions when what they're saying is clearly a writing thing and not what the character actually thinks or believes.

[KingOfHearts]

I'm starting to forget this episode even happened. They went through all the polarized characterizations so fast that we didn't get to savor any of them. Granted this was an AU that was intended to have no lasting consequences by design, but most of it wasn't enjoyable in of itself. There were a few funny parts, but it felt like a lot of potential was left untapped. With these writers it was probably a good idea to leave it as short as possible, but in the end I found it to be extremely forgettable.

 

The only thing that really stood out to me was Henry's ascent into herohood. Nothing else really contributed to the show. (besides the cliffhanger they pulled out of a hat (literally!) in the last five minutes.) It didn't leave the same good taste in most viewers' mouths that 3B's finale did.

Edited July 16, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[Dani-Ellie]

I don't think it's entirely fair to call the cliffhanger pulled out of a hat. Emma's whole story arc in 4B was that Rumple was trying to turn her towards darkness. In the end and in a very roundabout way, he accomplished his purpose. The show absolutely pulled an Insidious on us, where the characters and the audience think the danger is one thing when it's actually something else, but it's not like they didn't lay any groundwork for it, considering that the bit with the darkness killing Gold was introduced in "Heart of Gold."

[Camera One]

To me, the cliffhanger didn't work since I just didn't buy the premise of the darkness killing Gold. That also felt like it came out of nowhere.  Suddenly, he's so weak he can't even walk?  Give me a break. 

 

Similarly, I don't feel that Regina repeating she needed to find the Author ad nauseum in 4A was necessarily groundwork for what happened with the Author in 4B.  The whole concept of the Author trapping everyone in a book was something that felt like it was made up for this episode alone and didn't mesh with the episode with Cruella.  That's another reason I didn't find this episode all that satisfying.  

 

The AU scenarios felt very by-the-numbers to me.  I did enjoy Henry being the hero, but would have appreciated it if they let him have more intelligence using clues to get out of the situation, and if they shook up the scenario more than a straight-up Regina/Snow flip.

Edited July 16, 2015 by Camera One

[Dani-Ellie]

Not buying the elements of the story is different than the elements not being there at all, though. That's all I was saying.

[KingOfHearts]

But Rumple's efforts to turn Emma dark had nothing to do with how the cliffhanger actually transpired. What they did to turn her had no effect whatsoever. She only became the Dark One because of the random "oh noez! Black stuffz comin' out of Rumple!" at the end and her heroic sacrifice. She didn't go dark from temptation or doing mildly "bad deeds" like killing Cruella to defend her son. It was a magical, contrived reason that wasn't on the show's radar until the last few minutes. It's completely different from what Team Villain was attempting to accomplish.

 

 

if they shook up the scenario more than a straight-up Regina/Snow flip.

I wish their roles were truer to the characters. I wish Regina was the kind ruler beloved by her people, while Snow was a bitter bandit who blamed Regina for ruining her life. It should have been more of life from a villain's viewpoint than a role switch. Regina saw herself as a benevolent queen worthy to be praised, while she saw Snow as an evil rebel without a cause. 

Edited July 17, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[Dani-Ellie]

Which is where the Insidious-type ending comes in. In that movie, the family rushes to save the son from a demon that's after him only to have another ghost follow the father back from the spirit realm, a ghost that had been after him when he was a kid and that we as an audience only hear about in passing. (Which is where the title of the movie comes from.) With Once, Emma's temptation to the dark side was the demon going after the son, the immediate problem the characters are trying to avoid. And they do avoid it; through her own strength of will, Emma doesn't turn dark. The actual darkness coming out of Gold and taking over everything, necessitating Emma's sacrifice, was the ghost following the father out of the spirit realm, the danger lurking in the background that's only mentioned in passing.

 

"Darkness creeps up on you." We're not really supposed to see it coming. It's a deflection and some might call it a cheat but it's a storytelling technique that has been used many times before.

Edited July 16, 2015 by Dani-Ellie

[Shanna Marie]

I don't think that Emma taking on the Dark One was necessarily set up well, but it was an interesting payoff to the whole eggnapping/fetal darkectomy plot. If Emma hadn't had her natural darkness removed, would she be able to take on the Dark One without it consuming her? If she'd been normal, would she have been at just as much risk as anyone else? In a weird, roundabout way, Snow and Charming's questionable move in the past may be what saves them all now because it meant that they had someone handy who might just be able to save them all from the Darkness and survive.

 

A lot of the other stuff in the finale was anticlimactic and didn't fit what was set up, and the need for "dark Savior" blood for ink makes no sense (isn't a Savior kind of unprecedented? So how did they write before?) and probably was just a clunky excuse to introduce the fetal darkectomy plot to set up the Dark One transfer plot. It definitely feels reverse engineered.

 

How well the AU stuff works will depend on how it goes forward. Will Regina have learned anything after living Snow's life? Will the AU even be brought up again? I think it would have been more interesting if they'd actually done more with the heroes and villains stuff, if instead of role reversals of the characters there had been a world where the villains won and the heroes lost. That was the aim all along, wasn't it, for the villains to get happy endings, and I didn't think it was meant to be by them being turned into heroes. That's the whole point of villains, that they want the things they think heroes get without having to go through the difficult parts the heroes go through. Villains want happy endings without the personal sacrifice and struggles with doing the right thing. They want it all, and that's usually their downfall, so in their happy ending they'd manage to get it all while still getting to do the fun villainy things.

[Faemonic]

I don't think it's entirely fair to call the cliffhanger pulled out of a hat. Emma's whole story arc in 4B was that Rumple was trying to turn her towards darkness. In the end and in a very roundabout way, he accomplished his purpose. The show absolutely pulled an Insidious on us, where the characters and the audience think the danger is one thing when it's actually something else, but it's not like they didn't lay any groundwork for it, considering that the bit with the darkness killing Gold was introduced in "Heart of Gold."

 

 

Not buying the elements of the story is different than the elements not being there at all, though. That's all I was saying.

 

You make a good argument. I buy that the elements of the story are there, but not that they gel in the same way. With Insidious, it felt like character development. The father passed on his gift/curse of spirit world travel to his son, he didn't remember it because of the creepy old lady ghost moving people to mind-wipe him with psychic therapy, so he couldn't protect his son from a genetic thing that he didn't remember...and so, when he unlocks his suppressed talent to rescue his son then he unlocks the danger to himself too (two storylines conveging.) Even after he releases his son back to the kid's own body, he's got to face off against the old lady ghost saying that he's not afraid of her. That parallel emotional arc to the main arc of rescuing the kid then fully converges at that point, otherwise the dad's backstory would have felt pointless to mention...unless maybe his wife was really the old lady ghost who possessed a spirit world traveling baby after the dadhubby as a child refused to let the old lady ghost possess his body.

 

With Emma and Mr. Gold's darknesses, I feel it's more like parallel stories where one pole of the parallel got unstable and clunked onto the other so the other went, "ow."

 

Insidious established the dangers of the Beyond as "the incorporeal people over there."

 

Once establishes darkness as manifesting vengeance (Hook), vengeance (Regina), vengeance (Lily), greed and pride (Rumpel), vengeance (Evil Queen Snow), and...wrath maybe pride (Emma). Character flaws. Rumpel might have wanted to fill Emma's heart with darkness like his own, but Emma's not greedy, so Emmastiltskin doesn't make as much sense to me (on the plot-character continuum) as the dad in Insidious standing up to his childhood monster. Emma and Rumpel could be linked by pridefulness if I squint, but I'd have to really squint.

Edited July 17, 2015 by Faemonic

[Shanna Marie]

With Emma and Mr. Gold's darknesses, I feel it's more like parallel stories where one pole of the parallel got unstable and clunked onto the other so the other went, "ow."

It doesn't help that they're all over the map when they talk about darkness, without any kind of consistency -- is it the result of making bad choices? Are you born that way? Are some people born with more potential than others? Can darkness be removed or added artificially? Can you add or remove it yourself, in spite of how you're born? How do you measure darkness capacity? What does "darkness" look like in a person? In one episode, they can remove free will as a factor and also talk about how ultimately it's all about free will. We have Rumple who's dark because he murdered the previous Dark One to get his power and then he's spent the subsequent couple of centuries being utterly selfish and enjoying being cruel. We have Lily, who before birth was given an extra dose of darkness but who's spent her life mostly making bad choices and being unlucky without doing much of anything that could be called evil (I still think if they wanted to show someone filled with darkness, she should have been a high-powered Wall Street executive making tons of money on other people's misfortune, not a sad-sack diner waitress). And we have Emma, who had the potential to be great hero or great villain while still an embryo and who had all darkness removed while in the womb, but who seemed to have been reasonably normal other than maybe coming out of extremely difficult circumstances better than anyone might have expected. Meanwhile, there are other characters making choices of whether to be light or dark. And somehow darkness is something that shows up in blood.

 

So it's not so much that the worry about Emma's potential darkness doesn't track to her taking on the Dark One -- as I said, that kind of works, since her having had all her potential darkness removed may be what makes that possible -- it's that all the other talk of darkness surrounding the plot doesn't track very well. Remove the distractions and digressions and it works a lot better.

 

Likewise all the talk about heroes and villains, where they managed to repeatedly contradict themselves within the same episode -- heroes don't get happy endings because of the Author/heroes don't get happy endings because they go after them the wrong way -- and none of it tracks with the AU Isaac created or with his reasoning behind it. We learn in this episode that he was out to tear down heroes mostly out of jealousy -- that "you heroes think you're so great but you're really not" attitude. Rumple's situation fits with what he needed at the time, to be good in order to save his heart, and he was dictating that part. Likewise Hook and Emma's situations seem like what Rumple would have dictated. But the rest doesn't fit with what either Rumple would dictate or what Isaac would have done. Reversing the heroes and the villains, like he did with Snow and Regina, doesn't tear down heroes. It just creates new heroes. It would have made more sense for him to deconstruct the idea of heroes, to amplify their flaws and let other people see them (kind of like what this show does). So the people actually don't support Bandit Snow, or at least don't stick their necks out for her. The prince doesn't fall in love with her. The farmer-turned-prince gets outed and everyone mocks him instead of him being seen as a hero. They lose the war because how can a couple of outcasts with little support stand up against a magically powered queen?

[KAOS Agent]

I watched Back to the Future Part II last night and realized that it ended with Doc disappearing out of the sky with almost the same effects as Emma did. Since the S3 finale was essentially Once Upon a Back to the Future, I thought it was interesting that the S4 finale ended similar to the movie's sequel. Now I'm expecting Emma to be in an Old West version of Camelot.

[KingOfHearts]

I finally rewatched this episode all the way through for the first time.

 

I kept wondering what the reason was that Bizarro World just didn't work. The action in Storybrooke was all very good, but it was everything inside the book that just wasn't quite there. It was downright boring at times. Perhaps it was the fact nothing there had any consequence or tribute to character development, but that's probably not it. It could have been very fun all by itself but it leaves you wanting so much more. (And not in a good way!)
 

First off, there's the role reversal. As we've discussed before, merely switching who the heroes and villains were was not original nor bringing very much newness to the table. It was basically looking at the same exact characters only with different actors, especially with Snow and Regina. Rumple's role makes sense because he designed the universe. Zelena, on the other hand, probably would fit better in the Evil Queen's role with Robin as her huntsman or flying monkey. Being a peasant living humbly with a thief was never her happy ending. If it was just to steal Regina's, but it doesn't really achieve the same effect because no one remembers anything. This problem might be tied to a greater character problem involving the Zarian debacle, so I'll stop there.

 

Another issue might have been the actors simply being out of their element. Ginny is okay as the Evil Queen but seems out of place, and Lana as a bandit was not believable. Most of the performances I found to be bland. However, some of it did work, like cowardly Hook. That was funny and somewhat enjoyable. Unfortunately, little time is spent on that and clearly the episode was focusing on more annoying characters... like Isaac.

 

In my opinion, either it didn't take enough liberties with the AU or the writers were just incapable of tackling such a large concept. The pacing is sporadic, the worldbuilding limited, the plot mechanics random... there wasn't enough continuity to glue everything together. Some roles were reversed, some unchanged. The only thing really consistent was Henry saying "mom" to Bandit Regina every two seconds. This finale could have been the ultimate fan service, and with all the meta references, I think that's what was intended. However, it misses a lot of opportunities and doesn't start hitting right notes until the very last few minutes.*

 

*Except for maybe Captain Swan... that was really all to get from Bizarro World. And maybe Henry's heroism. I wouldn't do a song and dance, though.

Edited September 13, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[HoodlumSheep]

I still find these two episodes to be rather meh. I still like the first half better. I appreciate that Henry seemed back to his smart season 1 self for the most part. I did have a problem with some of the acting. Ginny and Colin were good. Evil Charming is still adorable even if he did off Hook. Robin didn't really change, Lana didn't give a convincing "hero bandit" performance, can't really judge Robert or anyone else because we didn't see too much of them.

The second half just gives me whiplash. They went from a slower/decent pace to hyper speed. It was like, Bam! hook's dead! Regina sacrifices herself! Magical solution! Back to normal! Evil dark goo! Emma peaces out!

All scrunched into pretty much the back half of the second episode. There was no time to breathe. I had no time to grieve over AU!Hook's death because he was alive 2 seconds later. And I wasn't one bit emotional over Bandit Regina sacrificing herself either.

It probably didn't help that you weren't allowed very much time to get emotionally attached to these new AU versions. Whereas the 3b finale had an advantage because Emma and Hook were interacting with characters that we've grown fond of over the course of 2-3 seasons.

The Storybrooke parts were more solid.

I'm still so torn about 4b as a whole. It was a mess and I've ranked it the worst, but I can't bring myself to hate the characters they introduced. I liked the Author, Mickey, Ursula, Cruella, and I liked this burnt-out version of Maleficent, and I liked Lily. It's just that they unfortunately got shuffled into the plot mess, which hampers their likability a bit.

Edited September 13, 2015 by HoodlumSheep

[Mari]

I know we said it earlier, but it's worth repeating--one of the major problems with this double episode is that it tried to do too little and too much at the same time.

 

The AU part was not AU enough.  It could, and should, have been more than a Snow/Regina flip. and what seemed to be a Zelena/Marian flip combined with a Rumple the Magic Knight scene or two.

 

Plus, the squeezed what could have been a several episode arc into about 1 2/3 episodes.  Why couldn't they have played around in their AU for much longer?  We could've had Maleficent, Ursula, Cruella flouncing around not doing much villainy there, too, and had the entire AU thing to play with.

 

(I won't even go into how very much I hate the name. How extraordinarily petty .  . . stopping now.)

[YaddaYadda]

Honestly, I never really understood why Rumple would write an AU about bandit Regina. This was about him getting his happy ending, but going back to reality hinged on Regina's own happy ending which I'm not even sure...yeah, Rumple, why did you write a book that wasn't about you? On top of being a jerk, Rumple also lacks imagination.

Edited September 13, 2015 by YaddaYadda