A Thread for All Seasons: OUaT Across All Realms

[Shanna Marie]

I think one reason for the sense of darkness and despair is that the consequences and emotional impact fall disproportionantly on the good guys, due to the structure of the show, since most of the bad guys are guest characters who are gone at the end of the arc, so the good guys are left picking up the pieces in the aftermath. Yeah, death is a big consequence, but the emotional impact is on the people left behind, and the connections between the bad guys and the good guys mean that the good guys are often left reeling after the bad guys die. So while Ingrid died to undo Shattered Sight, she got a quick exit while Elsa had to lose her last remaining family member other than her sister and Emma had to lose the closest thing she had to a mother while growing up, and right at the moment she turned herself around. Ursula got her happy ending and departed, Cruella got a quick death with the emotional impact falling on Emma and her family, and Maleficent was reunited with her daughter and gave up on vengeance before both of them were never seen again. But the good guys got stuck with all the guilt for what happened to all of them, with the eggbaby nonsense and Lily's terrible life with all of Emma's darkness.

 

Meanwhile, there's the Rumple Reset Button, where he's never allowed to suffer consequences for his evil for more than an entire episode and has to be back at the status quo as soon as possible. When he does something "good" in prioritizing his son over power, he gets stuck as Zelena's slave for the whole arc. When he plots murder to scheme to get more power, he gets thrown out of town, powerless, but is back in the next episode with all his powers back. When he schemes to turn Emma dark and rewrite reality to give himself a better ending, he gets the darkness vacuumed out of him, gets turned into a hero, gets Belle back, and gets his powers back.

 

So, the good guys are left with grief and anguish over what they have to do to stop the bad guys or over the consequences of what the bad guys did, or there's guilt about what they did to the bad guys, while the bad guys either reset or get a quick exit.

 

Then there's the way they really dump on Emma. As the protagonist, she certainly should be going through the most struggle, but she's never really allowed to win. Even when the arc is supposedly about Regina and how much Regina is suffering, it's Emma who gets the real anguish. They can't even let Emma be happy in the background while she helps Regina with her issues (which might have shown this supposed difference between hero and villain outcomes). Instead, she has all kinds of struggles with her capacity for darkness, her relationship with her parents, and her very self-image. Even when Emma has a triumph, it's yanked away from her or tainted. She resets the timeline, comes home, and kisses Hook -- but she brought back Marian and ruined Regina's life. She tells Hook she loves him and saves the town, and she's turned into the Dark One and goes through all that hell. Hook manages to fight off the Darkness, but then Emma has to kill him to end the Darkness, and then that's taken away from her by Rumple's actions.

 

We've got a protagonist who's never allowed a pure victory, even at the end of an arc, and who is never allowed to be just happy with her life in the background during someone else's arc, and we've got heroes taking the brunt of all the pain while the villains mostly skate or vanish. That adds up to a lot of doom and despair.

[Curio]

We've got a protagonist who's never allowed a pure victory, even at the end of an arc, and who is never allowed to be just happy with her life in the background during someone else's arc, and we've got heroes taking the brunt of all the pain while the villains mostly skate or vanish. That adds up to a lot of doom and despair.

 

I still think it was a mistake to jump over the six weeks Rumple was banished between 4A and 4B. We didn't have to spend the entirety of 4B looking at those weeks, but I think spending time looking at the normal, everyday lives of the characters would have really helped balance out the doom and gloom that hovered over that entire arc. A lot of important events happened over those six weeks that got left to Offscreenville, like how Belle met Will and their first dates, Emma going back to check on Hook after she ditched him for shots, the beginning of actually fixing the messed up Regina and Emma friendship that was stomped on during 4A, Snow's decision to ask Regina to become mayor again because she missed teaching, the first awkward family dinner with Snow, Charming, Emma, Hook, and Henry, Hook and Belle beginning to warm up to each other during their library sessions, and Rumple struggling to stay afloat in New York City.

I don't know why the writers are so scared of writing normal, everyday-life scenes like that anymore. They claim to still do them, but they're usually just 10 second set-up scenes that lead to a 3-minute soliloquy about the next monster they have to destroy. Everyday life isn't boring. It's only boring if you make it boring.

[Camera One]

That's what I miss about S1 - the slower pacing. You got to see the little things everyone does, and even the secondary characters got legitimate stories. I, myself, am not a fan of the half-season format. The reason they're doing it though is probably so they can have enough productive time to not need rerun weeks. You could maybe have a lesser threat for the half-season, then have a greater threat encompassing the whole season in a more subtle way. We could get some of the slower character moments in the first-half, then in the latter part of the second-half, get into the nitty gritty plot stuff. For the winter finale, just have a smaller victory like a blow to the villain instead of a full defeat. That's what I wish they'd do.

 

I too preferred the slower pace of Season 1.  I don't mind a few stand-alone episodes here and there, as long as the characters are being developed and get to interact on an organic everyday level.  

 

Even with the half-season format, they could slow down the pace if they didn't feel the need to throw everything but the kitchen sink at it, with a million and one new distractors every episode.  The ironic thing is the overarching plot still moves at a glacial pace (eg. the Broken Sword stuff in 5A), yet we don't get the joys of seeing everyday life.  We didn't see it in Camelot, we didn't see it in the Missing Year, we didn't see it even when everyone was kicking around Storybrooke in 4B.    

[Shanna Marie]

It seems to me like most of the half-season arcs might have worked better as full seasons, with maybe some one-offs and some additional subplots. Slow down the pace enough to fit in some daily life, since it's the daily life that makes us care about whether they survive and win. 3A might have been harder to do as a full season as it was played out, and I would have hated to spend months more in Neverland, but there was a lot of stuff they didn't delve into that could have provided great flashback material, and they could have done more with what was happening in Storybrooke -- lots of worldbuilding potential there. There could have been a bigger gap between the return to Storybrooke and the need to undo the curse, with them battling Pan in Storybrooke before he got his hands on the curse (that taking more time would have made the heroes look less incompetent).

 

Zelena was a fairly weak storyline for 3B, so there would have had to be some subplots, but there was so much potential in the Missing Year. In 4A, they rushed through the resolution to the Rumple plot, so that storyline could have extended into the next half. 5A ended up dropping whole story threads because they ran out of time.

 

Or else they could do a kind of rolling series of arcs. Say, Arc A is their splashy theme arc that they can get through in half a season, but there's also a more in-depth Arc B that might be introduced a little later and that cliffhangs at the mid-season break and doesn't resolve until midway through the next arc, when maybe a new mini-arc gets introduced. Since in the spring they usually break for Easter and in the fall there's usually a break sometime in November, that might be a good natural point to resolve one plotline while cliffhanging another and introducing the next big, splashy thing for promos. I think it's the rigid structure of every single story line having to fit into absolutely the same number of episodes when some stories need more episodes to tell them properly while others aren't strong enough to fill an arc and require a lot of wheel spinning that hurts them.

[andromeda331]

Zelena was a fairly weak storyline for 3B, so there would have had to be some subplots, but there was so much potential in the Missing Year

Like which has been mentioned before, they could have showed everyone re-adjusting to life back in

the Enchanted Forest, after nearly thirty years living in modern Maine with modern conveniences there would

be a lot of adjusting. Also, instead of saying there was no way back to show us. They could have spent an

episode showing Snow and Charming trying to find a portal to get back to Emma and Henry. Regina too

they could have shown all three trying every magical portal they know and potion and having it fail.

Then it finally setting in how they really can't get back to them and what to do now? Have an episode of

them trying to figure out their lives again now that they are back in Enchanted Forest and it looks like

its for good. Then we could have seen Snow and Charming attempting to get on with their lives with

having a new baby. Regina attempting to start her romance with Robin, the very first one since Daniel. Show

in the missing year why she liked him, why he liked her. There's a lot they could have done.

Edited February 26, 2016 by andromeda331

[Camera One]

I think it's the rigid structure of every single story line having to fit into absolutely the same number of episodes when some stories need more episodes to tell them properly while others aren't strong enough to fill an arc and require a lot of wheel spinning that hurts them.

 

They choose how many new characters and stories they tell.  They didn't need to include Merida or Zelena in 5A.  Cutting those two characters out already would have provided a lot more breathing room for day-to-day life, more character interactions and a deeper exploration of Camelot and Merlin.  They didn't need to do all 3 Queens of Darkness in 4B.

 

In 3B, they chose to waste flashback time on Rapunzel up in the tower, Cora giving birth to Zelena, and Zelena cackling at Regina in her umpteenth flashback.  They chose these over showing all the things andromeda mentioned.  Meanwhile, in Storybrooke, they decided to show stuff like Zelena giving Snow orange juice and Rumple in his jail cell episode upon episode, instead of showing Emma in New York City for another episode, or Henry adjusting to Storybrooke life, or characters worrying about their friends being turned into Monkeys.

Edited February 26, 2016 by Camera One

[RadioGirl27]

I'm still bitter that we haven't seen (and probably never will) Hook outrunning the curse and looking for Emma in NY.

[KingOfHearts]

It would actually benefit the villain du jour if they received less overall focus and were not revealed right away. In the case of Zelena, her early reveal (and subsequent variety of centrics) stymied her gravitas. It would have fit the mysterious tone of 3B if we only saw flying monkeys, green smoke, etc. Then a few new characters are introduced including Zelena the midwife. This kindly, ginger woman looks nothing like Wicked Witch if she doesn't wear her broach. Add a couple of shady characters for misdirects, and at least you have a mystery for the characters if not for the audience. In reality, Zelena's scam was so obvious it made the heroes look like total idiots.

Edited February 26, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

I think the Writers thought it would be fun for us to watch Snow being "tricked" by the midwife while we knew her true identity.  Ditto for the heroes "tricked" by Arthur for awhile, even though we as the audience knew.  I personally find it really grating and annoying.

[Shanna Marie]

I think a big part of the issue is that so much about this show is underdeveloped and half-baked, from the worldbuilding and magical system to the individual plots and most of the characters and relationships. That's how they manage to simultaneously skim the surface of everything while throwing in everything including the kitchen sink (Three Queens of Darkness! Camelot, Merida, Zelena, and the Dark Ones!) and run in circles, hitting the same few beats over and over again (Emma has walls! Snowing vs. the Evil Queen).

 

Take Neverland. There was so much potential there, but every story they might have told there was hampered by the fact that they never bothered to develop what Neverland was. It was like, "Okay, so there's Peter Pan, and Hook has been there, Bae was a Lost Boy, we need Tink, and there needs to be some danger, so maybe poisonous plant, and oh yeah, Pan could be Rumple's father!" and that was it. As a result, it came across like a few potted plants on a sound stage rather than like an actual world. Barrie's Never-never Land was a preadolescent boy's playground, put together from all the things that were big in popular media of the time. There were pirates out of Robert Louis Stevenson and "Indians" out of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, plus cute little fairies out of children's books of the day, and the mermaids were basically the ideal women for boys intrigued by the idea of breasts but not yet thinking about actually having sex. In the Once Neverland, the pirates came and went with Hook, the mermaids barely made an appearance, and there were no "Indians" or equivalent. So, what happened in Neverland? What did Pan and the Lost Boys do for fun? Who did they fight? This was supposedly Malcolm's dream world that he (and/or the Shadow) managed to turn into a reality he could live in, but what would he have put in his dream world? Malcolm himself is underdeveloped. We just know that he couldn't deal with adulting anymore and ran away, rejecting his son and anything else that reminded him he wasn't a kid, but that makes it sound like his dream world would be one where you found mai tais inside the coconuts and could lie around on the beach. Why would he want to essentially adopt a bunch of other kids he had to be responsible for and become CEO of a multi-dimensional Neverland Inc.? Was he unhappy as a single father and running from responsibility because his beloved wife died in childbirth and he was unprepared to do this on his own and deal with adult pain, or was he always immature, and his wife ditched him because she didn't sign up to be stuck with two children rather than a husband and child? Was Neverland really created for him, or was he the Shadow's patsy?

 

And then there were the questions raised by the things they showed or told us -- how did the Jones brothers' king have a sextant and navigational charts for Neverland and know about Dreamshade? Had anyone been to Neverland before? We only saw Pan then -- did he have any Lost Boys at that time? How did Pan go from too lazy to be an adult to enjoying cruel mind games on strangers? How far back did Pan start looking for the Truest Believer? Did he know Bae was his grandson all along, and why didn't he kick him out if he knew? Having his own son around ruined his illusion, so wouldn't having his grandson do it? How did he survive in the present with his adult son and adult grandson present? Wouldn't that have shattered his illusion?

 

And that's just in establishing the place of Neverland and how it works in relationship to Pan. Then there were also all the backstory things involving the other characters, like how many of them were actually Lost Kids of some sort, plus Neal and Hook's pasts there, and Tink's time there.

 

But with most of their plots, they hit a few superficial points and rush on.

[Curio]

It's astonishing how the show's timeline can crawl at such a snail's pace (each half season only covers a few days), but the characterizations and world-building are still so superficial. 

[Free]

It's astonishing how the show's timeline can crawl at such a snail's pace (each half season only covers a few days), but the characterizations and world-building are still so superficial. 

 

The arcs have only made it more obvious, especially when you have the writers constantly hitting the reset button so we're back to the status quo again and again.  (Ex. Rumple being the DO for the umpteenth time, yet another rescue arc involving the gang but most of them are just going to stand around again and again, etc.).

[Shanna Marie]

It would actually benefit the villain du jour if they received less overall focus and were not revealed right away. In the case of Zelena, her early reveal (and subsequent variety of centrics) stymied her gravitas. It would have fit the mysterious tone of 3B if we only saw flying monkeys, green smoke, etc. Then a few new characters are introduced including Zelena the midwife. This kindly, ginger woman looks nothing like Wicked Witch if she doesn't wear her broach. Add a couple of shady characters for misdirects, and at least you have a mystery for the characters if not for the audience. In reality, Zelena's scam was so obvious it made the heroes look like total idiots.

And it made Zelena look like a total idiot. If she hadn't felt the need to show up to mwa ha ha and then creep all over Snow's pregnant belly and had only swooped in to grab the baby when it was born, she could have easily cast her time travel spell before anyone could gear up to do anything to stop her. If she hadn't been flaunting the flying monkeys in Storybrooke, then everyone might have been too distracted by wondering how they got back to think of looking for the Wicked Witch. The story would actually have been a lot more interesting if the characters had been intelligent because it would have been more of a cat-and-mouse game, requiring them all to be a lot more clever. (And this is all more proof that the Zelena-as-Marian thing was either badly written or total retcon because she couldn't keep her mouth shut long enough to carry out her initial plan, so could she really have pulled off being Marian for that long without cracking and cackling?)

 

They could have also played with the idea of "story worlds" vs. "real worlds" with Oz. Aside from the later Robin story (also bad retcon), did the Enchanted Forest people know about Oz, or was that something they were only familiar with via their Storybrooke memories of it as a story? They hinted at that with the "one you pour water on, one you drop a house on" thing, but if Oz is just a story to them and not a real place they're aware of, then that means Oz is to them what the Enchanted Forest is to Emma. That could have made for a lot of fun if that puts Emma and her parents in the same boat of "OMG, I thought that was just a story, you mean those are real people?" And it puts Emma and Regina in the same boat in the sense of "I thought this was a fictional character, and I'm related to her?"

 

Then there's the potential to play with the expectations based on the best-known fictional depiction of Oz and have a Miss Gulch-type character that everyone suspects of being the Wicked Witch, so they don't notice the pretty redhead who doesn't fit the stereotype. Meanwhile, there's all the stuff we've discussed about the Missing Year, getting used to that world again, maybe bringing in stuff from Storybrooke culture, or what about the people who came back to homes destroyed by ogres and being displaced persons, having to rebuild their lives. They could have done a lot with Regina's redemption there if they were allowed to blame her for ruining their lives and if she was allowed to finally get it.

[KingOfHearts]

 

Aside from the later Robin story (also bad retcon), did the Enchanted Forest people know about Oz, or was that something they were only familiar with via their Storybrooke memories of it as a story? 

Regina and Belle knew it was real. No one else did.

 

Belle: "Actually, it is... but not here. There’s only one land that has creatures like that. I’ve read about it -- Oz."

Snow: "Oz... that's a real place?"

Regina: "The bookworm's right. It’s quite real. If our simian friend is any indication, then I think we know exactly who’s taken up residence in our castle -- The Wicked Witch."

[Shanna Marie]

Regina and Belle knew it was real. No one else did.

Well, they missed an opportunity there to have it be to them what the fairy tale world is to our world and do some perspective shifting. But I doubt the thought even crossed their mind because that would have required thinking in more depth.

 

Really, that writers room needs a good brainstorming facilitator, someone who can make them go deep and explore a concept fully before they're allowed to move on. They seem to stop at the first thought that pops into their heads and rush on with that instead of digging deeper.

[Camera One]

Villains? I'd have to say Ingrid. I really wish she and Emma could have had a conversation post-memory-return. Another aspect of Emma's life didn't get closure... sigh.

 

It was just plain weird that Ingrid didn't consider it important to tell Emma that Rumple was trying to kill her.  It would be a nice touch to see her in the Underworld so they could get some closure.

 

I want Walsh back. All of Emma's exes have reason to hate Zelena, so have them band together to shut her up once and for all. If we need a villain, bring back the hot ex-boyfriend. Also, Emma needs to know he was the Wizard of Oz.

 

I want to see The Wizard's story.  I thought they would go there since it was the core of the James Franco movie, which didn't do a great job with mythology.  "Once" didn't even try.  It turned out to be all about how Zelena felt left out by the Cleavage sisters and threatened by a little girl?  Could they make her more of a loser?  As if turning green because she was jealous of Regina wasn't lame enough.  Though they reached even lower depths of loser with King Arthur.   Always breaking new ground, this show.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

It was just plain weird that Ingrid didn't consider it important to tell Emma that Rumple was trying to kill her. It would be a nice touch to see her in the Underworld so they could get some closure.

Emma didn't really get to react to Ingrid either. She had sadface and begged her not to sacrifice herself, but we sort of just go to next day after that. I would feel better if we got to see Emma realize that someone cared about her in her youth that wasn't 100% crazy. There was no, "Wow... Ingrid was right!"

Edited February 27, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

That's the feedback I'd give (and will, if I get around to e-mailing those questions), that it's seeing what happens to the characters that keeps me interested, and I don't just want the big reveal or the aha moment. I want to see how they react to that big twist and see how it affects them rather than rushing on to the next big aha twist moment. If we don't get those normal, human reactions, then it becomes harder to care about and relate to the characters because they might as well be action figures.

 

As for the Oz stuff, Oz was even less developed than Neverland was. We never really got a sense of what it was like, how long the Wizard had been there, what his rule was like, what the witches really did, what threat they might be under that the prophecy referred to, etc., and what we did see was flat-out dumb. Zelena goes five minutes without cyberstalking her sister and they decide to trust her with unlimited, amplified power?

[KingOfHearts]

For the past 4 seasons, including S5, there's been plenty of magical shenanigans. In S2, the curse broke and fantasy cupcakes rained from the sky. Random characters popped out from all sides and it exploded into a whole new level. S3 ventured into Neverland, Oz, and time travel. S4 gave us Frozen, Bizarro World, and the Queens of Darkness. S5 is in the process of showing Camelot, Dark Ones, and the Underworld. Fans have become accustomed to random craziness, drama, and candy for the senses. What would happen if all that was taken away, and we were left with more of the mundaneness of S1?

 

When the show first started, there was already a precedent gift wrapped. We all knew the characters and could already sympathize with them because we grew up with them. Now, after 100 episodes, there's an even larger precedent for who we see on the show. If you broke up all the couples, removed magic, and forced all the characters to leave their usual lives, the audience would feel a sense of loss and a desire to regain all the development that has occurred over the course of the show.

 

For these reasons I wish the Missing Year could have occurred much later and involved cursed personalities. 

Edited February 27, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[Curio]

Fans have become accustomed to random craziness, drama, and candy for the senses. What would happen if all that was taken away, and we were left with more of the mundaneness of S1?

 

We've reached a tipping point in terms of how much crazy magic, characters, and new worlds the show can cram into one-half season. I think the fans would be fine with a bit more mundaneness, but it would have to be woven into the magic that has already been introduced. I actually thought the Camelot plot was pretty engaging and was fairly simplistic—help Emma destroy her darkness. If the Camelot plot had been all of 5A and was told in a linear timeline without the present-day scenes in Storybrooke and the random Merida episodes, I think a lot more fans would have liked it. 

[KingOfHearts]

S1 and 3A did a better job of balancing magic and everyday, imo. I liked the slower pace of Camelot too. I wish Storybrooke had been taken out of the picture completely in at least half the episodes. It got a little confusing when you had present day chiming in, then flashbacks, then flashbacks of flashbacks.

Edited February 28, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[Curio]

I wish Storybrooke had been taken out of the picture completely in at least half the episodes. It got a little confusing when you had present day chiming in, then flashbacks, then flashbacks of flashbacks.

 

In hindsight, a lot of the Storybooke plots were rather useless and repetitive. All the stuff with the Camelot people in Storybrooke seems like a waste because they didn't even get a proper resolution/goodbye. (I don't count on 5B wrapping up those storylines because it would be too difficult to schedule Arthur and Gwen's actors again.) The stuff with Regina wanting the town to trust her was useless. Henry's date was useless. They really didn't need to spend multiple episodes on training Rumple to pull the sword. The events in Storybrooke should have just been limited to a few scenes, like the confrontation between Hook and Emma on his ship (that was the only standout Storybrooke scene in my opinion, and a lot of that is mostly because of the acting), and everything after Hook was revealed to be a Dark One. Everything else is filler.

[Camera One]

They should have done what they did in 3A and just ditch Storybrooke entirely but I think there were a few reasons they didn't. Frankly, I don't think they knew what they would do for flashbacks, since they are adamant on that structure.  The whole reason of the 6 weeks later... was to use that 6 weeks in Camelot for flashbacks.  This was the exact structure and the exact problem as 3B, where nothing happened in Storybrooke (and practically nothing happened in the flashbacks, to boot).  Since nothing COULD happen until the flashback timeline and the present timeline coincidenced and the characters knew what the hell was actually happening.  In 5A, they also wanted to have that "mystery" of "What was Dark Swan hiding?"   If it had all been in flashback, we would have seen very much of "Dark Swan" at all.  

[Shanna Marie]

I think the 5A arc was initially better-paced than most, up to a point. The Dark One part of it worked pretty well. The problem was the kitchen sink tendency. Skip Merida entirely and skip the Percival/Robin/Regina/Furies nonsense that amounted to absolutely nothing. Maybe even leave all the Camelot people in Camelot, since they didn't amount to much of anything in Storybrooke. A Dark Curse was unnecessary for getting back to Storybrooke, given that the barriers were already down and Storybrooke didn't need to be created. Hook could have used the wand to send them back via tornado. Then we could have still had Camelot in flashbacks but then had the characters doing other stuff in the present, and that way Camelot doesn't have to be wrapped up in this arc. They can revisit it to desand them and stop Arthur.

 

But I'm truly baffled at so-called professional writers who are so badly off in their pacing by the end of the season that they drop an entire major plot thread at the last minute and just don't bother to resolve it.

[Curio]

But I'm truly baffled at so-called professional writers who are so badly off in their pacing by the end of the season that they drop an entire major plot thread at the last minute and just don't bother to resolve it.

 

How many dropped stories have we had throughout the years? (Of course if you asked the writers, they'd say these aren't "dropped" but purposely left open-ended in case they want to pick it up again in Season 8.)

• Will and the search for Ana 
• Lily and the search for her father 
• Merida seeking revenge on Arthur 
• Basically all of the Camelot stuff 
• The Home Office stuff
• Whatever happened to adult Pinocchio

 

Feel free to chime in.

Edited February 28, 2016 by Curio

[YaddaYadda]

 

How many dropped stories have we had throughout the years? (Of course if you asked the writers, they'd say these aren't "dropped" but purposely left open-ended in case they want to pick it up again in Season 8.)

• Will and the search for Ana 
• Lily and the search for her father 
• Merida seeking revenge on Arthur 
• Basically all of the Camelot stuff 
• The Home Office stuff
• Whatever happened to adult Pinocchio

 

Feel free to chime in.

 

As someone who didn't watch Wonderland beyond the first episode, I really didn't care for Will or Ana. For me, it was just hard to make that connection. I knew about them, but didn't care. Will was just a new character, and I can imagine a lot of people had no clue who he was, and then the story was dropped, and it was very meh.

 

Regarding Lily, how about we focus on the main characters, and flesh them out before we go on a quest for Lily's father. That seemed so very out of place in the finale, I thought, and it felt very forced.

 

Home Office could've potentially be good, but I think the writers chickened out. I would have loved to see the whole magic vs real world stuff, magical people living in the outside world. I think the potential for a good story was there. But I have to say that I really, really hated Greg and Tamara. I think I would have liked Tamara better if it was just her. The whole "her" on the phone and trying to be so mysterious, and shit. The show needs to quit doing that whole "surprise, motherfuckers! Are you surprised? Are you shocked? Did it work?" Just stop.

 

August is making toys with his dad.

 

I don't think that they've wrapped up Camelot just yet. They don't have a choice but to go back and wrap that up. I think it might happen in 5x21, or the start of 5x22 at least.

 

Merida can jump off a cliff and die. I really despise the character.

[KAOS Agent]

Presumably they did film some sort of Merida v Arthur stuff for the finale given the actress' comments on Twitter. It seems to me that that would have occurred while everyone was doing their goodbye at Granny's or sending Zelena to Oz, so couldn't they just slot that into a Meanwhile in Storybrooke section of the the 5B arc? No new filming would be necessary. Merida can go jump off a cliff for all I care. I will never watch Brave after the awfulness of Once. Man what a horrible character. I almost want Arthur to win that battle. Then Emma and Hook can desand the Camelotians and kick Arthur's ass while Regina & Henry wave goodbye to Violet. Everybody wins!

 

I'd like to actually understand what the hell was up with Merlin. What a horrible guy really. I don't think he was meant to be but then he had the whole hat thing, he set Ingrid after Baby Emma, never said a thing about the whole Excalibur will kill you with just a scratch, randomly visits a little girl (while trapped in a tree mind you) with a ridiculous message and basically created the freaking Dark One and then set up a whole thing to put it all in Emma's lap to fix all the problems he himself had created. In a lot of ways, he's responsible for Emma's entire crappy life and then he made it worse. Nice job, Merlin.

[YaddaYadda]

Merlin is no different from Rumple for me. Like at all. As someone who actually enjoyed 5A minus the ridiculous holes in the stories, all I kept thinking since season 4 was what the hell is wrong with this guy?

 

I think that desert sun before he drank out of the Holy Grail melted his stupid brain. It almost looked like he was playing this long winded chess game, moving his peons around to fit whatever future he was seeing that he wanted to happen. And nobody but Hook questioned this guy. 

 

Arthur had every reason to be pissed, and wanting to kill the guy. Orphan boy, you'll be king! But you know, caveats and all. Merlin was such an ass!

[Shanna Marie]

I feel like I need to clarify what I said about 5A being "better-paced" because as I was going to sleep last night, I found myself thinking, "Huh? What did I mean by that?" So where I think I was going with it and not expressing well because the flu fried my brains is that they at least broke their annoying arc pattern of "good guys wave their hands ineffectually at the bad guys and lose but escape, repeat in between research scenes, and then in the final showdown, they wave their hands effectively at bad guys and win -- and this has nothing to do with any of the research we've been watching." At least in 5A, in both Camelot and Storybrooke Emma had a plan and was taking steps toward that plan. She actually beat Nimue in their initial encounters until Nimue got Hook as a weapon Emma couldn't beat. It felt like there was forward progress with building tension and the characters having to get both smarter and more desperate. If they'd just focused on that, they'd have been fine. The problem came in the kitchen-sink writing of throwing in too many threads and characters that ended up being unnecessary and in resorting to too much idiot plotting. Emma's plan in Camelot would have worked if she hadn't been surrounded by idiots, like her parents' brilliant scheme to determine whether they could trust Arthur by telling him everything and seeing what he did with the information. And even that went nowhere because they were desanded 30 seconds later, so why even bother? It seems like they could have reached the same point without the idiocy by letting Arthur be smart and letting Merlin be reasonable. You get even higher stakes if Merlin has warned them about Excalibur and Hook takes a calculated risk, knowing the danger, out of desperation to save everyone else. Then he's knowingly sacrificed himself up front, maybe tries to hide the injury from Emma until she rids herself of the Darkness so he doesn't get in her way -- it's a small injury, so it's killing him slowly -- but he can't hold out as long as he'd like and collapses at a bad time. Then Emma's situation is even more tragic and Merlin doesn't look like such a jerk.

 

Presumably they did film some sort of Merida v Arthur stuff for the finale given the actress' comments on Twitter. It seems to me that that would have occurred while everyone was doing their goodbye at Granny's or sending Zelena to Oz, so couldn't they just slot that into a Meanwhile in Storybrooke section of the the 5B arc? No new filming would be necessary.

It depends on who else was in the scene. Supposedly, at least Henry was there saying goodbye to Violet, so they can't use that scene while Henry's in the Underworld, but then it's going to get really weird if the Camelot gang is just cooling their heels in Storybrooke until everyone gets back, and then I guess they wear the same clothes (miraculously untouched by whatever they go through in the Underworld) to send everyone back to Camelot -- and hope Henry hasn't hit a growth spurt so that he's visibly shorter when saying goodbye to Violet than he was in whatever scene they put before and after.

 

All those forgotten plot threads make the writers look very ADD, or like 4-year-olds telling a story. If you let a really small child tell you a story, they'll start with all these details and then ramble a bit and follow a few threads they care about while the other stuff is forgotten, and then random new stuff will come in, and they look at you like you're crazy if you ask about the thing the story started with. So they'll start telling you a story about a pony princess, and by the end the dinosaurs are having space battles, but if you ask about the pony princess, it's like "huh?"

 

With Lily, I did get the sense that they were giving just enough closure to explain why she might still be around but weren't planning to pick up that thread right away, so I'm not calling that a dropped thread yet. Will was just a huge mistake that seems to have been network mandated (they had to take him on as a regular because of whatever contract thing even though they didn't have any particular plans for the character). The Home Office concept got ditched when they learned they could use Peter Pan and go to Neverland, and I guess they couldn't wait to play with their shiny new toy instead of the toy they'd been working with, so they just waved their hands to turn the Home Office into a link with Neverland and then ditched it.

[Camera One]

Even if they include deleted scenes with Merida and Arthur, it would be out of place by 5B.  Thematically, wouldn't it make sense to wrap it up, since the focus of 5B seems to be elsewhere?  I'm not suffering through "Swan Song" again so I don't remember if there's a scene which could have been cut to include whatever the hell they filmed for Merida.  Though A&E has said via twitter or interview that 

Arthur and the Camelot gang are still in Storybrooke, so there shouldn't be any scene of Henry and Violet saying goodbye.

Edited February 28, 2016 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

I don't think there's much in "Swan Song" itself that could be cut, aside from perhaps yet another Rumple vs. Hook smackdown -- those were entertaining but didn't really mean anything to the story -- or possibly the shoehorning of Regina into Hook's backstory, though that did sort of matter to the story as they told it. What they needed to have done was skip the Merida-centric one-off and spread the Dark Hook stuff through more episodes so that they had time to deal with it all and resolve the Camelot stuff. Put Hook's death earlier in the finale, then do some resolution, give us time to feel his loss and absence, wrap up the Camelot plot, and then have Emma realize that Rumple screwed them over.

 

I may be mistaken about what Camelot farewell scenes were filmed, since we're going on filming spoilers and they can always edit the final product, but I do seem to recall hearing about

them being a farewell, specifically with Henry saying goodbye to Violet and Merida seemingly having Arthur in custody. If the Camelot folk are still in Storybrooke during 5B, my impression is that this is because they bungled the pacing to the point that they didn't have a chance to wrap that up, not because they always planned for them to stick around for the duration.

[KingOfHearts]

 

I may be mistaken about what Camelot farewell scenes were filmed, since we're going on filming spoilers and they can always edit the final product, but I do seem to recall hearing about

I remember seeing filming pictures with Merida and the Camelot gang with Arthur in handcuffs. IIRC, there was a portal involved.

Edited February 28, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[KAOS Agent]

When I was talking about a Merida v Arthur resolution, I was not talking about filming spoilers about scenes that did not air. The actress was tweeting something about how Merida does some really awesome stuff in the finale and that seems to be something else. I assumed that since Merida was thwarted in her attempts to torture Dark Emma by making her an arrow pincushion, she went off to take on Arthur who would have been equally helpless in the jail. Merida likes to take on unarmed people, doesn't she? She kidnapped the totally innocent Belle in Camelot too. But I digress. Anyway, since the Merida/Arthur jail scene would have occurred while everyone else was busy with the Dark Ones, the same scene could now be slotted in because everyone else is off in the Underworld. They could then have Belle, the dwarfs and the fairies stop Merida and desand the Camelotians in a non-Underworld C-plot. Then when everyone gets back from wherever, they could put in a goodbye scene and we'd resolve Camelot without it seeming too off in terms of hanging plot threads.

Edited February 29, 2016 by KAOS Agent

[Faemonic]

Regina and Belle knew it was real. No one else did.

Jefferson should also have known, but considering where else I've seen Sebastian Stan, he was probably busy with something else.

 

I'm truly baffled at so-called professional writers who are so badly off in their pacing by the end of the season that they drop an entire major plot thread at the last minute and just don't bother to resolve it.

They're not so-called professional. They actually do get paid to turn in a season finale script full of contrived character relationships (that would be so easily made organic) and lacking scenes that would have completed the story arc. Television writing must be more difficult and more lucrative than prose, is all I can think.

 

 How many dropped stories have we had throughout the years? (Of course if you asked the writers, they'd say these aren't "dropped" but purposely left open-ended in case they want to pick it up again in Season 8.)

Whoa, whoa, whoa...wait...how many stories left open-ended since S1 were picked up and resolved?

 

*Henry's father, Rumple's son

*Gepetto and Augustoccio

*David's real name, which funnily enough is David...?

*Princess Eva's real motivation for tripping a random peasant?

*Henry's adoption, Regina's fertility issues, Henry Sr.'s kidnapping...

 

I feel like I'm stretching it with the last three.

 

*Graham's consent and magical murder issues? (Run, Jamie Dornan! Run go be Christian Grey with the 50 sunglasses! Wait, that movie sucked? Run back! Come back!)

[Shanna Marie]

Whoa, whoa, whoa...wait...how many stories left open-ended since S1 were picked up and resolved?

I think there's a difference between leaving a story open-ended with plans to resolve it later and the kind of "hey, there's something shiny over there" plot line dropping that often tends to happen. It has to do with the opportunity to resolve it, the presence of the characters involved, and the overall handling of it. So, say, with the issue of Rumple's son and of Henry's parentage, at the end of season one I wasn't feeling like these important threads had been forgotten. As of the end of season one, very soon after we learned the reason why Rumple wanted the curse, the curse was broken and Rumple returned magic, so you knew he was making steps toward finding his son. If by the end of the second season he still hadn't really moved forward and this wasn't addressed at all, not even with showing him dithering and coming up with excuses not to go looking, if instead Rumple just went on with his usual power-grab storylines with no mention of his son, then it would have been a dropped plot. With Henry's father, I think that could have been treated as a "the other shoe will drop someday" issue indefinitely (if he hadn't been Rumple's son) because no storyline had yet come up that gave a reason why Emma would go looking for him or why he'd come looking for her. She'd have happily gone her way never being reunited with him. We could have just waited for the worst possible moment for him to show up, as long as it happened before the end of the series. In both cases, we had good reason to believe they would get to it eventually, since the characters involved were likely to remain part of the show.

 

Looking at the list of possibly dropped plots:

Will and the search for Ana -- dropped plot. Even if you didn't know the character's history from the spinoff, he was introduced as someone who was frantically searching for something. By 4B, his search seemed to be utterly forgotten and he was relegated to bringing Belle coffee. By the end of the season, he was mostly just dropped offscreen, as Belle declared that she didn't love him. No mention has been made about him leaving Storybrooke, finding what he was looking for, or going to search elsewhere. He just vanished, and the actor is no longer in the cast.

Lily and the search for her father -- I think this was setup for a possible future story, and the scene in which she tells Emma about this search is what keeps it from coming across like a dropped plot, the way Will's story did. We can assume that she's doing research and bonding with her mom offscreen, and when they're ready to tell the story and the actress is available, they can bring it back. Maleficent's been part of the fabric of the show from season one, so there's reason to believe they might get back to it. If they hadn't had that scene and Maleficent and Lily had just vanished, it would have been more like a dropped plotline.

Merida seeking revenge on Arthur (and on Emma) -- Supposedly, they're going to get to this, but it's probably going to be awkward and is feeling to me right now like a pacing problem from the previous arc. The actors involved in the story are no longer involved in the show. Their story is no longer relevant to the current plot arc, the main story their plot arc was part of has been resolved, and all but one of the main characters are away from the town where these people are. There's no point in bringing this story back other than to resolve it. The same thing applies to all the Camelot stuff -- the people still being under Arthur's magic sand brainwashing and stuck in Storybrooke.

 

The Home Office stuff -- not so much a dropped plot as a mutated one. When they learned they could use Peter Pan, they changed gears midway and decided that the Home Office was Peter Pan's scheme to find Henry. I actually think there's room here to pick up the Home Office thread. There were people out there who were opposed to magic, and presumably there are still others out there. They could say that Pan co-opted the leadership for his own uses, but now that Greg and Tamara are gone, the others might be looking for them, and even more anti-magic. It was weird the way they handled it, kind of clumsy, and the fact that Neal didn't seem even slightly bothered by the death of his fiancee or the fact that she betrayed him was weird, but that's different from a dropped plot.

Whatever happened to adult Pinocchio -- I'm not sure I'd call this a dropped plot (since a plot implies that some action is required) so much as a loose end. The last I recall, they were worried about him and he was ill because going through that much magical transformation was bad for him. Did we ever learn that he was recovering offscreen? As it was, the good guys come across like "well, we got what we wanted out of him, moving on." A line or two of dialogue about him feeling better and being back at home with his dad would have been nice.

 

To this, I'll add Graham, which is an odd case. His death hasn't been forgotten, since Emma brought that up as one of the reasons for her relationship fears. I'm not sure I'll call it a dropped plot because there isn't really a "plot" to resolve. The hanging issue is people knowing the real cause of his death, and there we run into the Regina Exception Clause. At the same time that Emma was being hampered in her ability to open herself up for love, Regina needed to be the victim whose life was ruined when she lost her boyfriend, and while Emma did say she wouldn't apologize for saving a life, she was made to apologize for hurting Regina and made to beg for Regina's friendship. That can't really happen if we're reminded how Graham died or if Emma learns the truth. So they want us to think about Graham, but not enough to think about how he died and who's responsible. He just died of the mysterious and sudden heart attack Emma thought he had. They definitely didn't seem to want us thinking about Regina killing Graham to keep him from being with Emma while Regina was whining about losing her boyfriend and acting like she had the worst pain ever or while Emma was begging for Regina's friendship. If you think about it during all that, then Regina comes across like a jerk and a liar for hiding the truth and playing the victim with absolutely no sense of empathy or guilt. On the other hand, if Emma did learn about it, would it change anything, or would she just forgive or, worse, take blame because her presence put Regina through so much, and if she hadn't been "stealing" Graham from Regina, Regina wouldn't have had to kill him?

 

Television writing must be more difficult and more lucrative than prose, is all I can think.

That may be a topic for the writers thread.

[Hookian]

The argument from the Hook haters that Dark Hook was not planned but switched after episode 5 is now a confirmed lie. Colin confirmed he knew Hook was immortal since Comic Con.

[Shanna Marie]

After rewatching the last few episodes, I think they could easily have carved out enough time to resolve the Camelot and Merida stories. Mostly, just cut out the Belle and Rumple I'm leaving/now I'm back scenes. Since she came back anyway, there wasn't much point in having her leave. It doesn't seem like her leaving had anything to do with Rumple's decision, and it's not as though she'd have figured out what he'd done even if she'd been there, given all the other people who were also there who didn't figure it out.

 

They could also have cut the scene in which Hook and Rumple meet on the road. That's a case of Kill Your Darlings because it's a good scene that's very well played, but it's absolutely meaningless for the plot and doesn't really tell us anything new about either Dark Hook or Hero Rumple. Let it be a DVD bonus feature so we can eventually enjoy watching it, but it doesn't need to be in the episode.

 

Take out those, and without changing the plot or the outcome, you get at least five additional minutes for Merida to confront Arthur and then Emma to open a portal to send them all home.

[KAOS Agent]

I'm still a little confused about how Merida thinks killing Arthur in revenge for killing her father is justified. Weren't they fighting a battle on a battlefield? Killing the other guy is what you do there. That includes cutting someone down from behind. And didn't she try to stop Arthur from killing her father by shooting an arrow that would've killed him? Am I missing something here? I get that she's sad her dad died and that Arthur was the one to kill him, but battles and war are a thing where you kill the other guy. In that context, Arthur's not any worse than her own clansmen who were killing members of Arthur's army. 

 

Arthur was a bad guy who screwed over his own people, but Merida's feelings on the issue were separate and make her look like an idiot. As a leader for her clan, she needs to work with other clans who may have warred with them in the past. She doesn't get to run around killing members of that clan because they hurt her family on the battlefield. Now Guinevere and the Camelotians have every right to take out her husband, but Merida needs to suck it up and deal.

[Camera One]

I agree with cutting the scene with Hook and Rumple on the road.  We already had scenes between them the previous episode, so it felt redundant to me.

 

I don't think they can cut Belle leaving, because Eddy made it seem like it shows that Rumple had really changed.  He was putting Belle first and letting her go.  That's how we are meant to interpret it.

[Shanna Marie]

I don't think they can cut Belle leaving, because Eddy made it seem like it shows that Rumple had really changed.  He was putting Belle first and letting her go.  That's how we are meant to interpret it.

I'm rather uncomfortable with the idea of him "letting" her go meaning he'd changed. She was the one who'd decided to go. He encouraged her after she made the decision, but what was the alternative if he hadn't changed, holding her prisoner? Him telling her to go ahead and go when she'd already decided to do so doesn't really prove much.

 

I thought he'd shown he changed when he came back to save her from the bear and proved he was a hero -- and he used the magic that would have allowed him to leave town. Her deciding to leave him after that was only for the drama and made her look like she has an evil power fetish if she left him at the height of what she thought was his goodness. At any rate, they could have bought several minutes for dealing with the dangling plot threads by cutting the number of scenes devoted to that storyline. There was the scene where she told him she'd tell him later what she'd decided. There was the scene where she told him her decision. There was the scene where he gave her the car and told her to go. And there was her return.

[Camera One]

The whole Belle jumps into the car and leaves that same night was so dumb.  What was the hurry exactly.  Just because he suggested it didn't mean she had to do exactly what he said that very instant (say bye to your dad and too-da-loo!  Don't let the town line hit you on the way out).

Edited March 1, 2016 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

The whole Belle jumps into the car and leaves that same night was so dumb.  What was the hurry exactly.  Just because he suggested it didn't mean she had to do exactly what he said that very instant

Then there was the weird way she dragged out telling him she was leaving. "Hey, I know you're about to go fight a duel to the death against a younger, taller, fitter man who has a lot more swordfighting experience and who currently has super magical powers and is immortal, but I thought you ought to know that I'm thinking about whether or not I want to stay with you now that you're different than you were all those times when you screwed me over. But I don't want to distract you from the big fight by telling you whether nor not I'm leaving. If you survive, then meet me at our wishing well, and if I'm there, you'll know I'm staying. Unless I just show up to learn what happened in the fight but I still decided to leave you anyway. And then after I tell you I'm leaving, I'll pop back one more time to say goodbye instead of just considering that telling you I'm leaving is goodbye."

 

Cut that down to one scene in which she tells him she's leaving and he acts all noble and encourages her to go and see the world, and between that and the scene between Rumple and Hook on the road we have enough time to send the Camelot crew home.

 

The Camelot thing may be the biggest dropped thread, considering the potential impact of it. At least with Will, it's just one character who's presumably offscreen in Storybrooke somewhere, resuming his quest for whatever but probably not affecting other people. Ditto with Lily and her search for her father. She could be offscreen, hanging out with her mother and getting her mother's memories of her father. But now we have the entire population of another kingdom, living in Storybrooke without the benefit of the modern life memory download. This kingdom is ruled by an evil king who has magically brainwashed the entire population to mindlessly follow him, even down to dying for him. He has an army of knights here in town with him. Now he's been thrown into a jail cell. And right at this time, everyone in any kind of law enforcement, peacekeeping, or ruling authority and most of the people with magical powers have left this plane of existence. Meanwhile, there's an angry Scottish woman with a bow and a sword who wants revenge on him and on one of the leaders of the town. This isn't a situation that can easily just sit and go nowhere in the background for an indefinite period of time without anyone noticing what's going on. If we're going with any kind of logic or human behavior, the obvious thing likely to happen is Merida breaks Arthur out to get her revenge, but then she finds herself facing all the knights, and by the time Team Underworld gets home, Arthur is ruling Storybrooke.

 

Unless maybe the fairies decide they just don't want to deal and pull a Sleeping Beauty, putting the whole town to sleep and frozen in time until Team Underworld gets back and can clean up the mess.

[Amerilla]

From the Swan Song thread:

 

Who has Emma been close to that has died, except Neal?

1. Graham
2. Henry (Temporarily at the end of Season 1)
3. Neal (The first time she thought he died when he fell through the portal)
4. Graham (Monkey or not, she claimed to love him during those 8 months of dating)
5. Neal Again (The real death)
6. Snow (Thought she had died temporarily during the time travel adventure)
7. Ingrid
8. Hook (Temporarily in the alternate universe)
9. Hook Again (Temporarily in Camelot)
10. Hook Again Again (For real in Storybrooke)

Even though a lot of these were temporary, having to watch someone die and not knowing whether or not they can be resurrected has to be taxing.

 

When we list things out like this, it really drives home the creative, ummm, "limits" of the writing team. Those are only the "deaths" involving Emma. (To which you could arguably also add August in Selfless, Brave and True):

 

* Snow watched Charming essentially "die" once in the pilot and once in the heart-splitting.

 

* Belle saw Rumpel "die" in "Coming Home" and coma-die in the 4B finale.

 

* Regina saw Daniel die twice.

 

* You also have Rumpel believing Belle was dead in "Skin Deep," Regina believing Cora was dead in 2a, and everyone thinking Zelena was dead for half a season. Rumpel may have also genuinely believed Milah was dead between her running off with Hook and meeting up again in "The Crocodile."

 

So that's at least 20 instances of appeared to be dead/mostly dead/really-most-sincerely-dead-except-for-cameos-schedule-permitting in 99 episodes. And those are just main cast "deaths." Forget the second stringers and guest stars who thought so-and-so or such-and-such was dead.

 

You could argue that the more realistic response at this point would be" "Eh, well, death only sticks about 70% of the time in my experience, so maybe I should wait a couple of weeks, see if Hook turns up, and if not...maybe then we should launch a search."

[Curio]

Thanks for quoting my post, Amerilla. I didn't realize I accidentally listed Graham where Walsh's name should be. (Fixed in my original post...)

 

And yes, fake deaths seem to be a very recurring theme in the writers room. Which makes me laugh at all the fans complaining about the gang wanting to bring Hook back from the dead, and how he's the "exception to the rule," when actually, Neal and Graham are more exceptions to the rule by staying dead.

Edited March 4, 2016 by Curio

[Amerilla]

Oh, shoot, Curio , I completely forgot to add your and the OP's names when I carried over! Bad form on my part. Bad form.

Thanks for quoting my post, Amerilla. I didn't realize I accidentally listed Graham where Walsh's name should be. (Fixed in my original post...)

And yes, fake deaths seem to be a very recurring theme in the writers room. Which makes me laugh at all the fans complaining about the gang wanting to bring Hook back from the dead, and how he's the "exception to the rule," when actually, Neal and Graham are more exceptions to the rule by staying dead.

The only thing that ever really dies is the story momentum.

[KingOfHearts]

My rewatches always seem to come to a screeching halt in 2B. 

 

Neal's story gets to be as cliche as it gets... like into Hallmark movie or romcom territory. He discovers he has a son then bonds with him over superficial things like pizza. The mother is conflicted over having feelings for him. (Which I find is apparent in 2B. Even Rumple says he can see it in her eyes.) But oh no! He has an evil fiance that puts a stick in the works! I'm honestly surprised A&E did not hook (no pun intended) Emma up with Neal. Everything that happens in 2B seems to point in that direction, including an ILY at the end. It's very, very cringey.

 

Thank God for Hook in 3A.

[Delphi]

My rewatches stop there as well. Unless I'm watching with my friend who needs to catch up with a whole season I don't plow straight through the episodes after season 2. I'll watch certain ones from the season that I enjoyed, and half the time I'll fast forward.

[Dianthus]

LOL! I'm grateful for Hook in all of it.

[Camera One]

My problem with the use Meg and Herc here is that they could have been anybody. There was no reason to use famous mythological/Disney characters for those roles, except for their connection to the movie, which had Hades as a bad guy. I mean, Herc was alright, but poor Meg was horribly misused. If she was another, random person for the gang to save, she would have been a fine character as a one off, but this is an established character that a lot of their audience was attached to. I grew up with the Hercules movie, and yeah, its not one of Disneys best, but its a pretty likable movie, and Meg is a great character. And, I get her being all traumatized from being trapped in the underworld, but the writers contrived it so that she was going through that. They could have written her so that we saw her in flashbacks being sassy and cool, then show her all messed up, or had her just be in the underworld, without all the terror, or anything else they wanted to allow her to be snarky and morally ambiguous and interesting (add me to the list of people thinking she was working with Hades, both because of the movie, and because she`s Abigail Hobbs, queen of the giant eyes that go from sweet to psycho instantly). The writers are steering this ship, they can make it go anywhere they wanted. They had Herc and Meg, and they just wasted them. 

 

I think that is what separates good/worthwhile use of fairy tale/Disney characters, vs. not good use.  Another prime example was Rapunzel.  She could have been any random princess up in the tower.  Her lack of confidence in ruling had nothing to do with the Rapunzel story.  This problem has gone all the way back to the beginning.  Cinderella, for example, was extremely poorly used, drawing practically nothing from her backstory except the fairy godmother, who was murdered.  Another one would be the use of King Stefan in Maleficent's backstory.

 

It's not like we want these guest characters to dominate and take over everything, but mashups and the inclusion of different fairy tales is a major draw for this show (and occasionally one of the few reasons to tune in), so how they are incorporated needs to demonstrate actual research and connect organically to the existing story for the adaptation to be satisfying. 

Edited March 16, 2016 by Camera One

[Mathius]

I still insist that Hercules was used just fine, it could not have been "anybody" because only Herc has the Cerberus connection (since Cerberus was his final labor in mythology, albeit not to fight it in the upper world or underworld but to bring it from the underworld to the upper world), plus he can foreshadow Zeus who I think we'll be seeing later. Meg, however, was utterly pointless. She could have been any random girl and there'd be no difference.

Edited March 16, 2016 by Mathius