A Thread for All Seasons: This Story Is Over, But Still Goes On.

[KingOfHearts]

30 minutes ago, Writing Wrongs said:

Finished Season 7. Not as bad as I remembered. Though Regina, Queen of the World was a stretch.

It could've been worse, I guess. 

Unpopular opinion: It was a more memorable than the S6 finale and I'm kind of glad the show didn't end on S6 because of how much I hated that season.

[daxx]

11 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

It could've been worse, I guess. 

Unpopular opinion: It was a more memorable than the S6 finale and I'm kind of glad the show didn't end on S6 because of how much I hated that season.

Agreed, season 7 wasn’t as bad (horrendous) as season 6.

[Writing Wrongs]

I wish we could've seen some interaction between Emma and her granddaughter. I guess after she married Hook, she gave Henry back to Regina permanently. LOL

I didn't really understand the past and present time curse thing. Seattle Adult Henry calls Storybrooke Teen Henry. Ok. At the end when they combine realms to Storybrooke, they have Adult Henry and Wish Realm Teen Henry. Plus Adult Robin and Zelena and all the Storybrooke people. So what happened to SB Teen Henry and little Robin and the rest? Is Zelena the SF Zelena/Kelly or the SB Zelena that Alice and Adult Robin went to SB to get?

I'm so confused.

[KingOfHearts]

Did 2017 Regina and 2017 Henry just cease to exist? 

The show hardcore broke its own time travel rules because tampering with the past should've drastically changed the future.

[Shanna Marie]

6 hours ago, Writing Wrongs said:

I didn't really understand the past and present time curse thing. Seattle Adult Henry calls Storybrooke Teen Henry. Ok. At the end when they combine realms to Storybrooke, they have Adult Henry and Wish Realm Teen Henry. Plus Adult Robin and Zelena and all the Storybrooke people. So what happened to SB Teen Henry and little Robin and the rest? Is Zelena the SF Zelena/Kelly or the SB Zelena that Alice and Adult Robin went to SB to get?

I think Storybrooke Present Henry and Storybrooke Present Regina were still off visiting colleges (I think they said something about that being where they were when Robin and Alice showed up) and didn't make it back for Future Cursed Regina/Roni's coronation. That's probably Storybrooke Present Zelena, since Future Cursed Zelena/Kelly was still off with her fiance on the West Coast and wasn't with the others who got to Present Storybrooke via the Wish Realm. It's hard to tell because all the people who should be at least 20 years older (based on Adult Robin's age) look exactly the same as their past counterparts -- and they looked exactly that way when the curse was cast, so it's not like the curse de-aged them while sending them back in time.

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

The show hardcore broke its own time travel rules because tampering with the past should've drastically changed the future.

Yeah, just imagine how combining all the realms of story and crowning a queen of the universe, plus bringing a bunch of people from other realms, including the wish universe, to live in Storybrooke should change things -- for one, will Henry still go realm-hopping, meet Cinderella, and all that? How can things play out if he knows his future? But if he prevents the curse from being cast, he and the others won't go back in time so they can show up in Storybrooke and crown Regina queen of the universe and the whole timeline collapses.

And there's still the unexplained issue of how Emma and Hook have a baby before Henry leaves home, but they didn't announce their pregnancy until after he'd been gone long enough to age into another actor. Did something about the time travel -- even before they were aware of it -- make Emma get pregnant earlier this time around?

Questions like these gave me a sleepless night when this episode aired. I haven't rewatched it since then.

[daxx]

4 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Questions like these gave me a sleepless night when this episode aired. I haven't rewatched it since then.

I didn’t even try to resolve it as I’d figured out already they didn’t know what they were doing. Just reading Adams tweets I knew it wouldn’t make sense.

[Shanna Marie]

5 minutes ago, daxx said:

I didn’t even try to resolve it as I’d figured out already they didn’t know what they were doing. Just reading Adams tweets I knew it wouldn’t make sense.

My headcanon is that they cut the scene that follows the end of the finale in which present-day Storybrooke Henry wakes up the morning after senior prom (and the after party Regina didn't know he was going to because he told them he was staying with Emma and Hook and his baby sister) hung over and maybe even still a little drunk and comes down to breakfast saying, "You're not going to believe the crazy dream I had last night. Instead of going to college, I used a magic bean to travel across realms on the motorcycle August gave me, and then I grew up and met Cinderella -- not Ashley, but a different one -- and the old Hook you said you met in the wish universe was there, but he got de-aged and hung around with me, and then Regina also joined us, and there was a revolution that made Tiana -- like in the Disney movie -- the queen, but I don't remember much about that part. Oh, and old Hook had a daughter, who was Alice in Wonderland. Cinderella and I got married and had a daughter. And one of Cinderella's wicked stepsisters made Regina cast a curse that took us to Seattle, but back in time, only back in time was the present. We didn't know who we really were, but my daughter tracked me down. The storybook I wrote was an actual novel about all of us. Old Hook and Rumple were cops, and we thought the wicked stepmother was the villain but found out who it really was, old Hook's daughter's mother, who was Mother Gothel, like in the cartoon, and she was trying to do some kind of spell, but we stopped her. And baby Robin, only all grown up, and Alice came to Storybrooke in a food truck to get help when we got trapped in the wish realm, and then Regina brought all the story worlds here and she was elected queen of the universe."

EMMA: I really shouldn't have let you go to that party. What were you drinking?

HOOK: I told you to stick to rum, and only out of the flask I gave you.

EMMA: You gave him a flask?

HOOK: It was a graduation present. It was engraved!

Henry (inhaling coffee): I'm never drinking again.

EMMA: And you'd probably better wait a while before you go anywhere near Regina, or she won't let you leave the house again.

[Writing Wrongs]

When Henry got his college acceptance letters from Boston U, California and Wisconsin, it just reiterated how Storybrooke makes no sense. If no one knows the town exists how do they get things? Is it a mysterious Dharma drop like on Lost? And all of a sudden Storybrooke has its own college? Whaaat?

[KingOfHearts]

12 hours ago, Writing Wrongs said:

When Henry got his college acceptance letters from Boston U, California and Wisconsin, it just reiterated how Storybrooke makes no sense. If no one knows the town exists how do they get things? Is it a mysterious Dharma drop like on Lost? And all of a sudden Storybrooke has its own college? Whaaat?

Because every small town in Maine has a college, I guess?

They should've just sent Henry to Hogwarts like they did with Gideon.

[Shanna Marie]

14 hours ago, Writing Wrongs said:

When Henry got his college acceptance letters from Boston U, California and Wisconsin, it just reiterated how Storybrooke makes no sense. If no one knows the town exists how do they get things? Is it a mysterious Dharma drop like on Lost?

Maybe by that time, they've managed to break all the barrier spells? There was the time during season two when the barriers hiding it from the outside world dropped and you could get in and out. The latest barrier was from Ingrid, where you couldn't see the town from outside, but maybe they broke that. Though things get freaky now that all the worlds are combined and in Storybrooke if people can get there from the outside world.

But that issue of just how hidden Storybrooke is goes back to the beginning -- how did 10-year-old Henry manage to catch a bus to Boston from a town the bus either couldn't enter or would just drive through without seeing a town? Mary Margaret apparently had a credit card that worked online even during the curse. Regina used her position as mayor of Storybrooke -- a town that supposedly didn't exist -- to be able to adopt Henry. It was probably a shady adoption agency, but did they not even look up whether the town existed? Did the curse create Kathryn's acceptance to law school in Boston? Did her application get short circuited so she got the fake acceptance, or did it actually make it to Boston? Where did she get her undergrad degree? Storybrooke U, or did she have fake memories, and a transcript to match, from some other place? How did Henry and Violet get a bus out of town in season 5? When Lily was waiting for a bus in 4B, they told her she'd be waiting a long time, like no buses would be coming through town, ever.

[KAOS Agent]

12 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

When Lily was waiting for a bus in 4B, they told her she'd be waiting a long time, like no buses would be coming through town, ever.

Which was stupid because just a few episodes earlier, Regina had to prove she was bad by playing chicken with a train. They put no effort into maintaining a set of rules regarding Storybrooke and how it appeared (or didn't) to outsiders.

[daxx]

7 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

They put no effort into maintaining a set of rules

Exactly, for Storybrooke, magic, savior, morality, distance in the EF, realms, timeline.  What did I miss?

Edited August 14, 2019 by daxx

[Shanna Marie]

8 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

Which was stupid because just a few episodes earlier, Regina had to prove she was bad by playing chicken with a train.

Didn't it turn out that the train went right through them, or something like that, since it passed through Storybrooke without really passing through Storybrooke? (That's one of the episodes I can't make myself pay attention to, so I don't remember.) But that is something they didn't clear up -- were outside trains, cars, buses, etc., stopped at the border, or did they drive through without actually seeing a town? A bus might have passed Lily, like the train went by, but it wouldn't have stopped because no one on the bus would have seen anything but trees. A train clearly went through town, but did that road that went through Storybrooke from the outside world go anywhere else, so that people would pass through, or did it dead-end in Storybrooke, so no one would drive on it unless they were going there? Even so, it would have dead-ended on the coast, so wouldn't people going to the seaside have tried that road?

And we still haven't answered the question of how Henry took a bus from Storybrooke to Boston. Was there a bus stop in what looked like the middle of nowhere? But why, if no one could get to the town or leave the town? Did Henry hike out of town to the nearest bus stop? Hike out of town and then hitchhike to a bus stop? We saw him learn to drive, so 10-year-old Henry didn't steal Regina's Mercedes to go in search of Emma, and no one else in town could leave.

[KingOfHearts]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Didn't it turn out that the train went right through them, or something like that, since it passed through Storybrooke without really passing through Storybrooke? (That's one of the episodes I can't make myself pay attention to, so I don't remember.)

She poofed them away right before the train went through, so we have no idea how that works.

[Writing Wrongs]

I never understood what that was supposed to prove.

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Writing Wrongs said:

I never understood what that was supposed to prove.

How does getting run over by a train prove you're evil...?

[tennisgurl]

8 hours ago, Writing Wrongs said:

I never understood what that was supposed to prove.

It proved that A&E always wanted to write a crappy after school special about peer pressure with a bunch of grown ass women. Oh yeah, nothing screams EVIL like doing a shot and playing chicken like a bunch of idiots. 

[Shanna Marie]

On 8/8/2019 at 8:04 PM, KingOfHearts said:

It's not something I normally pay attention to, but the blocking on this show is so terrible. The characters are always standing awkwardly in the middle of the room/street/clearing, ignoring their surroundings like they're perpetually stuck in a floating head scene. Their poses are always so stiff and boring. It's so unnatural. I've talked about this before, but the way everybody stands awkwardly in a group while one or two characters partake in the majority of the dialogue is super distracting. And that's like every other scene.

I was thinking about this while watching this week's episodes. It's not just the blocking that's static. It's like the writing is set up to avoid anything interesting. They seem to go out of their way to avoid showing actual action. Some of that may be due to time and budget, since action scenes take a long time to film and can be expensive (if you need stunt coordinators, stunt doubles, etc.). But it goes to rather ridiculous lengths on this show. We've got Captain Nemo and Captain Hook on a damaged submarine, and they stand around on it, apparently not doing anything, until it's already too late to get out in diving suits. There's no urgency or action until it's too late. In the meantime, they've somehow had time for Hook to give relationship advice to Aladdin and Jasmine. When they all get off the ship, they stand around on the beach talking before Nemo and Liam just go back to the ship. Still no action. Aladdin, Jasmine, Hook, and Ariel are confronting Jafar, and they just knock out everyone but Jasmine so that the big confrontation can be Jasmine and Jafar standing around and talking. The only thing that happens during Hook's realm-hopping adventure that isn't just standing around and talking is Hook and Blackbeard playing cards and then later running from the Lost Boys 2.0. Everything else happens offscreen -- Hook getting from Agrabah to wherever Blackbeard is and finding Blackbeard (even though the last he heard, he was in prison in Arendelle). And these are the "action-packed" episodes of the season.

Heck, go back to the Wishverse -- we do get to see Henry and his posse riding by, but otherwise, it's mostly Regina and Emma standing around and talking. There's about ten seconds of action when Wish Hook shows up, but that might be too exciting for us because he has to get zapped away so Emma and Pinocchio can go back to standing around and talking.

This is a fairy tale adventure show about standing around and talking. Even the action-packed scenes could be moved to any other setting because they can generally stand around and talk anywhere. The only difference is which convenient magical prop is present to quickly and easily solve the problem after they've stood around and talked about it.

[daxx]

Watching the Crocodile tonight I realized Moe wasn’t the villain, he was truly trying to save his daughter and she would have been so much better off if he’d succeeded. Sad commentary that is on the show. Same with the flashback, they want us to think Captain Hook is the villain but Rumple is, this whole episode suffers from this reverse morality.

[Shanna Marie]

18 hours ago, daxx said:

Watching the Crocodile tonight I realized Moe wasn’t the villain, he was truly trying to save his daughter and she would have been so much better off if he’d succeeded.

It really is a twisted situation because both Moe and Rumple were creepy and controlling and treated Belle like she didn't have any agency. Moe's tactics were horrible, but he was doing it for her good, while Rumple may have been "nicer" to Belle's face, but he was doing it for his own good. I hate to victim blame, but Belle's probably most at fault here for not really taking any agency other than to be stubborn and refuse to listen. Had she not left Rumple's place since the curse broke, not interacted with anyone else? Was Rumple not letting her leave, not encouraging her to get out, not taking her out anywhere? Any of those would be a red flag. If she'd even just met Ruby, surely Ruby would have known that if she was Belle, her father was looking for her. The fact that Moe was alive and in town, had been looking for her but hadn't seen the posters she made (that Rumple trashed) should have been a clue that Rumple had been lying to her and trying to keep her from her family, so she actually should have tried listening to what Moe was telling her about Rumple instead of going straight to "you don't know him, he's good, really." It's even worse that this is juxtaposed with the flashbacks about Rumple murdering his first wife for leaving him, so you know that Moe is right, even if kidnapping her and trying to wipe her memory isn't the best way to go about it.

I'm still rather horrified that a character who was shown murdering his wife for leaving him and showing no remorse for having done so, no admitting that he was wrong, and who "killed" her again in the afterlife and lied about it, again with no remorse or sense of guilt, was given a romantic happy ending in the afterlife. A lot of the stuff on this show falls into the category of "fantasy violence," but you can't read a newspaper today without seeing at least one story about a man murdering his wife or girlfriend when she tried to leave him. That's a ripped-from-the-headlines situation.

[KingOfHearts]

On 8/16/2019 at 1:40 PM, Shanna Marie said:

I was thinking about this while watching this week's episodes. It's not just the blocking that's static. It's like the writing is set up to avoid anything interesting.

It's truly mindboggling because something like Snow White, The Wicked Witch of the West, and Captain Hook all sitting at a table at Granny's just talking should be interesting. There's enough intrigue in this show's premise that you shouldn't have to bend over backwards to make scenes engaging to watch. All too often the writers forget these characters are fairy tale characters and that most of them have dual personalities. How do you have all that going for you and just make everyone stand around talking about the immediate plot?

These writers had all this rich literature handed to them on a silver platter, and they did their own things that nobody cared about. They could've just gone cookie-cutter and just adapted the source material they were given into live action with little change to the stories, and people still would've watched. 

But uh... Emma's gonna die! Rumple's rando mom is here!

[Writing Wrongs]

I was thinking about how The Dark Curse (apparently) gives everyone clever cursed names. I get Weaver, Rogers, Belfrey, Jacinda and Kelly West. But what does Roni have to do with Regina?

[Melgaypet]

I'm not sure, unless they were just going for alliteration. I went to Behind the Name and found two meanings for Roni:

• "My joy" or "my song" - Hebrew
• Diminutive of Veronica, "true image" - Latin

There's also "Rani" which I think is pronounced the same way and means "queen" in Sanskrit, and, of course, Regina also means "queen."

So...take from that what you will. I'm pretty sure it was just the alliteration.

[Camera One]

On 8/21/2019 at 7:53 AM, Writing Wrongs said:

But what does Roni have to do with Regina?

It's short for macaroni because the Writers bend over backwards for her.

Edited August 24, 2019 by Camera One

[Writing Wrongs]

As the show went on, the writing really became a sore point for me.

They do something interesting like Belle finally getting a backbone and forcing Rumple over the town line, but then they reverse it by having her forgive him AGAIN and take him back. The same with Rumple's pure heart and then having him get The Dark One powers back and screwing over Belle AGAIN and her taking him back AGAIN. And they get a happy ending!

Then they take the interesting idea of Emma becoming The Dark One, but her evilness is all a big fake out. Think if they would've done her character like Evil Angel in Buffy Season 2 and had her actually do Dark One things? Hook was way more interesting as The Dark One. It's like they were afraid to commit to making Emma bad or something.

Even the interesting idea of the Curse of Shattered Sight that got played for laughs. What a bunch of shit 

All the ridiculous and unnecessary retcons. Not knowing what to do with characters once they were introduced. 

This is still one of my favorite shows though.😉

[Camera One]

5 hours ago, Writing Wrongs said:

This is still one of my favorite shows though.😉

We all share in that Curse.  👿

[Shanna Marie]

15 hours ago, Camera One said:

20 hours ago, Writing Wrongs said:

This is still one of my favorite shows though.😉

We all share in that Curse.  👿

I love this show for what it could have been (and occasionally was), hate it for so much of what it was.

I've been rewatching the Wonderland spinoff, and I think it really is the better show. It did have the advantage of only being one arc, so it wasn't around long enough for retcons and character assassination, but I think that one arc was better executed than any one arc in the parent show. I've also found that it seems to fix a lot of the problems I have with the parent show. There's better pacing -- each episode has both the villains and the heroes making progress toward their goals, no just wandering around until the episode before the end, when some magical thing magically shows up. There's more consistency that makes it feel like the arc really was planned -- when we learn the villain's backstory, real goals, and motivation, it's more a case of "Oh, yes, I see it" rather than "huh?" It matches the characters' earlier actions, so rewatching is satisfying. I also got the sense that they told the actors what was really going on with their characters. I remember there being a lot of criticism about how "wooden" Ana was in the early episodes. Then we learned what was really going on with her and you can look back at those episodes and see how she was putting up a stiff front to try to hide what she was really up to from Jafar. No one talks about wanting to be a "hero" or discusses their "story." The good guys aren't punished when they make a right choice (there's a time when it looks like that might be the case, but it turns out that the good guy was clever and had a backup plan and the villain was actually doing something that benefited the good guys). There's much more of a sense of hope, since whenever the villain seems to come out ahead in an episode, there's something else that happens to show that the heroes have a chance. A villain has a sad backstory that isn't used to excuse his evil. The heroes are shown to have flaws without being treated like they're the worst evil ever for not being perfect. There's an actual redemption story for a villain in which the people she harmed are allowed to be angry at her.

In fact, Anastasia's story parallels Regina's story so closely that it's like she's the anti-Regina. Both of them are brought up by domineering, social climbing mothers who want to make them queens. Both fall in love with poor boys their mothers don't approve of. But Ana runs away with her love, only to discover that she hates being poor and ends up marrying a king at the first opportunity (makes you wonder what Regina would have done if she'd managed to run away with Daniel). Both get trained in magic and manipulated by powerful magic users and end up trying to do some really powerful and dangerous magic in order to get what they want. Except Regina wanted revenge and Ana was already feeling remorse for her actions and wanted to go back in time and make different choices.

All this makes me wonder how much of a role A&E really played in the spinoff. Were they "executive producers" just because they were overall supervisors and created the parent show but didn't do much of the day-to-day work? Aside from spinning off the original and including some of the same concepts, it really comes across like it's being written by entirely different people who have an entirely different worldview. And that makes me wonder what that crew could have done with the cast and situation of the original series, without A&E's interference.

[daxx]

7 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

All this makes me wonder how much of a role A&E really played in the spinoff. Were they "executive producers" just because they were overall supervisors and created the parent show but didn't do much of the day-to-day work? Aside from spinning off the original and including some of the same concepts, it really comes across like it's being written by entirely different people who have an entirely different worldview.

I recall reading that Jane Espenson was running the writers room for wonderland since A&E were managing the main show. I also recall comments that the wonderland writers room was boisterous where the main show room was quiet. I’m going to assume this is because those on the main show had learned not to pushback on any of A&E’s ideas. At least that is my experience in business, a quiet room isn’t a sign of a healthy staff/management relationship.

[Camera One]

Zack Estrin was more in charge of the "Wonderland" Writers' Room, but it was literally beside the "Once" room, so A&E and Jane could go back and forth.  

https://www.assignmentx.com/2013/exclusive-interview-the-creators-of-once-upon-a-time-in-wonderland-talk-season-1/

It helped that it's easier to start a series with new backstories to tell.  There could be more discussion about where the various characters could go without past restraints.  I didn't fully like it until the back-half (and even then, I thought Jafar was a lame character), when they pretty much realized the writing was on the wall and they would be able to tell a closed-ended story.

[Camera One]

It's a shame the worldbuilding was so shoddy and inconsistent on this show, because it really limited the potential for spinoffs or prequels.

I was reading about the new prequel TV series about Obi-Wan-Kenobi.  If "Once" had put more care into this show, it might have been interesting to see a prequel about Blue and how she came to be a fairy and her nemesis The Black Fairy (before it turned out to be a bad joke in Season 6... plus, they felt the need to insert yet another new character of Tiger Lily when they could solely have shown Blue vs. The Black Fairy in her origin tale). 

I thought maybe they would tell Blue's story in Season 5 with Merlin, since he was also an ancient sage.  I envisioned Blue as a mortal... maybe Merlin's childhood friend.  Together, they dabbled in magic.  Maybe Merlin and Blue clashed over the best way to defeat Darkness, with Blue being a bit more cynical than Merlin.  Merlin fell for Nimue over Blue, and she vowed she would never get involved in men again and started the fairy institution.  We could see how Fairy Godmothers came to be, and who The Black Fairy was... they could even have shown Maleficent turning dark.  

I can imagine in Season 6, Blue met with Merlin, Glinda, Gandalf and Yoda, and they decide that for the greater good, they should send Gideon to The Black Fairy to draw her out and to defeat The Dark One (and Darkness) for good.  Then, The Final Battle would be more of a battle instead of everyone standing around waiting to be Cursed and then relying on luck until Rumple decided he couldn't trust his mother and kill yet another of his parents and get rewarded with a seat at the table of "heroes".

Edited August 26, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

12 hours ago, Camera One said:

I didn't fully like it until the back-half (and even then, I thought Jafar was a lame character), when they pretty much realized the writing was on the wall and they would be able to tell a closed-ended story.

I didn't really participate in much discussion about it as it aired the first time (I recall dropping in on the TWOP forum, seeing that it was mostly Will and Alice shippers who hated Cyrus and thought he was boring, and noping out because I could tell I wouldn't enjoy the discussion), so I can't reread my original posts, but as I recall, I was very meh on it until about midway through, when I fell madly in love. Now when I rewatch, I love it from the start, and I keep finding things I like about it. I don't know if it's that I've already built a lot of goodwill that applies even to the weaker parts or if it's the contrast to what ended up happening in the mother series. The first half of Wonderland aired at the same time as the Neverland arc, which was one of the stronger arcs. The second half aired during the Zelena arc, which was one of the weaker ones, and the series went downhill from there, so in retrospect, Wonderland looks a lot better. It's basically a reversal -- I wasn't crazy about the first half of Wonderland when it aired, but after the way it had a strong ending and after what happened with the mother series, I now like the whole thing so much better, while I loved the first couple of seasons of the mother series, it had a terrible ending, and now I enjoy even the older seasons less.

I have decided that Wonderland has to take place after season four. I know that wasn't the original intent, since season four hadn't even happened yet, but that's the only way it can be at all satisfying for me. After the breakup with Ana, Will went back to the Enchanted Forest and got caught up in the curse, ending up in Storybrooke. It might actually work better if it was curse 2, with him being around the Merry Men and therefore being in the Coradome for curse 1, so we don't have to pretend he was in Storybrooke all that time and Emma didn't notice him until season 4. After making a drunken fool of himself upon finding himself trapped in a strange world where he has even less of a chance of getting back with Ana, he makes a halfhearted attempt at a relationship with Belle, who's still too stung over what happened with Rumple that she doesn't even clue in that she's dating a guy whose heart isn't in it (literally). He's affected by the Shattered Sight spell because his heart in its hiding place isn't protected the way Rumple protected Hook's heart. When we see Will dodging Emma's bug in the Wonderland pilot, she's on her way to deal with the Darkness in the season 4 finale. While everyone else is distracted by that chaos, the Rabbit shows up and takes Will away. That's why he vanishes and is never seen again in Storybrooke. He's particularly bitter and discourages Alice about love in those earlier episodes because not only was he burned by Ana, but Belle chose the Dark One dying of his own evil over him, so he's really jaded, feeling like it's not just that Ana wronged him, but love in general is a mess.

I really don't know what they'd have done differently if they'd been renewed because it seems like it was designed to be a short-run, closed-end series. I guess instead of Alice and Cyrus living in England they could have stayed in Wonderland and had more adventures, facing off against different villains. And, like in the mother show, it would have been weaker than the first season because they'd have had to retcon to tie it all together in the backstory. I suppose with Cyrus having spent centuries as a genie, he had time to build up a few enemies, and we didn't see all of Alice's earlier adventures in Wonderland, so there was more backstory to mine. It was mostly different writers, so maybe they wouldn't have become hung up on rehashing Alice and Cyrus vs. Ana instead of exploring other parts of the story.

[Camera One]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I didn't really participate in much discussion about it as it aired the first time (I recall dropping in on the TWOP forum, seeing that it was mostly Will and Alice shippers who hated Cyrus and thought he was boring, and noping out because I could tell I wouldn't enjoy the discussion)

I don't remember that, but I can't recall there was much in-depth discussion happening at all, not to the extent of the original show.

Quote

I have decided that Wonderland has to take place after season four. I know that wasn't the original intent, since season four hadn't even happened yet, but that's the only way it can be at all satisfying for me.

I'm totally on board with that.  I can't imagine what the hell A&E was even planning for Will in the parent show.  

Quote

I really don't know what they'd have done differently if they'd been renewed because it seems like it was designed to be a short-run, closed-end series. I guess instead of Alice and Cyrus living in England they could have stayed in Wonderland and had more adventures, facing off against different villains. And, like in the mother show, it would have been weaker than the first season because they'd have had to retcon to tie it all together in the backstory.

They would have run out of ideas even faster than the parent show.  It was their usual attempt to open the door to doing more.  Heck, they were even stubbornly thinking that there would be an eighth season and we would still have wanted to see Henry and the dismal gang for another year.  With Wonderland Season 2, they would have needed to break up or separate all the happy couples again, wash, rinse, repeat.  Ana might have backslid.  They would have been better off planning another stand-alone season in Oz or something since we hadn't yet seen Kansas and Wolfie's epic love story.

Edited August 26, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

31 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I don't remember that, but I can't recall there was much in-depth discussion happening at all, not to the extent of the original show.

I think I only popped in after the first episode, and it was mostly 'shipping. I might have come back around the finale, but that was still on TWOP. There wasn't that much discussion, since so few people watched it.

32 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I can't imagine what the hell A&E was even planning for Will in the parent show.  

That has been one of the more bizarre creative decisions on this show -- bring on a character from a spinoff who had a happy ending on the spinoff, so him being there means something happened to his happy ending. Hint at something going on with him that will be developed later. Drop that entirely. Randomly pair him up with another character, even though he has a canon true love. Then have him vanish with not even an offhand explanation suggesting that something happened offscreen. They devoted more time to tying up Lily's parentage than they did to wrapping up Will's story, and he was an opening credits character for an entire season. Was that a case of the network forcing them to include a character they had no plans for, or was it a bad case of New Toy syndrome, where they desperately wanted this character, and then as soon as they got him, they completely lost interest in him? While he was on the show, I'm pretty sure they were going with the idea that this was happening after Wonderland rather than setting up Wonderland, but they completely dropped all mention of anything they'd set up with him looking up stuff about the Red Queen in the library after 4A, and it was all left entirely unresolved. So, since we'll probably never get an answer, both shows having been cancelled, I'm going with my headcanon, which ties it all up neatly.

41 minutes ago, Camera One said:

With Wonderland Season 2, they would have needed to break up or separate all the happy couples again, wash, rinse, repeat.  Ana might have backslid.  They would have been better off planning another stand-alone season in Oz or something since we hadn't yet seen Kansas and Wolfie's epic love story.

I thought when they first announced the spinoff that that was the plan -- one-off, short series featuring other worlds that would run during the downtime of the main series in the usual OUAT slot. There didn't seem to have been an expectation at the time that there would be multiple seasons of Wonderland. It was more like there would then be a season of, say, Oz or Neverland, or Agrabah, etc. But then they ran Wonderland on a different night while the main series was also airing, and when they cancelled it, they were talking like there had been an expectation of having multiple seasons, so maybe something changed along the way and they were treating it more like a conventional series.

I think they might have been able to do something fun with it, since there's a lot going on in Wonderland. I think they even could have kept the couples together and just not focused on their relationships, having them facing external threats together. But I'm kind of glad they left it the way it was. And that we didn't have to watch the adventures of Kansas and Wolfie.

An Ariel series focusing on the sea-type stuff might have been fun -- her running into Ursula and Poseidon, tracking down Blackbeard, etc. She could have popped up anywhere in the multiverse.

[Camera One]

14 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I thought when they first announced the spinoff that that was the plan -- one-off, short series featuring other worlds that would run during the downtime of the main series in the usual OUAT slot. There didn't seem to have been an expectation at the time that there would be multiple seasons of Wonderland. It was more like there would then be a season of, say, Oz or Neverland, or Agrabah, etc. But then they ran Wonderland on a different night while the main series was also airing, and when they cancelled it, they were talking like there had been an expectation of having multiple seasons, so maybe something changed along the way and they were treating it more like a conventional series.

It might have been a case of the network getting greedy, a casualty of the pilot turning out better than they thought.  The show might have done better with the original plan of airing in mid-season.  Once it aired on another night and seemed like it could become another primetime show, A&E started thinking about maybe having two continuing hits.  It was obvious they had zero plan beyond the first season (just like they had zero plan for after the Curse broke on "Once").

I personally thought the acting from Anastasia and Jafar in the pilot to be on the levels of Jacinda and Victoria Belfry.  That was how bad it was to me.  I did really like Alice, Will and Cyrus, though, so that kept me engaged in the show until the writing got better.  In comparison, the writing for Season 7 only got worse and I didn't like any of the characters except Whook and Alice.  I wonder if it would have been better if it had been a completely new show without Henry, Roni, Rumple, Whook, etc.  Just Jacinda, Victoria, Lucy, Ivy, Alice and Mophead.  Doubtful.

Edited August 26, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

I personally thought the acting from Anastasia and Jafar in the pilot to be on the levels of Jacinda and Victoria Belfry.  That was how bad it was to me.  I did really like Alice, Will and Cyrus, though, so that kept me engaged in the show until the writing got better. 

I thought the acting from Anastasia at the beginning was awful, until there was a flashback showing her as "Anastasia" rather than as "the Red Queen," and she was totally different. Then we saw the origin of her "Red Queen" persona when she overheard the noblewoman at the ball and started imitating her, and we started seeing her code switch depending on who she was talking to, and it became clear that the stiff, fake personality we saw at first was deliberate. Now, rewatching, I can see the nuances in what she was doing. She has little moments to psych herself up to deal with Jafar, where she puts that persona on full-blast. She's still hard to take, but once she starts having scenes with people other than just Jafar she's a lot more well-rounded.

I just loved Alice. She's a lot like what season one Bandit Snow had the potential to be, where she's sweet and innocent, tries to see the best in people, often comes out ahead by being kind to people, while she still takes no nonsense and is strong, capable, and badass. She's a rare case of TV showing a "strong female character" who's a good fighter but who isn't obnoxiously abrasive and edgy. As I recall, the actress is a former gymnast, and it really shows in her physicality. And Cyrus was so very pretty and clever.

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

I wonder if it would have been better if it had been a completely new show without Henry, Roni, Rumple, Whook, etc.  Just Jacinda, Victoria, Lucy, Ivy, Alice and Mophead.  Doubtful.

I don't think I'd have cared to watch without some ties to the original show. About the only new character I cared at all about was Alice. Ivy had a tiny bit of possibility, probably mostly because of the actress, but the rest of the characters were bland and boring (and not very well acted). I think they were relying too heavily on the old characters to keep the audience, so they didn't seem to have put a lot of effort into the new characters. Plus, it doesn't help that the storytelling was so random that it felt like they were making it up as they went along, with no real plan.

[tennisgurl]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

didn't really participate in much discussion about it as it aired the first time (I recall dropping in on the TWOP forum, seeing that it was mostly Will and Alice shippers who hated Cyrus and thought he was boring, and noping out because I could tell I wouldn't enjoy the discussion),

If I remember right, a lot of people thought that Cyrus was dull at first, but came around more on him and Cyrus/Alice when he started to get more involved in the plot. Of course, I dont think it got as much traffic as it deserved in general back on TWOP in general. I have been thinking  about starting to watch the show again, I have such fond memories of the show, and I want to see if it still holds up. I feel like it will though, especially after watching this show again. It just reminds me of all the things that this show did wrong that Wonderland did right. 

I feel like Once tried to make a character as good as Alice a million times, and failed miserably over and over. They really had no idea how to write a really compelling female character after awhile, and they just got into this rut of writing "Strong Female Characters" are are really just disturbingly violent (but in a badass empowering way I guess), always pissed off, even at people who have done nothing to anyone, and dont have much personality beyond being angry and being able to throw a punch, until they defrost or whatever and we`re supposed to like them now. Dorothy, Merida, Tiger Lily, Murderella, they were all just variations of the same character. We saw that even more with Wishverse Emma and what they think a "not strong" female character is like: Kind, loves traditionally feminine things, cant use a sword, she is the opposite of their badass angry women who are "not like the others girls", like they cant even comprehend that a woman can enjoy flowers and be a badass, or be a strong person without being able to drop kick anyone. It was like all of the sudden, they only had one kind of character they were interested in when it came to female characters, and unfortunately that kind of character was really boring. 

And its weird, because they used to be able to write for a more diverse amount of female characters who were strong in different ways. Snow was kind of angry and a baddass, but she was also compassionate and romantic. Ariel was sweet and bubbly, Belle and smart and dreamy, Red was saucy and loyal, Mulan was stoic and serious, Aurora was gentle and demure, but they were also all brave and competent and fun to watch. Granted, a lot of those qualities left those women or their characters disappeared all together, but they were a wide variety of female characters who had different personalities and interests, but none of them were considered bad or wrong, they were all heroes, whether or not they could throw a bunch or a one liner.

Edited August 26, 2019 by tennisgurl

[Writing Wrongs]

Since we are talking about OUATiW, I never understood Amara's timeline. She was some kind of witch that taught boy Jafar until he was an adult and turned her into his staff? When did she have Cyrus and his brothers and need saving by the well water? Why doesn't she age?

[Camera One]

33 minutes ago, Writing Wrongs said:

Since we are talking about OUATiW, I never understood Amara's timeline. She was some kind of witch that taught boy Jafar until he was an adult and turned her into his staff? When did she have Cyrus and his brothers and need saving by the well water? Why doesn't she age?

I had to look it up.  She had Cyrus and her other two sons first.  The waters they stole to heal Amara kept her young forever.  After her sons were turned into genies by the keeper of the well, that's when Amara became an evil sorceress (because mothers can become evil because they are desperate to help their children as per Once Upon a Time logic rule #815).  She became Jafar's mentor and he eventually turned her into his staff.  

Edited August 27, 2019 by Camera One

[Writing Wrongs]

Thanks.

[Shanna Marie]

5 hours ago, Camera One said:

After her sons were turned into genies by the keeper of the well, that's when Amara became an evil sorceress (because mothers can become evil because they are desperate to help their children as per Once Upon a Time logic rule #815).

I think she parallels Rumple maybe a little better than she does the mothers who turned evil. I haven't reached that point in my latest rewatch, but wasn't her aim in trying to do the "break the laws of magic" spell to be able to turn back time so she could undo what her sons did and keep them from being made into genies? That's kind of like so much of Rumple's evil being about him trying to reunite with Bae. And I think there's a cautionary tale there about the dangers of power and immortality. She wasn't already evil and didn't gain power and immortality on purpose, the way Rumple did, but it does seem that,no matter how good your intentions start out being, it's hard to remain good when you outlive everyone around you and are super powerful. Other humans start to look like mayflies, and it's easy to start to feel about as much compunction about killing them as many people feel about killing flies. Besides, I think she, like Ana, figured that it didn't matter what she did since it would all be undone when she rewrote history.

It is ironic that much of the Wonderland series about how nearly impossible it was to change history was airing at the same time as the Zelena arc about her wanting to go back in time and change history. It took Amara (and then Jafar) centuries, plus the combined power of two powerful sorcerers and three genies to be able to do it. Meanwhile, Zelena just needs a newborn and a few symbolic items.

22 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

If I remember right, a lot of people thought that Cyrus was dull at first, but came around more on him and Cyrus/Alice when he started to get more involved in the plot.

Yeah, when I dropped back in on the forum later in the series when I'd really gotten into it, the tone had changed a lot, with most people being on board with Alice and Will being a "broTP" rather than a romance. I have to give the writers credit for avoiding the Dreaded Triangle entirely. At the beginning of the series, I was fairly certain they were going to go down the Standard Hollywood Romantic Triangle path that goes back to the 1930s, in which the existing boyfriend who's coded as "elite" (coming across as wealthy, educated, powerful, or privileged, with conventional polite manners) is shown as being boring compared to the rough-around-the-edges rogue with a heart of gold. But they subverted that trope by having Will have his own love and Alice just be friends with Will while Cyrus turned out to be pretty cool.

22 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

I feel like Once tried to make a character as good as Alice a million times, and failed miserably over and over. They really had no idea how to write a really compelling female character after awhile, and they just got into this rut of writing "Strong Female Characters" are are really just disturbingly violent (but in a badass empowering way I guess), always pissed off, even at people who have done nothing to anyone, and dont have much personality beyond being angry and being able to throw a punch, until they defrost or whatever and we`re supposed to like them now.

I think a lot of it was in the performance. Alice said some pretty shockingly violent things (like when she learned the Rabbit had betrayed them and she's talking about how to find out who he's working for by grabbing him by the feet and holding him upside down over the edge of a cliff), but she sounds so sweet and sunny while saying it that it doesn't come across as abrasive. No matter how tough her lines are or how big a fight scene she's in, she never sounds all that pissed off. It's similar to with Bandit Snow. On paper, she could easily have been as obnoxious as Merida, like with her snarky insistence on calling David "Charming" when they first met, but Ginny's delivery didn't quite have that edge. She was still playing "Snow White," just one with a bit more spunk. But by the time we get to Merida, they just wrote her as angry, and the actress seemed to be going for feisty like in the movie, so she was obnoxious. With Dorothy and Jacinda, they were so far from the storybook source material that they couldn't draw on that to balance the writing.

[Camera One]

4 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

With Dorothy and Jacinda, they were so far from the storybook source material that they couldn't draw on that to balance the writing.

Jacinda was abrasive even in her Cinderella ball attire and I forgot whether Dorothy was in the gingham dress (since there would be a price for me to to rewatch "Ruby Slippers").

I agree it's amazing how much the actor how to do with whether storylines worked or not, for us to actually believe what A&E were trying to force-feed us.  

[Shanna Marie]

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

Jacinda was abrasive even in her Cinderella ball attire and I forgot whether Dorothy was in the gingham dress (since there would be a price for me to to rewatch "Ruby Slippers").

I think there was maybe some suggestion of gingham in Dorothy's costume. Jacinda was never really Cinderella. She wore the costume, but otherwise we never saw anything in her character that had anything to do with any version of Cinderella, ever. Come to think of it, ditto with Dorothy, who in both book and movie was always kind and caring, not abrasive.

I don't know whether we can really blame the actresses for not pulling off the material when it's possible they were directed that way -- "Can we have that a little edgier?" They wanted Snow to be recognizably Snow White even when she was in bandit mode, but with the others, they really did seem to fall into the Strong Female Character trap (and it's not just this show -- one downside of watching Wonderland on the Roku app is that they stick in commercials, mostly for their new shows, and there's one promo that's basically Strong Female Character: The Series, hitting all the cliches of being abrasive, beating up men, and spouting sardonic one-liners). Though with Merida, I get the feeling they saw the trailer for Brave but didn't actually watch the movie because while movie Merida had an attitude and was feisty and stubborn, she wasn't really abrasive and didn't go around punching people. She was just a frustrated teenager, and she learned a lot through the course of the movie. Show Merida was a grown woman, probably about ten years after the movie, but she was less mature than movie Merida was at the beginning, before she grew and matured. With the show, it was like "Okay, she's redheaded and Scottish. That's all we need to know."

With Alice, although she said some dire things about what she'd do to the Rabbit, when she found him, she ended up helping him and being kind, with no attitude. And in that same episode, Cyrus had a very Hook-like moment, when they were attacked by men trying to get a genie, and Cyrus drew them away from Alice -- not to protect her, but to give her a chance to get to her sword. The men threatened him, saying, "We're not to be trifled with," and Cyrus said, "Neither is she," just before she attacked. That seemed like the way Hook was with Emma, having total faith in her abilities and being proud that she was a badass.

[Camera One]

Taking this from the "Ill-Boding Patterns" thread:

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I guess Zelena turned out okay?
She got a small retcon, but it didn't assassinate her character by any means.

Yes, I agree that Zelena might have been the only majorly featured character in Season 6 which came out alright.  

It could be because they had not fully redeemed Zelena yet, so she got to make a big sacrifice which actually meant something, so in a sense, her character actually "peaked" in development in Season 6. 

Whereas the other characters had already been so-called "redeemed", so the Writers felt the need to go backwards and create some more egregious retcons so the character could angst over them again (eg. Hook), or have them regress for the umpteeth time (eg. Rumple).  

[Writing Wrongs]

After watching the live action Aladdin, which I enjoyed very much, I was in a genie mood and am re-watching Once in Wonderland. It really is more enjoyable and fast paced when you don't have to stretch a season out to 22 or more episodes. 13 is enough to get the job done. 

[KingOfHearts]

3 hours ago, Writing Wrongs said:

After watching the live action Aladdin, which I enjoyed very much, I was in a genie mood and am re-watching Once in Wonderland. It really is more enjoyable and fast paced when you don't have to stretch a season out to 22 or more episodes. 13 is enough to get the job done. 

I think it's funny that OUATIW was a better adaptation of Aladdin than OUAT's, and it didn't even include Aladdin or Jasmine.

Quote

Whereas the other characters had already been so-called "redeemed", so the Writers felt the need to go backwards and create some more egregious retcons so the character could angst over them again (eg. Hook), or have them regress for the umpteeth time (eg. Rumple).  

This feels weird to say, but S7 probably handled "redeemed" characters better than any other season. Regina and Zelena seemed like much more mature versions of themselves, like they'd been through a lot of positive changes and were now ready to help the next generation. It seemed like they had a lot of great character development in Offscreenville. 

Rumple still annoyed me, though. His machinations didn't make any sense and he just sat around twiddling his thumbs until the heroes got their crap together. He wasn't running around killing innocents in coldblood, but he wasn't very helpful either until the very end. I hated how the writers tried to make us think he had this master plan going behind the scenes when in reality he was flying by the seat of his pants. They tried to make him look "edgy" as Weaver when they really didn't have to. It was like the writers were scared to show a truly redeemed Rumple willing to help the good guys.

I get it - Redeemed!Rumple would be boring as tar. In actuality, the character should've left ages ago and had no business being in S7.

Edited September 1, 2019 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

34 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Rumple still annoyed me, though. His machinations didn't make any sense and he just sat around twiddling his thumbs until the heroes got their crap together. He wasn't running around killing innocents in coldblood, but he wasn't very helpful either until the very end. I hated how the writers tried to make us think he had this master plan going behind the scenes when in reality he was flying by the seat of his pants. They tried to make him look "edgy" as Weaver when they really didn't have to. It was like the writers were scared to show a truly redeemed Rumple willing to help the good guys.

Well said... he was irritating as hell and his behavior as "Weaver" did not match with that "heartbreaking" flashback we saw in "Up!" or whatever that episode was called.

[KingOfHearts]

2 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Well said... he was irritating as hell and his behavior as "Weaver" did not match with that "heartbreaking" flashback we saw in "Up!" or whatever that episode was called.

Rumple is always just an asshole, with or without magic, and with or without murder.

Edited September 1, 2019 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

2 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Rumple is always just an asshole, with or without magic, and with or without murder.

Now now, he's just a difficult man to love.  Deep inside, he's just big ol' soft Wumple.

Edited September 1, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

The Wonderland spin-off really is like Once Upon a Time in Opposite Land. Our Regina-like character actually gets a whole episode after she does her turnaround in which the people she's wronged get to tell her what a terrible queen she was -- and they aren't shown to be mean or in the wrong, even though they end up putting the good guys in danger (and the good guys are also allowed to tell her how much she sucks). She's shown to be a flawed person who made mistakes rather than the real victim who always gets the wrong end of the stick.

Meanwhile, we get more culture clash of fairy tale people reacting to Storybrooke in one episode than in the entire original series, in spite of the fact that the original had major opening-credits characters who never got the memory download. I still crack up at Cyrus being fascinated with light switches and Alice playing with the icemaker.

4 hours ago, Writing Wrongs said:

It really is more enjoyable and fast paced when you don't have to stretch a season out to 22 or more episodes. 13 is enough to get the job done. 

It also helps that they paced the story better, with the characters all having goals and those goals evolving. They started with Alice's goal being to find Cyrus -- and they're reunited halfway through. But they can't escape because Will's now a genie and they have to find him. But when they find him, they learn about Cyrus's brothers being captive, and they also agree with Ana that they have to stop Jafar, and meanwhile Cyrus learns he has to find his mother in order to free his brothers. On the main show, usually the heroes would start by trying to figure out what was going on, then they'd learn, then they'd swear they were going to take action, but then they'd just kind of react to what the villain was up to for a few episodes, and then in the next to last episode of the arc, some random magical thing that would help them save the day would appear.

[Writing Wrongs]

I don't understand why Lizard died after making her 3rd wish.