A Thread for All Seasons: OUaT Across All Realms

[Souris]

Does anybody have a link to the screentime figures that were posted ... sometime a few months ago? I know Curio did them for CS, but I feel like I remember there being screentime data for each character, too. Or I could be misremembering.

 

ETA: I found some on tumblr.

Edited September 4, 2015 by Souris

[Shanna Marie]

Not seeing more of the setting (or at least a better variety) was one of it's biggest points against it in my opinion. They could have added more magical/imaginative elements while still keeping them creepy.

I've been thinking about this, and I remember Rumple's warning about how Neverland was a land fueled by imagination. And yet it seemed pretty unimaginative. It was supposed to be a boy's idea of paradise, the kind of awesome, fun stuff boys imagine they'd get to do if there weren't any pesky adults around to make them do stuff like take baths and go to school. That's why the original was filled with pirates right out of Robert Louis Stevenson novels and "Indians" right out of a Wild West show. It was what a British boy of that era might have considered the height of adventure.

 

But in the Once Neverland, Hook and the pirates came of their own accord for their own reasons and had nothing to do with Pan's imagination. In fact, Pan didn't seem to have conjured up anything to play with. Part of the problem is that they don't seem to have considered what Malcolm/Pan might have thought of as fun and exciting. He was from a magical world that contained fairies, mermaids, and storybook pirates, so what would have been his idea of adventure outside of daily life? What did he and his Lost Boys do without the regularly scheduled fights with the Indians and the pirates? Did they have the constant running battle with the pirates, like in the book? What role did the mermaids play? We only saw the stroppy, homicidal one on the Jolly Roger and then Ariel, but what was Pan's relationship with the mermaids? Were they enemies or allies? What was the appeal for the Lost Boys that made most of them so loyal to Pan? Was dancing around a fire really all that great? This is where it would have helped if we'd had more Neverland flashbacks to compare it to the present, so we could maybe see how the loss/decline of magic was affecting the place. We needed to see how the pirates and the Lost Boys interacted, see the effect on the pirates -- like maybe seeing them in the echo caves to set up Hook knowing how to deal with them in the present -- see the magic and wonder of the place and then maybe understand more about why Pan was so desperate to save it. And in the present, maybe Pan didn't bring the original pirates, but he might have missed playing with Hook and his crew and brought in more, so that would have given the Nevengers more to deal with and maybe set up some reasonable doubts about Hook and his loyalties if there were other pirates around.

[Amerilla]

I don't think A&E respect (or understand) the difference between folklore and literature.

 

Basic fairy tales are pretty flexible. Beauty and the Beast is a great example - yes, a segment of the audience gets hung up on how it's not like the movie, but we've seen bazillions of variations on the concept, and we know the basics when we see it. Characters like Peter Pan and the Wizard of Oz are works of late 19th/early 20th Century literature. Peter Pan and Dorothy Gale are specific characters, and they inhabit specific visual worlds we know through a much more narrow catalog of movies and cultural references. There's less wiggle room, and variations are much more noticeable and jarring.

 

With Neverland, they dicked around with the origin material too much. Just turning Pan from the boy who didn't want to grow up to a literal man-child is huge, but to turn him into a literal man-child who is a straight-up sociopath willing to torment three generations of his own family to hold on to immortality just violently buggars Barrie's original concept.

 

Without an emotionally compelling Pan, you can't have a compelling Neverland. Whether or not they intended it, the soundstage filled with potted ferns is actually a pretty accurate visual representation of the character - dark, cold, and hollow.

 

Which is not to say, however, that they shouldn't have put more effort into worldbuilding. For example, they could have played with the fact that it was cold, dark, and hollow because Pan's imagination had withered, threatening the dimming of imagination across multiple realms and that, more than immortality in Neverland, was why he needed Henry. Or, do a twist on the father theme. Malcolm hated being a father, but he's come to love the Lost Boys like sons and they're dying as Neverland begins to die, so he's willing to sacrifice his own blood relations to save his children. Just something that humanized him to a degree.  

 

Since the core of that arc was the Rumpel-Nealfire-Henry lineage, I think Bae would have been a better mechanism for that than Hook and/or the pirates and mermaids, etc. I would have preferred to see Neverland though his eyes - as an involuntary Lost Boy - than the Pan-Pied-Piper EF flashback we got. They threw down some breadcrumbs,  hints that Bae had tried different ways of escape, that he had attacked Pan in the past, that he clashed with Felix, that he had lived in isolation, and when Neal got there, he moved around the landscape with a fair amount of confidence. A flashback or two charting his life in that world would have added more to both the worldbuilding and the emotion on it all.

 

But....the backstories of secondary characters and assorted Big Bads are primarily used to amplify the stories of the main characters AND they had already decided to kill Neal off. Why waste time developing a character who was going to die mid-season to develop a story that was always going to be one-and-done. Or, in this case, one-half-season-and-done.

[Curio]

Or, do a twist on the father theme. Malcolm hated being a father, but he's come to love the Lost Boys like sons and they're dying as Neverland begins to die, so he's willing to sacrifice his own blood relations to save his children. Just something that humanized him to a degree.

 

That would have been interesting to see and would also kind of reflect the situation with Milah. Rumple's biggest fear is that he isn't good enough for the people he loves. Rumple loved Milah, but she didn't reciprocate his feelings and fell in love with Killian instead. I'm assuming young Rumple as a child loved his father, but he didn't love him back and came to love the Lost Boys instead. And then with Belle, the one person who actually truly loves Rumple, he takes it for granted and chooses power instead. It's the perfect tragic character story, and I really hope the writers stick to their guns and don't give Belle and Rumple a happily ever after ending because a character like Rumple needs to have a tragic ending. His tragic story is set up too well for him to suddenly be redeemed and have True Love with a ribbon on top; it would feel like a cop-out at this point.

Edited September 7, 2015 by Curio

[Camera One]

They needed to show what Peter Pan had to lose.  That giant ass hourglass just didn't cut it.  It felt totally random to me. 

 

And what about the mythology of Henry's picture existing before he was born?  It still makes zero sense.  Oh well, what else is new.

 

It is interesting how with Peter Pan, they hardly fleshed out his motivations, while with The Snow Queen, they did flesh out her motivation, even though it was rather clunky.  Granted, Zelena's motivation was even more threadbare.  I'm not sure which way was better.  I mean, even with Cora, they never explained why she wanted to become The Dark One.  It looked like she could already do pretty much anything she wanted and she wasn't bound with the Dagger.  They haven't defined what it is about the Dark One's magic which makes it more powerful than everyone else's.

[Shanna Marie]

Since the core of that arc was the Rumpel-Nealfire-Henry lineage, I think Bae would have been a better mechanism for that than Hook and/or the pirates and mermaids, etc. I would have preferred to see Neverland though his eyes - as an involuntary Lost Boy - than the Pan-Pied-Piper EF flashback we got.

Yeah, I've been thinking that they needed to do more paralleling between Henry and Bae in the backstories, especially for the part where Pan was gradually seducing Henry into his fold. I like the idea of Peter Pan also being the Pied Piper, but him going after Bae and confronting Rumple didn't make any sense. I didn't get the feeling that Malcolm actually hated Rumple. He just didn't want to adult anymore, and having a child reminded him that he was adult and ruined the magic. If he couldn't have his own small child around, then why would he have sought out his middle-aged son and teenage grandson? You'd have thought he'd have stayed far, far away from them for fear of breaking the spell and becoming an adult again. And maybe if he didn't know that the portrait of the Truest Believer was his family member, he'd have looked less creepy -- like if he never knew that Bae was his grandson and Henry his great-grandson, and they could have used that knowledge as a weapon against him.

 

So instead of the Pied Piper flashback to parallel Henry being lured in, they could have picked up Bae's story after Hook let the Lost Boys have him. Did he get rejected the moment Pan realized he wasn't the kid in the picture? Was he let go to do his own thing in Neverland, or did he have to escape? Was he ever part of the Lost Boys or did they always hold no appeal to him? Seeing him go through the process of being introduced to Pan and lured into their circle could have shown us the magic of Neverland. That's when he could have met mermaids and fairies or done whatever other adventures there might have been. He was still angry at Hook, so he could have joined in an attack on the pirates. And then he could have noticed the hollowness of it all and escaped. Though I guess that would have made Henry look bad because he didn't figure it out, but then Pan was working a lot harder on Henry and Henry was younger and a lot less worldly than Bae.

 

In general, the flashbacks could have been better used to build the Neverland story and take care of their worldbuilding, to show us what Neverland was supposed to be like before it became the dreary place it was with magic dying. The thematic flashbacks were the least successful of the entire series, for me, especially "Lost Girl" and the "you have to believe in yourself" message that was so bland and didn't even really track between the present and the flashback since the episode wasn't even about Emma needing to believe in herself. That's where, if they weren't going to show Emma's lost girl childhood, they could have shown Bae as a Lost Boy in Neverland. Maybe they could have gone out of sequence (like they did in season one) and start with him utterly alone after he's left the Lost Boys, and the hopeful ending be when Hook finds him, which then sets up how Hook knew how to find where he stayed.

 

In general, this arc is so much better when you fast forward past the flashbacks. There are a few exceptions, but in most cases, you can follow the present part of the plot without the flashbacks and the pacing is stronger.

[Camera One]

The thematic flashbacks were the least successful of the entire series, for me, especially "Lost Girl" and the "you have to believe in yourself" message that was so bland and didn't even really track between the present and the flashback since the episode wasn't even about Emma needing to believe in herself.

 

To me, that was a case of something that didn't work thematically and once again retread the same ol' period in the past, but was actually enjoyable and emotionally effective to me.  It was the last time an episode was intentionally built around Emma and Snow's relationship and paralleled them (albeit not successfully), before Hook and Regina took over.  We haven't had a true heart-to-heart between daughter and mother since.  

 

I do like that alternative to the Pied Piper episode.  You'd think knowing ahead of time that Neal would be killed off in 3B, they would sap everything left out of his story first.  As you said, we haven't really seen Neverland when belief and imagination was at its height.  New information we've gotten since then, like Hook was going back to the Enchanted Forest to get baked goods for Peter Pan was just WTF.

Edited September 7, 2015 by Camera One

[YaddaYadda]

New information we've gotten since then, like Hook was going back to the Enchanted Forest to get baked goods for Peter Pan was just WTF.

 

That was the deal Hook mentioned in 3x05, the one Pan would never make again. Hook goes to the EF to bring Pan sweet treats, Hook gets to leave Neverland.

 

I have to make stuff up since the writers will never tells us what that deal was anyway. But that was just about the weirdest thing. Sort of takes Captain Hook several notches down in the whole pirate thing. But then, this is also the imbalance that exists on this when it's just a regular person vs a wielder of magic.

[HoodlumSheep]

Yeah, the flashbacks were wasted. Excalibur was definitely a waste. I wish we would have gotten just a few Bae flashbacks instead, just to fill in some of the gaps. Maybe one where he and Tink meet and one where he "escapes" the island. Maybe one more of him and Hook during the time there was magic and stuff still. It didn't have to be very much, but it would have been much better.

That was one of the little things that bugged me. They pushed how bae managed to "escape" when I never saw it as that. Bae was a very smart boy, don't get me wrong, but how many times was it stated that you don't leave the island unless Pan basically lets you?

I've also always believed that Pan let Baelfire escape on purpose. He already knew of Henry, so who's to say he didn't know Nealfire was going to be his father?

Anyways, one of my favorite scenes in 3a was what Gold said before he ditched the group in 3x01. That's what I thought we were going to get in Neverland; Emma basically proving Gold wrong about taking a leap of faith and stepping into the world of imagination/magic. Which I don't really think we got. Yeah, she started magic training, but the belief and acceptance still wasn't really there (it wasn't really there much in 3b either until near the end).

Confession time (please don't laugh): when I first heard Gold talk about taking a true leap of faith, I had it set in my mind that we were going to see Emma fly at some point. That sounds so dumb in hindsight, because the thought of any of these cynical, bitter 30 year-olds flying around from pixie dust sounds so stupid. I could buy the EF natives (Snowing, Regina, Hook) eventually flying because they grew up in the EF so they wouldn't have a hard time believing, but Emma? Emma would have probably had some trouble.

Like maybe they were being chased and ended up having to jump/fly across a cliff/gorge with the last bit of pixie dust. I don't know.

At least we got to see someone fly (Henry is the only kid, so it makes sense it'd be him).

[Shanna Marie]

I never got the impression that Hook's trip was just about getting cakes. There was probably something else, and it was a case of "Oh, and while you're there, pick up some cake." It was just that the cake was all Smee was tempted to sample for himself from the cargo. And it doesn't look like running out to get cake was all Hook had to do to be let go for good, since Ursula had clearly aged at least a couple of decades between that time and when we saw her again, pre-curse, so there must have been a lot of other errands or other hoops Hook had to jump through before he was finally freed.

 

It is funny that the one lesson these guys didn't pick up on from Lost was the "flesh out a character and make him really interesting right before you kill him" tactic. I don't think Neal's dumb move to revive the Dark One counted as "fleshing him out and making him interesting so we'll care when he dies." They could have really done a lot with that in showing his Neverland ordeal, how it changed him, and how he escaped so that they could have really twisted the knife when he died so soon afterward.

[YaddaYadda]

Excalibur was definitely a waste.

 

I don't know that it was a waste given that they're doing Camelot this season and that they've brought it in the show in season 2 and 3 and then 4 again. I'm just hoping it's not something that's going to end up being like Maleficent's return because she too was a well established part of the show before they messed it up completely.

 

Did they introduce the sword in the stone as Excalibur? I'd go back and watch the episode but I'm having one of those days.

[HoodlumSheep]

^ I suppose I shouldn't call it a waste because it's building up a realm, but I do think it was out of place in a season that's supposed to be about Neverland.

I'm still (stupidly) waiting for the squid ink to show up, or the deal/whatever Hook made to get off the island. They could easily loop that squid ink back to season 1/2 with it being the ink that Snowing used to "trap" Rumple or the ink he used to write Emma's name over and over again with.

Alas, I don't think the writers will even consider that, but I can always hope.

Edited September 7, 2015 by HoodlumSheep

[Rumsy4]

It's the perfect tragic character story, and I really hope the writers stick to their guns and don't give Belle and Rumple a happily ever after ending because a character like Rumple needs to have a tragic ending. His tragic story is set up too well for him to suddenly be redeemed and have True Love with a ribbon on top; it would feel like a cop-out at this point.

 

Well... I'm not going to hold my breath on that. The writers keep mentioning that the show is about "hope", especially when talking about Rumbelle. I really can't see them not giving a main character a Happy Ending. It's most likely going to be poorly done at this point, but if a mass murdering rapist gets to have a happy ending in the show, why not Rumple? 

[YaddaYadda]

I suppose I shouldn't call it a waste because it's building up a realm, but I do think it was out of place in a season that's supposed to be about Neverland.

 

I don't even know if this is the appropriate thread for it. I did a re-watch of "Lost Girl" some weeks ago (so it's extra sad that I don't remember if they straight up called the sword in the stone Excalibur which it isn't if that's the case), but there are tons of similarities between Emma and Arthur (especially their births, childhoods). Knowing what we know now that at least this half season will be Camelot heavy and going off who Arthur is and how his life changed when he pulled the sword out of the stone, combined with Emma slaying the dragon with her father's sword and how her own life changed once she saved Henry from the sleeping curse, I think it actually makes a lot of sense.

 

Plus Snowing's links to Camelot with the fake sword, the first mentions of Merlin and then episode 2x03 with Lancelot...

[Camera One]

Good point.  There is a lot of potential for parallels.  Though with Emma, the Dark Swan stuff might overshadow any parallels with Arthur.  Maybe they could do a parallel with Charming and Arthur, both growing up not realizing they would eventually become King.

 

The writers keep mentioning that the show is about "hope"

 

I don't get that at all.  This show is about being manipulated like hell by outside forces, by villains who have unfair vendettas against you, and having a life that is constantly uprooted and upended.  You "hope" that things get better but they won't.  But if you don't trust hope and take action to prevent something, it blows up in your face.  Half the time, the plot is depressing as hell.

[KAOS Agent]

The thematic flashbacks were the least successful of the entire series, for me, especially "Lost Girl" and the "you have to believe in yourself" message that was so bland and didn't even really track between the present and the flashback since the episode wasn't even about Emma needing to believe in herself.

 

What got me about this one was that the theme between the past and present wasn't about believing in oneself, it was about affirming who you really are. Snow became a leader and fought back against Regina while Emma discovered that her identification as the Saviour and sheriff and daughter and mother were not her main markers, but rather that she is a Lost Girl. That really sucks as the answer to the question of Who am I? for a thirty year old woman. And it was clear that the writers intention was never to parallel Snow & Emma that much because the big conversation at the end where Emma makes the realization was originally meant to be between Emma & Hook. A stronger Neverland parallel that would actually show Neverland would have been between Emma/Bae.

 

I get really tired of this show not using the realms they visit to really explore things. Why wouldn't you have a Neal/Emma lost boy/lost girl parallel where we can see how Neverland affects the lost children who arrive? It could also have included Henry in the parallel as you see how the same things that affected Bae are affecting Henry and how that same thing is affecting Emma to a different degree.

 

Why even bother with Oz if we don't get to see it? The Wicked Witch of the West and her friendly neighborhood gathering of cleavage baring witch sisters could just as easily been in the Enchanted Forest from what we got of Oz. A CGI green city in the background does not do anything for me. Did random people fear magic in Oz because of the wizard and the colossally stupid Glinda? How does Oz work? Does it give Zelena a different type of mindset from people in the Enchanted Forest? Is it a separate area like Arendelle so the culture is slightly different but can be easily gotten to from the Enchanted Forest?

 

It's puzzling to me that they wouldn't use these settings/realms/whatever to enhance the story because there is a ton of stuff to draw from creatively. Instead it seems more like they just treat it as a side note and pretend we're in the Enchanted Forest except not. Given that Lancelot showed up in the Enchanted Forest and the references to Camelot, I have to assume that things aren't going to change all that much with regards to seeing it in Season 5.

Edited September 7, 2015 by KAOS Agent

[Camera One]

It is funny that the one lesson these guys didn't pick up on from Lost was the "flesh out a character and make him really interesting right before you kill him" tactic.

 

I was watching clips from "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter", and the one time they did it was with Graham.  

[YaddaYadda]

Though with Emma, the Dark Swan stuff might overshadow any parallels with Arthur.

 

I think their parallels and similarities have to do with the circumstances of their births and the way they grew up.

 

Their births were manipulated in order to suit someone's purpose, Merlin's with Arthur and Rumple's with Emma. They changed these two people's circumstances forever. Both are the product of magic.

 

Arthur was taken away from his mother by Merlin, was raised believing he was born a bastard, didn't know who he really was until he took the sword out of the stone.  Snowing were told by Rumple to get Emma to safety because she was the only hope they had. She grew up and orphan, never knowing who she was until after she broke the curse (since she never really believed anything Henry said about her). There's been a lot of pressure and expectations placed upon them.

 

Arthur and David might end up paralleling at some point. Once loves nothing more than a good parallel after all.

 

I've started a re-watch of the episodes posted on ABC. I'm still on the Pilot because now I have to go extra slow in the re-watch and pay extra attention to the details which I normally don't pay attention to. I've already picked up a couple of things that might be relevant to the spoilers we already know, so it might not be such a waste of time after all.

Edited September 8, 2015 by YaddaYadda

[Shanna Marie]

What got me about this one was that the theme between the past and present wasn't about believing in oneself, it was about affirming who you really are. Snow became a leader and fought back against Regina while Emma discovered that her identification as the Saviour and sheriff and daughter and mother were not her main markers, but rather that she is a Lost Girl. That really sucks as the answer to the question of Who am I? for a thirty year old woman.

I'll take this to the "Lost Girl" thread.

 

I get really tired of this show not using the realms they visit to really explore things. Why wouldn't you have a Neal/Emma lost boy/lost girl parallel where we can see how Neverland affects the lost children who arrive? It could also have included Henry in the parallel as you see how the same things that affected Bae are affecting Henry and how that same thing is affecting Emma to a different degree.

I rewatched "Nasty Habits" last night, and I think that would have been a good place to show Bae as a Lost Boy, instead of the Pied Piper stuff. In the present we were seeing Neal coming back to Neverland and making use of his old knowledge, Emma seeing Bae's old cave, Hook revisiting the cave and obviously getting misty-eyed over the boy he once knew, and Henry being seduced into becoming a Lost Boy. The obvious parallel would have been Bae's arrival in Neverland, maybe being tempted by being a Lost Boy, and then leaving and making it on his own. How did he resist the lure of the Lost Boy life and why did he choose to be alone all those years instead of being part of the crowd? If you factor in the Pied Piper stuff, he'd already shown that he liked the idea. Once he was really angry/disappointed in his father after the portal incident, that should have been even more appealing to him.

 

One thing that hampered the Neverland world was the obvious studio set and bad CGI. At least their version of Wonderland was kind of supposed to look like bad CGI because it created that otherworldly effect, but this seemed like it was supposed to be realistic. They didn't do anything fantastic with the potted plants and CGI backgrounds. The fake look was most obvious in "Good Form," where there's one scene that looks like it was actually shot on location, in the flashback when Killian and Liam have just arrived at Neverland and are on the beach. The sand on the beach looks like real sand, the lighting looks natural, and the background looks real rather than greenscreened. It's a sharp contrast to later when they're obviously on a set. I'm sure there are all kinds of budgetary and logistical challenges to doing location shooting for an arc that takes place entirely at night, but then there's a chicken-and-egg thing -- were they shooting in the studio to avoid an arc that would require everything to be a night shoot, or did they come up with the "it's always night because Neverland is dying" thing so that the darkness would make the studio jungle look less fake?

 

Still, if they were going to shoot in a studio and use CGI backgrounds, couldn't they have made it look less like Gilligan's Island and given it more of a fantastic twist?

[Shanna Marie]

I skipped back to season one on my rewatch, in part because I was thinking about doing a rewatch for my blog, and although I found myself falling in love all over again with the pilot, I had to turn it off midway through the second episode because it became absolutely unbearable to watch. It's not because the eggbaby retcon spoiled things -- that was just so ridiculous that I can't even make myself take it seriously as something that actually happened. It's because Regina is just so over-the-top awful, in the past and in the present. I recall it being difficult to watch the first time around with the way she manipulated everything in Storybrooke to make Emma look bad and make her lose credibility with Henry, without caring what it did to Henry, but at least then I was able to watch with a sense of glee at the future comeuppance I knew just had to be coming. They were setting Regina up for a huge fall, and it would be glorious.

 

Now, though, I know that the kid she was gaslighting and deliberately hurting, who was in therapy for years because of the strained relationship with his mother, even before he got his hands on the book and started believing they were all fairy tale characters, thinks that Regina is just the most super awesome mom and was willing to devote his life to getting her a happy ending, with practically no transition time. I know that the Regina who declared that she was taking away everyone's happy endings would then get all those people whose lives she destroyed to help her get a happy ending for herself. I know that the Regina who threatened her best friend and murdered her father would later whine about not having anyone in her life, and the writers would expect us to pity her. I know that the Emma who's being oppressed and threatened by her left and right, just for caring about the well-being of Henry, is going to be begging her for friendship. I knew that there wouldn't be any karma at all, that Regina might change her behavior but she'd never show any sign of admitting that she was wrong, that the show would get warped to make her look sympathetic and that the people who wrote all these actions would later claim that Regina always gets the short end of the stick. It got to be too much to take, and I had to turn off the episode.

 

I did notice how much richer a world Storybrooke seemed to be then. There were people other than those with speaking parts in the diner. There were cars on the streets and people on the sidewalks. It seemed a lot more like a real place then. Now it's more like a ghost town populated only by the regular characters.

 

I may have to reverse my pattern from my seasons 2-3 rewatch. There, I was watching the present and skipping the flashbacks. For season one, I'll have to watch the flashbacks and skip the present because the present is just too painful and difficult to watch. I have a hard time with "institutional injustice" stories in which the powers that be have absolute power and can do things like twist justice and manipulate events, so the playing field isn't at all even.

[retrograde]

The speculation in this cartoon (gotta enlarge it) is funny, but the best part is the summaries of real seasons that have already happened.

[Shanna Marie]

I've made it to 3B in my fast-forward rewatch. I would say that for the most part, my problem with 3A isn't that it was bad, aside from most of the flashbacks. The problem is that it had the potential to be so much better, and most of that potential was squandered. Neverland as a place should have been a lot more interesting and magical. Even if the magic was dying in the present, they could have showed it in the past. There was so much rich potential in the mythology of Neverland and in the interactions of the characters associated with the place that we didn't get to see. We didn't even get to see what kind of relationship Tinkerbell had with Peter Pan. Did they even have a scene together? How can you do a twisted version of Peter Pan and a jaded badass Tink and never show them together? Then there were hints of what kind of relationship Bae/Neal and Hook must have had, but we didn't get to see any of it. Was Wendy a prisoner all that time? She was the same age as when we saw her with Bae, so the Darlings must have come to Neverland not long after he did. How did that happen? Did some of the events of the original story play out with them? Like maybe the thing where Tink tried to have Wendy killed as she arrived in Neverland was actually Tink trying to protect Wendy and keep her away from Pan. How did Tink know Bae? What kind of relationship did Tink and Hook have -- drinking buddies, or other kind of buddies? The stuff that happened onscreen was okay, but the #ItHappenedOffscreen stuff could have been awesome, and it's hard to watch what is on the screen without mourning what we didn't see.

 

I was a little surprised by how much remorse and self-awareness Regina showed in that scene before the curse was undone. She even handled the "shut up, Henry" moment well, and she got that although she was the one making the technical sacrifice to cast the curse, she wasn't the only one who would suffer from the results. But then they did an abrupt reversal in the very next episode, where she's utterly lacking in empathy, acts like she's the only one suffering, and whines so much about her suffering. Then she sees Henry again in the present and starts whining some more about how awful it is. Gee, what part of "Magic comes at a price and I can never see Henry again" did she forget?

 

I think I'm going to end up watching about 15-20 minutes out of most of the 3B episodes, mostly because as soon as the camera zooms in on Regina's weepy eyes, my finger convulses on the fast forward button.

[HoodlumSheep]

Didn't Wendy mention that she eventually followed after Baelfire when the shadow eventually came back to her house?? I can't remember.

I'm still trying to figure out the Hipster Darlings timeline. Was that ever explained? I can't remember that either. All I can think of is that they wanted to rescue Wendy, so the shadow took them to Neverland. There, Peter Pan told them if they wanted to save Wendy, they had to get ahold of baby Henry. So, he gave them the real world download, and sent them there however many years in advanced. They failed and he eventually gave them orders to go to Storybrooke.

I have know idea how he would have communicated with them trough the realms.

Then again, I don't know if that actually happened because I can't remember if it was explained in the show.

But yes, one of Neverland's biggest problems was squandered potential. At least we can be thankful of what we got though, because it turned into 2nd best arc the show has done.

[Camera One]

3A was definitely one of the better arcs of the show so far, but the strengths and weaknesses still fell into the general pattern.  For me, the strengths:

 

1. Regina: Used in a limited capacity and used well.  Showing growth with Tinkerbelle episode.

2. Rumple: Generally showing some growth in being willing to sacrifice himself.

3. Hook: Growing to do the right thing.

4. Villain of the Arc, Peter Pan: well casted.

 

The arc was also cohesive in the sense that everyone was working together organically for the same goal.

 

But the weaknesses were similar to other arcs.

 

1. Henry: Went from defiant against Peter Pan to suddenly believing.  Zero internal conflict.

2. Snow/Emma: Completely dropped after Episode 2.  Snow and Emma mostly segregated, Snow with Charming and Emma with Hook.

3. Charming: Just a victim, mainly used as a vehicle to get Hook to do the right thing.  Impending death and consequences ignored.

4. New Ignored Regular of the Season, Neal:  Past in Neverland not explored, fallout from Tamara not explored, relationship with Rumple, Henry, Emma, Wendy, Tink, Peter Pan, Hook, etc. hardly explored.

 

The arc also necessitated that people act in stupid fashion with reliance on WTF "surprises" and insta-magical objects and solutions up the wazoo, though not any more than in other arcs.

Edited September 15, 2015 by Camera One

[Mathius]

I agree that 3A was the second-best arc mainly for the present-day narrative, but that it is a victim of wasted potential, mainly in the flashbacks. Personally, I would keep the Ariel, Hook, young Rumple, and (unpopular opinion) Pied Piper flashbacks, while I would alter the Tink flashback to move on from Regina quickly and into Neverland, replace the Excalibur flashback with a young Emma one, replace the Henry adoption one with a Lost Boy Bae one (it would really fit for the final episode in Neverland), and would just dump the Medusa one altogether and stick solely to the present day in that episode.

With Neverland, they dicked around with the origin material too much. Just turning Pan from the boy who didn't want to grow up to a literal man-child is huge, but to turn him into a literal man-child who is a straight-up sociopath willing to torment three generations of his own family to hold on to immortality just violently buggars Barrie's original concept.

Actually, while the man-child is indeed a huge change, the straight-up sociopath angle is closer to Barrie's original concept than any other version, since his original concept of Pan was actually of a villain. His early notes for the play actually describes him as "villain of the story" and "demon child". His desire to never grow up and to persuade other kids to live the same lifestyle was NOT meant to be seen in a positive light, and that's why he was originally the villain, changing him to a hero actually seems like an odd move in retrospect. Edited September 15, 2015 by Mathius

[LizaD]

I liked 4A better overall, than 3A but 3A had the better ending by a mile. The ending to 4A almost killed the entire thing and then I figured out why. 4x11 had 2 seconds of Anna and Elsa and so the Disney suits must've said sayonara by that point.

 

 

victim of wasted potential, mainly in the flashbacks

The flashbacks I think, was their lame attempt to give something to Snow, Charming and Woegina to do. Because for the most part the way they framed Neverland was for the abandoned kids- Neal, Emma, Hook, and Rump. So there was this huge disconnect where the present story was revolving around their issues and Pan and then they tried to shoehorn in the other 3 with flashbacks and make it fit somehow. No surprise our our master storytellers failed miserably. So in trying to be fair with a huge cast, everything got a shallow treatment. If you notice all those flashbacks you suggest they dump, and I agree with it, would practically make those 3 the Will Scarlet of S4.

 

The biggest mistake was not wanting to deal with Pan/Rump/Neal/Henry in any way. They made such a big deal about Pan being Rump's daddy so why not do something with it? I honestly don't get it. It's like setting out all the ingredients for a burger and going "ok since I have lettuce and tomato, I'm obviously going to make ramen and put lettuce in it. Only option available."

 

But I can probably guess their answer, paraphrasing, "we would like to tell stories about all these other people but we can't sacrifice Woegina's story. Tough titty."

[KAOS Agent]

 

The biggest mistake was not wanting to deal with Pan/Rump/Neal/Henry in any way. They made such a big deal about Pan being Rump's daddy so why not do something with it?

 

They didn't want to deal with it because Pan = Rumpel's daddy was the big twist and actually telling the story would have spoiled their surprise. It's pretty typical of the storytelling on this show that so much of the meaty drama is stripped out for the Big! Surprise! Twist! All the stuff with Rumpel/Pan would have been much more impactful if we'd known the real relationship between the two from the beginning. Instead a lot of it was just really lame.

[LizaD]

But the reveal was dropped in ep. 7 or 8? That gave them 3 or so episodes after to deal with it. Except we got another Woegina centric, another Snowing vs Woegina centric, and then all the random flashbacks for every character in the finale that revealed absolutely nothing new. There's no excuse for it except the fact that they didn't want to write it and they wanted to give fluffy airtime to the others. Just one episode focusing on it would've been enough and none of the material they gave us after should've trumped that. I wasn't asking for an in-depth 5 episode analysis. But if they can build Rumbelle's relationship in 1 episode, they could've done it for that side of the family too.

Neal was told offscreen that Pan was his grandpa. Henry apparently never got told anything or it was all offscreen too. Rump's big to do was sacrificing himself to save Henry and they didn't share a single line together in that arc did they? Henry and Neal never got anything with Pan post Neverland. Neal and Henry had a 2 second scene together as did Rump and Neal. All 4 got diddly squat together. And look I hate Henry and the less of his mug I see on my screen the better but if you're going to set up a huge dynamic and huge relationships, then do it? Common sense no?

[Shanna Marie]

Personally, I would keep the Ariel, Hook, young Rumple, and (unpopular opinion) Pied Piper flashbacks, while I would alter the Tink flashback to move on from Regina quickly and into Neverland

I like the idea of the Pied Piper flashback because it makes sense as a way Pan would have recruited his Lost Boys, but it just doesn't fit with the continuity. For one thing, Pan sent his small child away because his son reminded him that he was a grownup, which kept him from being able to fly. So why would he want to face his middle-aged son and teenage grandson, who would remind him that he's not only a grownup, but an old man? He might not have known who he'd find in the place he went, but as soon as he knew who Bae was, you'd think he'd have avoided him and had nothing to do with Rumple.

 

Then that flashback meant that Pan had already met Bae, knew who he was, and had seen him, which doesn't fit with Pan being so determined to get Bae off the Jolly Roger and compare him to the sketch of Henry to see if he was the boy they were looking for. Supposedly, Pan knew about everything happening on Neverland, so wouldn't he have known already who Bae was and that he wasn't the boy they were looking for if he'd already met him? Even if his spidey sense didn't tingle at the time that he was his grandson, by the time Bae was brought before Pan, Pan would have known who he was. Then you'd think he'd have sent him away the way he sent his son away -- and that's assuming the Shadow didn't know who he was to start with. If Pan had already met Bae, then nothing else about what we know about Bae's time in Neverland really fits. They didn't need to drag him off the Jolly Roger because they should already have known he wasn't the right boy, and Pan should have wanted to keep his grandson well away rather than keeping him. Considering the Shadow took him from a different world, it wasn't as though he was getting to torture Rumple by keeping his son away from him because his son was already away from him. The story makes so much more sense if you remove that one incident. Then Pan doesn't know Bae and doesn't know who he is and doesn't know before Bae even gets to Neverland that he's not the right boy.

 

With the Tinkerbell stuff, they really could have cut out a lot of the Regina waffling and included more of how Tink got to Neverland and what she did when she first arrived. That would still have given the Regina origin story and the reason Tink was bitter and wingless, while still incorporating Tinkerbell better into the Neverland mythology.

[KingOfHearts]

 

With the Tinkerbell stuff, they really could have cut out a lot of the Regina waffling and included more of how Tink got to Neverland and what she did when she first arrived.

I have this crazy headcanon that Pan had a thing for Tinkerbell and let her use Neverland as a place to go to. After seeing the way he treated kids, she decided to go live on her own as it made her feel uncomfortable. After that, they just remained friends and that's how they're on amicable terms.

 

I really would have rather seen her interact with Pan over Hook. The show doesn't explain well why she knew Pan's whereabouts.

Edited September 18, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[YaddaYadda]

I really would have rather seen her interact with Pan over Hook. The show doesn't explain well why she knew Pan's whereabouts.

 

The show doesn't explain how she got to Neverland. You need a portal for that. 

 

Did Bae hitch another ride via shadow to leave the island?

 

One of my favorite loose ends is the deal Hook made with Pan to leave Neverland.

 

And with all the loose ends, 3A is still one of the best arcs on this show. 

[Rumsy4]

Robbie Kay as Pan was great until he played Henry!Pan. He wasn't convicting as Henry (and the accent did not help). However, he and Cora are my favorite guest villains of the show.

There was a big disconnect between Malcolm and Pan. Malcolm was a loser, and not even a good card sharp. Pan was an expert manipulator, and there is also the issue Shanna Marie mentioned about the Pied Piper episode, and Pan running into Rumple.

They should have made Pan Rumple's older brother, not father. The concept of Pan works better as a creepy older brother to the Lost Boys than as a deaged loser-adult leader. His brother's abandonment coming on top of his father's would have worked quite as well to explain Rumple's issues. It would have made an excellent anti-parallel to Killian's relationship with his brother. It would also make Pan's mind games with the Jones brothers about the Dreamshade more significant.

Edited September 18, 2015 by Rumsy4

[Shanna Marie]

I really would have rather seen her interact with Pan over Hook. The show doesn't explain well why she knew Pan's whereabouts.

Yeah, while I enjoy the mental image of Tink and Hook being drinking buddies, it's mostly about the mental image and the clash with the Disney image or the original story, but there's not really any story material there. But Pan and Tink were such a strong relationship in the original story -- Tink was willing to murder Wendy out of jealousy because she wanted Pan to herself and then was willing to sacrifice herself for Pan by drinking poison to keep him from drinking it -- that we should have seen how that relationship was changed in this reality.

 

Did Bae hitch another ride via shadow to leave the island?

That was what he said he did. That knowledge was how they figured out how to leave and then were able to persuade Tink to help them.

 

3B is proving to be really weak. I'm fast forwarding through the parts that don't really interest me, and that means I'm averaging 15-20 minutes per episode (going by the time on the clock when I start and the time on the clock when I'm done), and large chunks of that are spent in the fast forwarding time or having to go back when I fast forward too far. The scenes that are good are very good, but they're buried in a lot of nonsense that doesn't hold up when you think much about it. This arc really suffers when you think about what came after it. They did an entire arc about someone who was so jealous of the life Regina had that she wanted to go back in time and take that life for herself -- and then they followed it up with a storyline about how Regina just can't catch a break and is being cheated out of having a happy ending because she was a villain. What they showed of Zelena here makes the Zarian reveal make no sense. When we first really meet Zelena, she's jealously looking at Regina's jewels and fine clothes, reveling in the luxury. Is this woman's idea of revenge really going to be taking Regina's boyfriend away to live in a crappy New York apartment? She wanted the fine, princessy life Regina got that she felt cheated out of. She'd have been more likely to try to make it so that Regina had to go live in a tent in the woods with Robin while she got to take over the mansion.

[Mathius]

All the stuff with Rumpel/Pan would have been much more impactful if we'd known the real relationship between the two from the beginning. Instead a lot of it was just really lame.

 

Disagree 100%.  You do NOT drop a bomb like freaking Peter Pan secretly being a de-aged grown-up, and a father at that, at the very beginning of a story arc, you just don't. Revealing this twist early on would have made it even lamer, and I actually like the Rumple/Pan stuff that we got that can be watched once while its happening and then rewatched after you know the twist so that you're looking at it in a new way. People may mock the "Big!Shocking!Twist!" habit this show has, but sometimes those twists are needed in stories and sometimes this show has pulled them off well, this being one of those times IMO.

 

But the reveal was dropped in ep. 7 or 8? That gave them 3 or so episodes after to deal with it. Except we got another Woegina centric, another Snowing vs Woegina centric, and then all the random flashbacks for every character in the finale that revealed absolutely nothing new. There's no excuse for it except the fact that they didn't want to write it and they wanted to give fluffy airtime to the others. Just one episode focusing on it would've been enough and none of the material they gave us after should've trumped that.

 

Exactly. I still say "Save Henry" should've been more of a Neal centric than a Regina one, complete with Lost Boy Bae flashback.  It should have been him with Emma and Regina at the big tree sequence, he was with them at the start of the episode and it makes no sense to trade him out for Snow.  Heck, him being bound by his regret of abandoning Emma would have made MUCH more sense than Snow being bound by HER regret of abandoning Emma (by which, of course, is meant her putting her in a wardrobe and sending her to Earth in order to save her life from the psycho bitch queen out to kill her!  The show does this over and OVER again, condemning the Charmings for sending Emma to Earth on her own without anyone remembering the reason why they did it and why there was literally no other choice.)

 

There was a big disconnect between Malcolm and Pan. Malcolm was a loser, and not even a good card sharp. Pan was an expert manipulator

 

 

I actually like that, because it's kind of the point.  When Malcolm gets to Neverland, he's overwhelmed with nostalgia, has a mid-life crisis and you really see that he's viewing his life in a new perspective: he's just become aware of how much of a loser he is, and remembering how cool he used to be as a boy, that's why he starts desperately pining for those days again.  Malcolm being so lame while Pan is so cool gives us a solid reason WHY Malcolm would want to become Pan.

 

Also, he became an expert manipulator overtime.  Rumple was also a loser and a coward, and upon first becoming the Dark One was little more than a bullying thug with dark powers, it took centuries for him to hone his manipulative talent.  Pan's even better because he had a head-start over Rumple. 

 

3B is proving to be really weak. 

 

With the seasons, I (and apparently the majority of other people) group them as such:

 

The Best of the Best: Season 1

The Runner-Ups: 2A & 3A

The Weak: 3B & 4A

The Terrible: 2B & 4B

 

3B and 4A are pretty much opposites: 3B was a consistently weak storyline that suddenly has a fantastic ending (albeit one that has next to nothing to do with the previous events), whereas 4A was pretty solid for the most part and then suddenly fell apart and had a crappy conclusion that broke every fans' spirits (as bad as 4B was, I think it was the last episode of 4A that made most people on this forum declare that there is no hope for this show anymore.)

[HoodlumSheep]

I'd fit Wonderland in with the Runners-up. Just cause I can.

I also thought Robbie perfectly captured henry's awkwardness.

[Mari]

Also, he became an expert manipulator overtime.  Rumple was also a loser and a coward, and upon first becoming the Dark One was little more than a bullying thug with dark powers, it took centuries for him to hone his manipulative talent.  Pan's even better because he had a head-start over Rumple. 

Added to the amount of time he had to become a master manipulator was the way magic worked in Neverland.  

 

I think part of the reason Malcolm was able to become a master at managing other people wasn't just the practice he had, but the belief he had that he would.  His ability grew because it was a perfect mix of magic, desire, and self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Shanna Marie]

I finished 3B, aside from the finale. It's amazing how many episodes you can get through when you only watch the good parts. I did end up watching most of "The Jolly Roger," though. It had minimal Zelena as herself, barely dealt with the main plot, the duo of Hook and Ariel is highly entertaining, and Regina was actually more than tolerable. I only fast forwarded through the parts with David trying to out-cool Hook with Henry.

 

But the main problem with the 3B arc is that it requires idiot plotting to work. There are so many places where the entire story falls apart if people aren't total idiots. To start with, Zelena's scheme would have succeeded if she hadn't felt the need to mwa ha ha all over the place. That should be rule #1 in the Villains' Handbook: Don't give in to the urge to boast about your plan to your enemy. Even if she couldn't resist making sure Regina knew she existed, she could still have snarked at her sister without creeping all over Snow and Charming's baby and making them worried for the child's sake. If they thought she was just some crazy bitch but otherwise didn't worry about her, she could have gathered all her ingredients, then done the freezing thing and taken the baby as soon as it was born -- the way she eventually did -- and they wouldn't have known what she was up to so they could stop her in time. Then in order for Neal to have been able to warn Hook, he had to ignore being warned that raising the Dark One was a trap that would kill him, and Rumple had to make the ultimately futile grand gesture of choosing to absorb Neal rather than keep himself out of Zelena's clutches. Once in Storybrooke, Zelena ruined it again with the flying monkeys -- what harm did she think random dwarfs with no memories would do if they got near the town line? Why make sure to clue everyone in to the fact that they were under threat? And why tell Hook about the kiss curse so that he would then be determined NOT to kiss Emma? Why not just make it happen and then set up some dramatic rescue situation where either they'd be prone to kiss or Emma would have to do CPR? Why did they make a big fuss out of the protection spell on the loft, and then stay out of it? Couldn't they have brought Whale there to deliver the baby, unless there were complications? They're from a world where she wouldn't have been giving birth in a modern hospital if it hadn't been for the curse. Why did David make such a big fuss about sending Hook -- the one person who could remove Emma's magic -- with Emma to confront Zelena? Maybe they should have kept Hook as far as possible from Emma. Robin and the dwarfs might have been a better team for taking the fight to her. Keep Hook at the hospital, where he'd have been at least as useful/useless as Robin was. Not to mention the stupidity that got us the super-powerful Zelena in the first place -- putting all your magic into an object that can be removed is such a great idea, and of course thirty seconds without obsessive, hyper-jealous, stalker behavior totally proves that this person has completely changed, isn't dangerous anymore, and should have her power amplified. I'm not even sure why Zelena didn't kill Emma. Once her memories were restored and they were in Storybrooke, maybe she wouldn't have been powerful enough to stop Emma, but what about those eight months Walsh was with her in New York? He couldn't have slipped something into her drink?

 

And then as much as I love the finale, did no one think that maybe it would be a good idea to scuff out the occult symbol carved into the barn floor? And maybe do some kind of ritual cleansing, just in case, to remove the traces of the spell?

 

If your story requires people to lose all common sense, it isn't a very good story.

 

I suppose Regina's curse in season one counts as the "ruin your evil plan by boasting about it" thing, but we know that the curse would ultimately have been broken anyway because Rumple wanted the Savior clause, so it didn't change much, and we also know that ruining Snow's wedding day was as much a part of Regina's goal as the actual curse was. She wanted to ruin Snow's happiness, and telling her about the curse was a big part of that. So I feel like they made it work within the context of the story. It's not like the Zelena thing where Zelena had absolutely no reason to tell Regina what she had planned and there was nothing to indicate she wouldn't have been successful even if she hadn't told.

[Camera One]

But the main problem with the 3B arc is that it requires idiot plotting to work.

 

This was pretty much the case in every arc after Season 1.  

 

In 4B, nothing would have happened if the good guys just left well enough alone (eg. not let in Cruella and Ursula; not try to find the Author; not let the Author loose from the Book, Robin not saving Rumple, etc.)    Meanwhile, Rumple (and Zelena)'s plans could have been way more elegant and successful (in both 4A and 4B).  Peter Pan's muahaha-ing was his downfall, when he could have trapped everyone until he hypnotized Henry.  

[Shanna Marie]

This was pretty much the case in every arc after Season 1.

I don't know about that. Yeah, 4B was pretty much a case of raging idiocy at every turn, and even more egregious than 3B because it all came down to the good guys being stupid, throwing aside all common sense for what was actually a selfish goal rather than any greater good. That entire arc would never have happened and Rumple's darkness wouldn't have been a danger if Emma had just told Regina as soon as she learned about Operation Idiocy that, duh, you write your own happy endings.

 

But the Cora and Hook arc of 2A actually involved everyone being pretty clever. Hook and Cora just wanted to get themselves to Storybrooke and didn't much care whether or not Emma and Snow got back, and they managed to pull it off in spite of seemingly being thwarted because Hook was clever. Team Princess wanted to both stop Cora and get themselves back, and they did get themselves back, but I don't feel like they failed to stop Cora out of any real stupidity. They managed to get themselves back by being clever (and in part because Hook was playing both sides and may or may not have thrown the fight to give Emma a chance, since he already knew he had an extra bean). There's a slight chance that if Emma had trusted Hook instead of betraying him and thereby sending him back to Cora, they might have all made it back without Cora getting there, but that's a big question mark. Whether or not Hook was at all trustworthy at that time is in doubt, so Emma doesn't look like she made a stupid (and out-of-character) choice there. Aside from Emma's bizarre trusting when they first arrived, pretty much everyone in that arc was being smart. One reason the "dark heart" nonsense after Cora's death irks me is that I thought it was a brilliant solution to the situation. It would have been Idiot Plotting if Snow had refused to kill Cora and thereby let her run rampant through town. I still boggle at the "we have to save the Dark One!" nonsense, but in context, that was the way they had to take out Cora, and I'm not sure anything else would have worked. If it hadn't been for that, Hook would have succeeded, so his failure in his goal had nothing to do with being an idiot. The only person really being an idiot in all this was Regina, who blindly trusted Cora in spite of the evidence in front of her and who went on to do stupid stuff like burning all the magic beans and getting out the failsafe, despite what she'd learned about her mother and what she and her mother had done to everyone. And then there was a lot of Idiot Plotting in dealing with the Home Office stuff.

 

I don't feel like Pan failed because he made dumb moves. He failed because he underestimated the possibility of goodness and unselfishness in people, and that was totally true to his character. He was counting on Hook being the selfish pirate he knew and never expected Hook to risk losing Emma by telling everyone about Neal. And if that failed, he was counting on the Echo Cave, where even if they saved Neal, the secrets would tear them apart. He was counting on Rumple being a coward. But they managed to rise above his expectations, and I'm not sure Pan was capable of even imagining that people could be that good. In that case, they defeated their enemy by being better people than he imagined they could be rather than by being smart. The Idiot Plotting there was in the aftermath, where Henry had two mothers who were powerful magic users, a father, three grandparents (one of whom is the Dark One), a step-grandfather who knew Pan well, and a fairy on board the ship, and they left him entirely alone with no magical protection before they were away from Neverland and safely back home. That's where the finale of that arc falls apart. And then there's the part where no one ever listens to Emma's instincts, no matter how often she's right. Whenever she has serious concerns, they just accuse her of jealousy and disregard her. If someone had taken her seriously the moment she said something was wrong about Henry, they wouldn't have had to worry about the curse reversal.

[andromeda331]

One reason the "dark heart" nonsense after Cora's death irks me is that I thought it was a brilliant solution to the situation.

I hate that dark heart too.  I thought it was great the way they killed her and that Snow was the one

who did it. I hated that they ruined it with the dark heart and her later saying it was the easy way

out. Cora was going to kill them all. If Snow hadn't done that, she would have. It was shown

clearly that none of them could have stopped her.

[LizaD]

 

Robbie Kay as Pan was great until he played Henry!Pan. He wasn't convicting as Henry

To be fair to him, it's hard to imitate nothing. There's really nothing distinctive about Henry that you could bring to life. The only thing that screams Henry is his stupid, annoying, cheesy to the max lines they have him spout and that's on the writers. But he had good chemistry with Emma and Rump. The short scenes we got with Henry!Pan with Rump vs Daddy!Pan and Rump or Pan and Emma and Henry!Pan and Emma showed that he, and his acting partners, were able to make those dynamics completely different. So for me, he was convincing as Emma's kid and Rump's grandkid, if not exactly Henry.

 

On the other hand I'm glad RK got another job and isn't stuck with one of the most annoying roles on TV ever in Henry.

Edited September 19, 2015 by LizaD

[Camera One]

I don't feel like Pan failed because he made dumb moves. He failed because he underestimated the possibility of goodness and unselfishness in people, and that was totally true to his character.

 

The "dumb" aspect of it is as usual, he took the roundabout, extra-complicated route.  He didn't need to play mind games or to "tear the group apart".  He had the powers to imprison them all, and then get Henry's heart of the truest believer.  The writers could say Zelena's showy actions in 3B was "true to her character".  

 

Personally, every season, I've been frustrated watching characters do exactly the opposite of what they should be doing. 

[KingOfHearts]

The "dumb" aspect of it is as usual, he took the roundabout, extra-complicated route.  He didn't need to play mind games or to "tear the group apart".  He had the powers to imprison them all, and then get Henry's heart of the truest believer.  The writers could say Zelena's showy actions in 3B was "true to her character".

 

 

Compare that with Ingrid, who was pretty cut to the chase. Her plan just took longer because of some unexpected road bumps. She was like Cora in that she knew how to get crap done, even if it takes a long time. Her greatest asset was tremendous patience.

Edited September 19, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[HoodlumSheep]

That's why I liked Jafar in Wonderland. Like Cora and Ingrid, he cut to the chase and got stuff done. And, unlike the villains in Once, he actually achieved his goal. Did it permanently stick? No. But he had temporarily achieved it (unlike Regina, Rumple, Cora, Ingrid, etc).

[Mathius]

The "dumb" aspect of it is as usual, he took the roundabout, extra-complicated route. He didn't need to play mind games or to "tear the group apart". He had the powers to imprison them all, and then get Henry's heart of the truest believer. The writers could say Zelena's showy actions in 3B was "true to her character".

Technically, they would be right. Pan likes to play games, using his power to imprison his opponents would be no fun for him, not to mention he may NOT have actually had that power since his magic (the magic of Neverland) was waning. Zelena is a spoiled diva who wants attention, so she can't resist being showy even when it makes little sense for her to be so.

I think where Pan succeeds while Zelena falters is he knows when to knock it off, once the Echo Cave bid failed he stopped with the mind games or attempts at group disharmony altogether, whereas Zelena never stopped making a spectacle of herself wherever she went. Pan also had contiguity plans in mind, while Zelena did not, she herself admitted that the whole Zarian thing was spur-of-the-moment inspiration...she had nothing in mind for what might happen if her time ritual was stopped and her pendant was taken.

This was pretty much the case in every arc after Season 1.

That was the case in Season 1 too. Emma was a moron more often than people care to remember, which is how Regina was almost always one step ahead of her in their clashes.

I'd fit Wonderland in with the Runners-up. Just cause I can.

I would agree with you. It took some time to get going, but ended up being really good. Edited September 19, 2015 by Mathius

[Camera One]

That was the case in Season 1 too. Emma was a moron more often than people care to remember, which is how Regina was almost always one step ahead of her in their clashes.

 

I would agree that those moments were aplenty in Season 1 as well.  They dragged out Emma not believing for too long.  There was no incremental belief.  She would seem to progress a bit (eg. "Hat Trick") and then fall back in the next episode.  It would have been more interesting for me to see the process, and I felt gypped at the payoff, or lackthereof.

[Shanna Marie]

The "dumb" aspect of it is as usual, he took the roundabout, extra-complicated route.  He didn't need to play mind games or to "tear the group apart".  He had the powers to imprison them all, and then get Henry's heart of the truest believer.

I'm not entirely sure Pan did have the power to imprison them all, not for long enough to win Henry over. He was able to keep Wendy because he was using her brothers as hostages, and Neal was entirely unmagical (and kind of stupid). I don't know that we saw Pan do anything that showed he really could have taken on and defeated the entire team of Nevengers working together, especially with Emma and Regina being powerful magic users. They had the handwave about magic in Neverland dying to cover the idea that maybe his powers were weaker, so he had to play mindgames rather than get into a direct confrontation, even if they never outright spelled it out. I just figured that if he was that desperate to restore magic, that meant he was weaker than he let on and didn't dare waste any power.

 

The real Idiot Plot element there was Henry so easily being talked into giving up his heart, when he already knew that Pan had him kidnapped by the people who tried to destroy Storybrooke and when Pan had lied to him about who he was to begin with. I found his eagerness to be a hero to be a little disturbing. The show seldom paints it this way and treats wanting to be a hero (like Belle, as well) as a positive, but to me, saying you want to be a hero means what you really want is glory. "Hero" should be something someone else calls you after you do something because it's the right thing. I think that's one of the many reasons Hook's redemption arc works for me. He shrugs it off when someone calls him a hero, saying he was trying to do the right thing. That to me is very different from setting out to want to be a hero.

 

The big Idiot Plot with Emma in season one was her never suspecting Sydney. She fell for all of that hook, line, and sinker, and was way too naive about all of that. But I'm not sure that really delayed her ability to defeat Regina and break the curse. If she'd been skeptical about Sydney, it just would have meant a little less public humiliation. It doesn't really change the actual plot all that much, so I'm not sure it really counts as a true Idiot Plot. It would have been better if she'd been smarter, but it doesn't blow up the whole story if she acts like she's got some sense.

 

The Zarian thing kind of diminishes the season 3 finale, and it was so good. Marian is such an awesome character, and it's painful to know she really did die there in the forest. But I still call retcon, mainly for the season 4 premiere, where she nearly got killed by the snow monster while everyone else was unconscious. There's no way that Zelena wouldn't have unleashed her own magic to save herself when no one else was looking. She didn't know Regina was there. And I certainly can't imagine her so earnestly thanking Regina for saving her, not with a straight face.

[Camera One]

I'm not entirely sure Pan did have the power to imprison them all, not for long enough to win Henry over. He was able to keep Wendy because he was using her brothers as hostages, and Neal was entirely unmagical (and kind of stupid). I don't know that we saw Pan do anything that showed he really could have taken on and defeated the entire team of Nevengers working together, especially with Emma and Regina being powerful magic users.

 

How about shoot them all with Dreamshade arrows?  Rip out all their Shadows?   Have a Shadow turn into Emma or Regina or whoever to convince Henry to give up his heart, like what he did with Rumple and the Belle vision?

Edited September 20, 2015 by Camera One

[andromeda331]

The big Idiot Plot with Emma in season one was her never suspecting Sydney. She fell for all of that hook, line, and sinker, and was way too naive about all of that. But I'm not sure that really delayed her ability to defeat Regina and break the curse. If she'd been skeptical about Sydney, it just would have meant a little less public humiliation. It doesn't really change the actual plot all that much, so I'm not sure it really counts as a true Idiot Plot. It would have been better if she'd been smarter, but it doesn't blow up the whole story if she acts like she's got some sense.

I don't either. Emma grew up in foster care and chased after bail jumpers, it makes no sense that

she would have believed Sydney. Now if Sydney had brought her info that was used to nail

Regina for something, then I could see why Emma might start trusting him. But everything

he did suggested he was still working for Regina.

[andromeda331]

The real Idiot Plot element there was Henry so easily being talked into giving up his heart, when he already knew that Pan had him kidnapped by the people who tried to destroy Storybrooke and when Pan had lied to him about who he was to begin with. I found his eagerness to be a hero to be a little disturbing

I don't know how it worked. Why Henry believed Pan so easily. As you said, Pan kidnapped him and Henry

knew his family was on the island coming for him. If he was really there to "save" magic, why did it take so

long for Pan to tell him? Why not tell him right of the bat? Why didn't Henry find it suspicious? How was this

being a hero? How does it line up with the Heros in his book?