Continuity, Nitpicks, Unanswered Questions and Timeline Headaches: When Did That Honeycrisp Apple Come From

[Mari]

So in the flashbacks for Emma and Lily, isn't Emma close to the age she is when she met Neal? If Emma was born in 1983, she would be 16 in 1999. She met Neal when she was what, 17 or 18? It's even more glaring having JMo playing the flashback scenes in Tallahassee.

They've sort of mucked up the timeline, there.

 

Emma had to be 16 or (just) 17 when she met Neal, in order for Henry to have already been a solid ten years old--which he was, since he had an 11th birthday before a year passed in-show--but, then said she met Neal in 2001. 

[Faemonic]

So in the flashbacks for Emma and Lily, isn't Emma close to the age she is when she met Neal? If Emma was born in 1983, she would be 16 in 1999. She met Neal when she was what, 17 or 18? It's even more glaring having JMo playing the flashback scenes in Tallahassee.

 

When they watched the footage of Emma in her new foster home using Lily's camcorder at the beginning of A Family Business (406), I think Emma said that she was 13, almost 14?

[Zuleikha]

This is petty, but I winced when Cora described Tinkerbell as a wingless fairy and Regina recognized that Cora meant Tinkerbell. It was  a significant moment in Quite A Common Fairy that Regina didn't know Tinkerbell lost her wings. I know this show is convoluted, but I hate those moments that tip off that the writers don't track their own show. (it was also just a stupid way to get Cora's motivation out; there's no reason for Tinkerbell in Neverland to talk to Cora in Wonderland and Cora's the Queen of Hearts. There can be another wank to have Cora know about Regina's true love discovery).

 

ETA: Per IMDB, Jane E. wrote both episodes, too. I wish I was on Twitter so I could tweet her about that in a friendly, yet pointed, way.

Edited May 4, 2015 by Zuleikha

[Curio]

I think the writers and the characters take shots of Regina's forgetting potion on a regular basis. Poor Roland seems to be next. (And I wish this stuff existed in real life so I could forget most of 4B ever happened.)

[Camera One]

Out of the three Queens of Darkness, why did the Chernobog select Maleficent in the 4B premiere?  Wouldn't Cruella have "the heart with the darkest potential", even if she can't act on it?  Twice, Maleficent has turned her back on revenge and was willing to "let it go".

 

Questions that we still don't know the answers to one episode before the 4B finale:

- What exactly can the Writer do or not do?

- Could the writer have written Regina her happy ending if she had asked for it?

- What were the blank books at the Sorcerer's mansion for?  Why didn't the Apprentice hire a new writer?  

- Who was writing the book after the Author got trapped in it?  Was the Rogue Author writing the book from within it?  If so, where did he get the ink from?  Is the story in Storybrooke post-Curse being recorded?

- How did Rumple know the Author?  If he knew of his powers, why did he need the conversation with Regina in the car before he went to search for him?  How did he know he would need Emma's blood with dark potential for the ink, especially when this situation has never been encountered before?  Whose blood was in the ink back in the Enchanted Forest?

- What was Rumple referring to when he said in the 4B premiere, "[The Author's] book harnesses a great power, one that exceeds anything you've ever experienced, giving villains and heroes what he deems just desserts.  Our collective frustrations? They're because of his will, not our missteps."  Whose will?

- Why hasn't the Rogue Author tried to escape before?  How did he know where the "key" would be to open The Book?

- Why did Rumple's heart decay so fast in Storybrooke?  Why isn't he using magic to "protect himself" now that he was back in Storybrooke (according to what he said in Heart of Gold')?  How was writing a brand new "Heroes and Villains" book going to heal the heart?  Why not start by asking the Author to write that his heart was no longer black?

Edited May 7, 2015 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

How did Rumple know the Author?  If he knew of his powers, why did he need the conversation with Regina in the car before he went to search for him?  How did he know he would need Emma's blood with dark potential for the ink, especially when this situation has never been encountered before?

I was just wondering about that. When Regina told him about it in the car, he acted like this was a totally new concept. He got banished to the outside world that day, and seemed to have been busy setting up his spell and tormenting Hook that day. But then he comes back from the outside world already having a plan about finding the Author, knowing he needed Emma to be dark, and knowing Emma had the potential for darkness. So how and when did he learn all this in the World Without Magic?

 

It's just crazy that there's suddenly all this knowledge about this Author that no one has even hinted at until now, and it came up when Regina came up with this idea out of the blue, based on no evidence whatsoever, but purely on wishful thinking from looking at the book, seeing the happy endings, and deciding that what she needed was to have one written for her.

[snarkastic]

I'm sure season 5 will be all about breaking the Dark One curse completely after unsuccessfully containing it in the hat, but haven't we already seen it defeated/contained in the vault when Rumple stabbed himself with the dagger? Or is the vault forgotten now because it happened in season 3.

[kili]

So how and when did he learn all this in the World Without Magic?

 

He was e-mailing some Oxford professor who knew all about it? Apparentl, it's believable that somebody could translate that spell in the World Without Magic.

 

He may actually have been able to get some info in our world. Since Disney is named as an Author and they are clearly alluding to his death when they are looking for a new Author and apparently, this current Author came from our world, [fanwank] perhaps there is information about Authors in the World Without Magic. I know there are lots of crazy theories about Disney, his works and his parks. Maybe if you sift through all of that, you can find intel about Authors. Rumple spent is 6 weeks in the World Without Magic eating Ramen, e-mailing Belle and reading up on Disney lore. Now if Adam and Eddie were up to the level of Lost, there would be a website out there with a conspiracy theory about Disney being the Author.which would provide all the info that Rumple would have found.

[Camera One]

Rumple and Isaac have met each other before, so I don't get why he needed Regina to give him the idea in the car in the 4A finale.  

 

When Robin saw Rumple in NYC, why did he immediately assume Rumple was looking for The Author.  That was a pathetic way to clue Zelena-Marion in what Rumple was potentially up to.

 

Even if there were real-world sources about The Author, there wouldn't be information on how the Ink would require blood containing Emma's dark potential.  

 

I still think it's unlikely that Rumple was willing to have his Happy Ending trapped inside some Book.   It wasn't even reality.  

 

Very little makes sense.

[YaddaYadda]

I still think it's unlikely that Rumple was willing to have his Happy Ending trapped inside some Book.   It wasn't even reality.

 

I know what you mean when you say trapped in the book, but I don't think he cared as long as he got to have what he wanted.  That's my take from it at least.  He was willing to kill a child (an obnoxious one, but a kid nonetheless) in order to preserve what he had.

[Crimson Belle]

If the Dark One magic has to be tethered to someone, where was it when Rumple was dead before Neal committed suicide by Wicked Witch?

[YaddaYadda]

Actually, speaking of that, Rumple was resurrected at the Dark One's vault or whatever they called it.  What if that's where Emma ended up?

 

And i'm assuming Camelot is actually part of the Enchanted Forest at this point.

[Curio]

Actually, speaking of that, Rumple was resurrected at the Dark One's vault or whatever they called it. What if that's where Emma ended up?

 

That's a good point. Taking my response to the speculation thread.

[browneyegirl89]

Hello all. I am new to this board and I find it refreshing to find intelligent OUAT viewers that just don't gobble up the tomfoolery that OUAT give us. The ulitimate problem with OUAT is that, when they introduced new content, it always seem to contradict previously establish information. For instance, let's talk about the Echo Caves.

 

Snow said that wanting a new child was her deepest and darkest secret. Okay, we can buy that. But having season 4 to show that she and Charming stole a baby and regretted it so much, wouldn't that logically make more sense as for as talking about the deepest and darkest secret?

 

And for Snow to kidnap a child is wholly uncharacteristic. Snow's first big bad thing she did was killing Cora. That is why she was so traumatize with that aftermath. If killing Cora was not her biggest crim with the kidnap of Mal's baby, than that episode or two with her self-loathing wouldn't have make sense. This show is just messy. I don't watch any other show that has as much inconsistencies as this one does.

[pezgirl7]

Snow said that wanting a new child was her deepest and darkest secret. Okay, we can buy that. But having season 4 to show that she and Charming stole a baby and regretted it so much, wouldn't that logically make more sense as for as talking about the deepest and darkest secret?

 

Welcome to the boards! The echo caves secrets were pretty ridiculous. With all of the bad things Hook has done, how is him opening his heart to Emma his deepest, darkest secret? All I can think is that the secret has to be something that only they themselves knew. So because Snow and Charming both knew about stealing egg!Lily, it therefore wasn't a secret.

[ParadoxLost]

The bells tolling on the last page of the book make what the Author wrote irreversible.  How does that work?  As long as no person voluntarily travelled into the book then the story would never reach its conclusion?

 

BTW.  Did we ever find up what was with the alternate picture of Regina kissing Robin Hood?

[Faemonic]

For the Echo Caves Snowing secret, I'm going to have to go Doylist rather than Watsonian: the writers didn't know back then that Snowing had done something that awful. Well, okay, going Doylist...Snowing thought it was worth it until only recently. Remember when Emma was telling Snow White that she (Emma) would never put at risk the life and quality of life of an innocent, and Snow replied, angrily, that that was exactly why they did the thing (and that it was worth it)?

 

Unfortunately, the Egg Plot ruined for me that one scene in season 2 where Emma and Snow look at Emma's old nursery. The concept of the Baby Do-Over being spoken out loud in the Echo Caves didn't do that, the naming of Neal Jr the Second didn't do that, and Snow Drifts didn't ruin Snow Falls for me the same way I've heard Snowing fans complain, so...different strokes. Egg plot was the fatal one for me.

 

 

Or maybe we can go all quantum about it, like maybe Snow's Dark Curse brought to the Land Without Magic people from a different timeline than the one that the Un-Curse whisked away, and this Snow's Emma is not her Emma, and this Emma's Snow is not her Snow, but neither of them know it because the parallel dimensions are similar enough except for that one egg baby detail.

 

This can also explain why the Snow in Season 1 told David that Regina "poisoned an apple because she thought I was prettier than her!" and maybe also why she thinks his name is James. When the FIRST Dark Curse came around, we see a potentially infinite number of Enchanted Forests minus Cora Dome being whisked away to the Land Without Magic (because that's a fixed point, just ask any Time Lord) but simultaneously so that it looks like one event...but only the one where Regina DID confront Bandit Snow at Daniel's grave made it over to the parallel universe of the Land Without Magic.

 

Quantum flux! The sci-fi solution to all the continuity problems you previously did not have! :)

Edited May 16, 2015 by Faemonic

[Camera One]

The bells tolling on the last page of the book make what the Author wrote irreversible.  How does that work?  As long as no person voluntarily travelled into the book then the story would never reach its conclusion?

 

That was a major point of confusion for me.  When the story ended, would Henry have gotten dumped out of the book?  Why couldn't he re-enter in an earlier chapter and try again?   Why did the key for the Other Book work for this one?  Was Cruella's world inside a book too, or was this the first world we've seen inside a book?  Do other worlds inside books exist?  

 

If "heroes getting a happy ending" would destroy the book, wouldn't Emma being freed and being with her son be a happy ending?  Why did it have to be Regina? Was there a guarantee that if Regina interrupted the wedding, Robin would have chosen her instead?  

 

What happened with that dream Regina had in earlier in 4B where she met Robin and then the Evil Queen barged in and she felt the Evil Queen was protecting Robin?  What was the point of that?  Some speculated it would occur in the Alt in the finale, but it wasn't.

 

Did we ever find up what was with the alternate picture of Regina kissing Robin Hood?

 

Does this dialogue from "Mother" clear things up?

 

REGINA: And you can really do as you say? Take a look at this.

[Takes out paper] This page It says my happy ending is possible, doesn't it? I mean, it has to exist for a reason.

 

ISAAC: Whoa.  I wrote this.    I mean, the story with this drawing in it, from my Well, a-a little experimental writing I did for another book that I never got the chance to write.  Where did you get this?

 

REGINA: It just turned up one day in Robin's things.

 

ISAAC: I don't know how that happened, but it yeah, it suggests that something is looking out for you.

 

REGINA: Something? Well, could you be more vague?

 

ISAAC: You know as well as I, there are forces greater than all of us.

[RadioGirl27]

BTW.  Did we ever find up what was with the alternate picture of Regina kissing Robin Hood?

 

Does this dialogue from "Mother" clear things up?

 

REGINA: And you can really do as you say? Take a look at this.

[Takes out paper] This page It says my happy ending is possible, doesn't it? I mean, it has to exist for a reason.

 

ISAAC: Whoa.  I wrote this.    I mean, the story with this drawing in it, from my Well, a-a little experimental writing I did for another book that I never got the chance to write.  Where did you get this?

 

REGINA: It just turned up one day in Robin's things.

 

ISAAC: I don't know how that happened, but it yeah, it suggests that something is looking out for you.

 

REGINA: Something? Well, could you be more vague?

 

ISAAC: You know as well as I, there are forces greater than all of us.

So, page 23 was, basically, Isaac writing fan fiction about the Evil Queen.

[Mari]

The echo caves secrets were pretty ridiculous. With all of the bad things Hook has done, how is him opening his heart to Emma his deepest, darkest secret? All I can think is that the secret has to be something that only they themselves knew.

Replying in the Hook thread.

[Camera One]

So what color will Rumple's heart look now that he's no longer the Dark One?  It wouldn't be fair if it suddenly became full red again.  So now it's still black but not so black as we saw in "Mother", ie, it's still black but he won't be having constant heart pain anymore?  Or did the Writer "cure" him?  I'm assuming not since nothing in that alt story stuck.  

Edited May 17, 2015 by Camera One

[OnceUponAJen]

So what color will Rumple's heart look now that he's no longer the Dark One? It wouldn't be fair if it suddenly became full red again. So now it's still black but not so black as we saw in "Mother", ie, it's still black but he won't be having constant heart pain anymore? Or did the Writer "cure" him? I'm assuming not since nothing in that alt story stuck.

Didn't it come out pure white once the darkness was removed at the end of the finale? I may have missed some dialogue to do with that.

[Shanna Marie]

Didn't it come out pure white once the darkness was removed at the end of the finale? I may have missed some dialogue to do with that.

I mentioned this on the speculation thread, but it seemed to me that once the darkness was removed, there was nothing left, just an empty vessel. I don't think that was meant to show purity, just that it had been so 100 percent dark that there wasn't anything left.

[ParadoxLost]

It looked clear to me which I took meant he could go either way.  Basically the same thing as with Emma having the potential to be good or darkness until Snowing shifted the balance.

 

But I also missed the fact that he got put into stasis so what do I know?

[Camera One]

So if Merlin is able to destroy the darkness, why didn't he do it before?  Is it because he didn't know and attaching the Dark One to a person was his immediate solution to the problem until he figured things out?  Or was he just being a lazy hack?

 

At the very least, why didn't Merlin banish the person who was tethered to the darkness to a non-magical realm like Blue basically tried to do by giving Bae the magic bean?  Even if the original tethered human got back to the Enchanted Forest, the Apprentice should have been working towards sending each Dark One to a non-magical world like ours.  Zoso should never have been allowed to stay in the Enchanted Forest.  Was The Apprentice doing anything useful apart from sweeping?

[YaddaYadda]

Was The Apprentice doing anything useful apart from sweeping?

 

He was protecting the hat that kept changing hands, so he failed at that.

 

I wanna know how Merlin's very awesome manor arrived in Storybrooke?  Merlin the all powerful's manor was torn to Storybrooke after Snow cast the second curse.  Clearly the Apprentice has been realm jumping since he went to see Lily and he found August in Phucket and told him all about the book.

 

I'm also assuming that August knew Neal was Baelfire because of the Apprentice and he knew where to find Emma because of the same guy.  I guess that clears up the mystery.

 

If the Apprentice knows all and knew what was going on while he was in the hat, I'm guessing Merlin knows everything as well.  Henry and Hook (as well as Emma) are the ones who heart what the Apprentice said about finding Merlin, but if he's such a know-it-all which is what the writing seems to be pointing to, what if Merlin is the one who actually comes to them instead because maybe his Apprentice has died (we're still up in the air with that one) and he has no one to do his bidding for him anymore.

 

I like how the Apprentice tells them who they need to find, then tells them he's far far faaaaar away from here instead of telling them that they need to travel to Camelot or some other realm where he might be.  

[Camera One]

If the Apprentice knows all and knew what was going on while he was in the hat, I'm guessing Merlin knows everything as well.  Henry and Hook (as well as Emma) are the ones who heart what the Apprentice said about finding Merlin, but if he's such a know-it-all which is what the writing seems to be pointing to, what if Merlin is the one who actually comes to them instead because maybe his Apprentice has died (we're still up in the air with that one) and he has no one to do his bidding for him anymore.

 

I like how the Apprentice tells them who they need to find, then tells them he's far far faaaaar away from here instead of telling them that they need to travel to Camelot or some other realm where he might be.  

 

I'm assuming he died, so the "heroes" can't get any more information out of him.  Plus A&E won't need to explain why the Apprentice is lacking a couple million brain cells.

 

It seems like The Apprentice was sitting around in a Robe watching TV in Storybrooke, since he had no idea the Sorcerer's mansion came along for the ride, and the Hat AND the key were just sitting there.  Did The Apprentice know The Door was in Henry's book?  Did he think it was perfectly safe there?  

 

The Sorcerer, Blue Smoke Version, is clearly a very "hands off" boss since he sounded annoyed that The Apprentice disturbed him.

Edited May 18, 2015 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

I like how the Apprentice tells them who they need to find, then tells them he's far far faaaaar away from here instead of telling them that they need to travel to Camelot or some other realm where he might be.

Merlin may not currently be in Camelot. In some of the Arthurian stories, Merlin is put into/goes into a kind of hibernation in a crystal cave, so he might not be physically reachable, or they might have to reunite his spirit and his body. The time we saw the Apprentice talking to him, he seemed incorporeal. That might count as far, far, faaaar away.

 

I do wonder why they hadn't freed the Apprentice before now. Hook and Belle were talking about needing to do that after they freed the fairies, and then apparently they totally forgot about it. What's worse, Blue didn't seem to need anything particularly special to do it. Would they have just never bothered with him if they hadn't found out who he was? (Obviously, they had to keep him there for story reasons because he knew too much and could have prevented a lot of trouble by just telling them what they needed to know, but they should have come up with a better in-story reason why they weren't able to de-hat him until then.)

[Camera One]

I do wonder why they hadn't freed the Apprentice before now. Hook and Belle were talking about needing to do that after they freed the fairies, and then apparently they totally forgot about it. What's worse, Blue didn't seem to need anything particularly special to do it. Would they have just never bothered with him if they hadn't found out who he was? (Obviously, they had to keep him there for story reasons because he knew too much and could have prevented a lot of trouble by just telling them what they needed to know, but they should have come up with a better in-story reason why they weren't able to de-hat him until then.)

 

It was clumsy writing for sure.  I guess A&E could argue that Blue didn't know they possessed anything from the old man, and she needed that.  While Hook didn't know Blue had the powers to release people from the Hat, as long as she had a possession.  So it was lack of communication.  Ironic...

 

What's more, he came out and seemed to know exactly what was happening.  But if he did know all, why would he side-eye Hook, since wouldn't he know Rumple had him under his thumb?  

Edited May 18, 2015 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

But if he did know all, why would he side-eye Hook, since wouldn't he know Rumple had him under his thumb?

Maybe that look just meant, "Ah, good, Clarence is still on the job," or "I hope Clarence is on stand-by, because things are about to get difficult for him."

 

(going back to our running bit about Hook's overworked guardian angel)

 

But Hook was just being blackmailed when he forced the Apprentice into the hat. At that point, he still had a choice. It was a difficult choice and he had a lot to lose, but he wasn't required to cooperate, and it was only his own paranoia about the hand that got him into the situation to be blackmailed (and before that, his insecurity/vanity/bravado that got him into the situation that made him paranoid about the hand). It was different from the fairies, where he literally had no choice because he was being controlled. So I don't entirely blame the side-eye.

[KAOS Agent]

If the Darkness is its own entity and it's tethered to the dagger to keep it from destroying everything in its path, wouldn't it have wanted Rumpel and Belle to True Love's Kiss? Wouldn't it have tried extra hard to keep Rumpel from pulling away? If True Love's Kiss simply releases the human soul from being tied to the Darkness, as I suspect it has to otherwise Emma & Henry share a peck and the whole Dark!Emma plot is over, then the evil demon inside him should have been all over the idea of the kiss and freedom from being tethered. This then shows that not only did Rumpel have choice and control over the Darkness in his actions, but he very clearly chose the Darkness over Belle.

 

Also, Rumpel told Ursula they needed to make two more stops before Storybrooke. They went to Cruella's and that's it. What was the second stop? 

[The Cake is a Pie]

Also, Rumpel told Ursula they needed to make two more stops before Storybrooke. They went to Cruella's and that's it. What was the second stop?

Mr. Cluck's

[KingOfHearts]

Rumple told Ursula to "get her things" like they were going to pick up Cruella than head right into wherever they were going. Later we see he's been living in her apartment for a while. I think this was another instance of dialog being said for the effect of grandeur instead of what a character would actually say.

Edited May 31, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[KAOS Agent]

 

I think was another instance of dialog being said for the effect of grandeur instead of what a character would actually say.

 

Exactly. It was meant to create drama, but ultimately was completely irrelevant. I kept expecting it to be revealed as the season went on where Rumpel would pull out something that he got at the second stop. I hate that this show does things like this. It actually finally gave itself a built in reason for some alien vampire bunnies to appear and then they dropped it completely. It's not like they didn't already have multiple episodes written when they were filming this one. They continued filming without break between 4A & 4B. It's not like they stopped for a few weeks and decided to change their minds with the next episode.

 

Plus, the timeline got all wonky. "Six weeks later" was shown on the screen when Rumpel approached Ursula in "Heroes & Villains" and told her to get her things. Belle & Hook discuss the six weeks they've been working to free the fairies, so this lines up with Rumpel & Ursula leaving immediately. However, at the beginning of "Darkness at the Edge of Town," Rumpel is happily ensconced in Ursula's apartment where it's implied he's been long enough to wear out his welcome. So what happened there? How little thought is put into the season long arcs? To fix the continuity, they only needed to change one word in Hook's dialogue and say eight weeks they'd been working on the hat deal, but Rumpel just hanging out while his heart is basically dying seems a little off. He went with her to get her things and then thought, This place seems nice. My heart will be fine in the Land without Magic. I totally didn't flatline a few weeks ago. Let me hang out in my bathrobe and eat ramen for a while. Why wouldn't they just grab Cruella and go?

[OnceUponAJen]

This is something I've been wondering for a while. Does anyone know how many people it would actually take to sail a ship the size of the Jolly Roger (Lady Washington, I think it is)? It seemed a bit hopeful to think that only two could do it, as in the S4 finale and I really have no idea what it takes realistically.

[Amerilla]

Lady Washington has a crew of about 12, I believe.

[daxx]

This is something I've been wondering for a while. Does anyone know how many people it would actually take to sail a ship the size of the Jolly Roger (Lady Washington, I think it is)? It seemed a bit hopeful to think that only two could do it, as in the S4 finale and I really have no idea what it takes realistically.

A crew of a dozen is correct. Hook stated the Jolly is made from enchanted wood. My headcanon is that the captain thinks what he wants and it happens. Sort of like The Queen Anne's Revenge in the Pirates of the Caribbean. Nothing else would makes sense. In a pinch a brig the size of the Jolly could probably be sailed by a crew half the size of ideal, but not a single person. Someone has to trim the sails and man the sheets.

[Shanna Marie]

I don't think a ship like that can just be sailed up to or away from the docks, either. It has to be towed in and out because it's not quite so maneuverable as to make it through a harbor and to a particular pier (it would all depend on the wind). So that must be more enchanted ship magic when Hook and Cora just sailed up to the dock in Storybrooke, or when Hook just sailed away alone, or when he returned alone, or when they left for Neverland and returned from Neverland.

 

They write the Jolly Roger like there's a gas pedal and brake pedal there at the wheel, and all you need is someone standing at the wheel to make it go, stop, and turn.

[pezgirl7]

Most sail boats, including tall ships, have a motor diesel engine for auxiliary power, so yea, the enchanted wood must have something to do with it. Here is some interesting info about how ships used to dock and embark

http://ask.metafilter.com/45303/How-did-massive-ships-embark-from-the-pier

It seems like they mostly used ropes to pull the ship to their destination, which obviously would require a lot of strong men. The link mentions the Lady Washington, aka The Jolly Roger, once being able to leave the dock with just its sails, due to the wind being just right.

[Shanna Marie]

A discussion on the spoiler thread got me started thinking again about accents on the show. In the real world, accents can tell you something about a person's geographical origins, as well as their educational level and social class. I'm not sure what accents say on this show because so far they haven't used the accents to indicate much of anything, even though characters have varying accents. They're not going with "accent blind" in which they just use the actors' natural accents and don't worry about explaining what that means (like color-blind casting that's often used on stage) since a number of actors aren't using their native accents. There are foreign actors using North American accents, North American actors using foreign accents, and foreign actors using different foreign accents. Leaving out the spoilers that triggered this, here's how I figure them being sorted:

 

The "default" accent seems to be North American (non-specific American/Canadian). This applies to most Enchanted Forest characters, plus Arendelle and the Southern Isles, and the sea creature characters.

 

Characters with British (or variations on British) accents:
Rumple (with varying degrees of touches of Scottish depending on where he is in life)
Milah
Hook (with a bit of a lilt that makes his accent not entirely standard British)
Blackbeard
Zelena (and her adoptive parents)
Will
most of the Wonderland characters, including Anastasia and the people from Agrabah
Pan/Malcolm (but as Malcolm he was Scottish)
Cruella
Robin Hood

 

Australian/New Zealand accents:
Belle and her father
Tinkerbell

 

Other non-American accents:
Gepetto/Marco -- Italian
Lumiere -- French
the one guy in Arendelle who inexplicably has a stereotypical Scandinavian accent even though no one else there does (but since that was in the movie, I guess we can't blame the show)

 

There are some odd mixes that come up. Anastasia is Cinderella's stepsister, but Cinderella has an American accent and Anastasia has a British accent -- maybe Cinderella's stepfamily is from a different place than Cinderella. Robin has a different accent from Marian, who sounds more like the rest of the Enchanted Forest characters -- did he move to the Sherwood/Enchanted forest region from elsewhere? Is the "Australian" accent a very localized dialect, since only Belle and her father seem to have it? Zelena and her adoptive parents sound British, but no one else we've met from Oz did. It's interesting that they have the Wicked Witch be British when the source material is so very American and they've generally given British accents to characters from distinctly British sources, like the characters from Peter Pan, though some of the Alice in Wonderland characters were British. Hook sounds like a foreigner to the Enchanted Forest, but no one's ever remarked on this, asked about his origins or assumed something about his origins. Gepetto's parents died when he was young, and it sounds like he was more or less brought up by Jiminy, who has an American accent, and the people around them had American accents, but Gepetto has an Italian accent.

[Faemonic]

A discussion on the spoiler thread got me started thinking again about accents on the show. In the real world, accents can tell you something about a person's geographical origins, as well as their educational level and social class. I'm not sure what accents say on this show because so far they haven't used the accents to indicate much of anything, even though characters have varying accents. They're not going with "accent blind" in which they just use the actors' natural accents and don't worry about explaining what that means (like color-blind casting that's often used on stage) since a number of actors aren't using their native accents.

I think they're still doing that, the "accent blind" thing, actually. Not so blind that they use the actors' natural accents, but blind enough to be non-indicative.

 

The casting call for Lancelot, and now Merlin, is one of the stranger ones I've read. African-American with a British accent? Don't they have African-British people with British accents in Britain? It's not like there's a human embargo that prevents them casting over the pond. Maybe the auditionees won't be called African-British because that sort of pedantry is generally found more on the Stateside, but it definitely boggles me how specific and yet non-indicative that is. Like, authentic accents need not apply for this role. I doubt that everybody in Camelot would be African-American with posh London accents, either, though that would be interesting if so.

 

Reminds me of the Marco Polo miniseries on Netflix, where everybody spoke English even when they were 13th century Mongolians speaking to Chinese people, which I didn't mind. But the translation convention got kind of weird when Prince Jingim started crying to his dad that, "The Mongolians don't respect me because you made me Chinese! I dress Chinese! I talk Chinese!" And I'm like, kid, you are soooo Australian. It would not have surprised me if the guy playing Marco Polo were an American faking an Italian accent, although it appears that he actually is Italian and looks like Jaimie Dornan's hot younger brother.

 

...And, you know, if they can get away with it, then a Kitchen Sink Fantasy like OUAT can do too.

 

Disney's got a dubiously proud history of accent inconsistency. Peter Pan was American among the very English Darling family, even though they were careful enough to give Cecco an Italian accent. The original voice for Aurora had a Southern accent that they tried to coach into something "more trans-Atlantic" whatever that meant. I think somebody from The Jungle Book spoke in Ebonics? Definitely nobody was Indian.

Edited June 22, 2015 by Faemonic

[Shanna Marie]

The casting call for Lancelot, and now Merlin, is one of the stranger ones I've read. African-American with a British accent?

It turned out that wasn't from the actual casting call but was the reporter reporting the casting call, going on political correctness autopilot. The casting call was for black and British, and the reporter changed "black" to "African American" because that's the current approved term, but didn't think it through and realize that he wasn't talking about an American. The reporter went back and corrected it. So we'll let the casting people live this time.

 

It does seem weird if they're doing accent-blind some of the time to also have specific accent requirements at other times. For the most part, they seem to be having American be the default, for most of the generic fairy tale characters, while those that are specifically from British literature are British-ish. Still doesn't explain Zelena, from the very American Wizard of Oz, being British. In other cases, they seem to have started with accent-blind in the original casting, but then the accents of the original cast dictated the accents of people around them -- Rumple's parents need to be Scottish, Belle's family needs to be Australian, etc.

[YaddaYadda]

The accents!

 

My favorite one is the whole accent dynamic with Rumple's family.  Milah, British accent, Rumple sort of Scottish (I guess it depends on the day since that changes), Baelfire, America accent...Pan British accent, Malcolm who is supposed to be the grown up version of Pan, not so British accent.  I don't remember wee Rumple's accent.

 

Next stop, A&E will be blaming the accents on the Rumple family dynamic going south because these people didn't understand each other when they spoke.

[Shanna Marie]

I don't remember wee Rumple's accent.

I think he was Scottish. I remember thinking it fit the adult version.

 

I can see Bae having a different accent than his parents because that happens with kids in immigrant families, but then does that mean Rumple and Milah moved there from elsewhere? And if so, then why is he so afraid to move away?

[YaddaYadda]

And if so, then why is he so afraid to move away?

 

Easy.  Scared of change and the unknown which is exactly how Rumple's character is built.  Every character on this show has their polar opposite.  

[Faemonic]

It turned out that wasn't from the actual casting call but was the reporter reporting the casting call, going on political correctness autopilot. The casting call was for black and British, and the reporter changed "black" to "African American" because that's the current approved term, but didn't think it through and realize that he wasn't talking about an American. The reporter went back and corrected it. So we'll let the casting people live this time.

 

It does seem weird if they're doing accent-blind some of the time to also have specific accent requirements at other times. For the most part, they seem to be having American be the default, for most of the generic fairy tale characters, while those that are specifically from British literature are British-ish. Still doesn't explain Zelena, from the very American Wizard of Oz, being British. In other cases, they seem to have started with accent-blind in the original casting, but then the accents of the original cast dictated the accents of people around them -- Rumple's parents need to be Scottish, Belle's family needs to be Australian, etc.

Bwaha, that kind of pedantry is definitely found Stateside, no offense to Statesians. The casting people should live long and prosper, because baby Snow and baby Ursula were perf, and JMo looks like JDall and Ginny smooshed together, and also everybody.

 

But it really seems like the anthropology of the Enchanted Forest boils down to, "Whatever A&E feel like." The Germanly-named Rumpelstiltskin is Scottish here but not too Scottish because the viewing audience mostly have Saxon ears (why won't this let me link to The Proclaimers' performance of "Throw the R Away"?) and he has an English wife and a Canadian kid...but apparently it would just be weird if the royal family of fantasy France didn't consistently have Aussie accents.

Edited June 23, 2015 by Faemonic

[KingOfHearts]

Why didn't Snow and Charming fret about Baby No. 2 being evil? They never even questioned whether it was a True Love Baby or not. Why exactly wasn't BDO a TLB? Story reasons?

Edited June 23, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[YaddaYadda]

Well that useless nimrod Glinda told Snow that she was now carrying two pure hearts when she crossed the door of stupid.

 

Glinda the Good Witch vs Maleficent the Worst Villain...gives you an idea.  All in all, anyone can manipulate Snow.  I don't think she's working with a full deck anymore.

[Curio]

Why didn't Snow and Charming fret about Baby No. 2 being evil? They never even questioned whether it was a True Love Baby or not. Why exactly wasn't BDO a TLB? Story reasons?

 

On this show, it's always #BecausePlot.

 

Speaking of babies, I'm curious about when the writers decided to give Regina the storyline about not being able to have a child. (Probably around the same time they decided to resurrect Zelena.) Shouldn't we have gotten some kind of emotional reaction from Regina in Season 3 when Snow announced she was pregnant again? Would she be jealous? Sad? Something? Or at least begin to reflect about that random flashback we got during her conversation with Zelena in the cell at the end of Season 4? Why wouldn't that memory of Regina drinking the potion to spite her mother pop into her head as she was in the hospital protecting Snow's delivery from her sister Zelena in the Season 3 finale? Wouldn't Regina connect the dots then and think, "Wow, I can't believe I was once jealous of Snow's ability to have children, but now I'm risking my life trying to protect her second child"? Why did they wait until the end of Season 4 to reveal that? Considering 3B was all about babies, it would have made more thematic sense to include it there.

Edited June 23, 2015 by Curio

[YaddaYadda]

But wasn't there always this thought that Regina might be barren?  I remember talks especially in season 2 when she tried to keep Owen for herself.  And there was the whole Hansel and Gretel thing in the EF when she offered them to stay (I don't remember what it was in exchange of).  I always assumed she couldn't have kids. I just didn't think she did it to herself.