S07.E21: Homecoming

[KingOfHearts]

Why not use Remy's bean to start relocating everyone back to the Disenchanted Forest? 

Tiana is not queen here and has no real power. They're not in a bubble like Storybrooke.

[Mitch]

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Why not use Remy's bean to start relocating everyone back to the Disenchanted Forest? 

Tiana is not queen here and has no real power. They're not in a bubble like Storybrooke.

But arent the "real " people like.."Who the hell are these people??" Didn't their memories come back too, or is that something a true Author doesnt need to explain?

[KingOfHearts]

On 5/15/2018 at 7:59 AM, Rumsy4 said:

I noticed that as well. A&E's so-called feminism always comes with strings. They may put a sword in Snow White's hand, but they will also label her a murderer for using it.

This show's unintended moral is "be careful what you wish for". You want female leads? They're also going to grovel and wait for an abuser (Rumple or Rumple) to save the day. IMO, this show has done more harm than good as far as feminism is concerned.

Edited May 17, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Rushmoras]

Umm... I acutally don't have anything to say. Only one thought is in my mind: "Where's the timeline, Lebowski?!" Sure, some of the previous seasons baddies returned, a guest appeareance of J. Gilmore, whose character is sort of dark, cause he blames Regina and whatnot, but... is that it? Rumple wants a story for himselfa. Jeez, just create an alternate world where he's Emperor and let him have it lol. Nah, but seriously, pretty bleak episode. I wonder if ep22 will be the same...

Wait, Wish Henry is King... and he was friendzoned? Dude, just order her to be your concubine, what the hell.

Edited May 31, 2018 by Rushmoras

[Camera One]

This episode was still more entertaining than the Season 5 and 6 finale, but the story still made little sense.

Wish Rumple's actions were all over the place.  If he wanted to tempt Henry to get the Author's pen, why not just transport him to the Wish Realm by himself? 

Instead, somehow Wish Rump knew about Tilly's mirror, and he knew Rumple/Whook/Regina would go to look for realm hopping objects among Tilly's belongings, so Wish Rump went to crack the mirror.  Cracking the mirror was apparently specially designed to separate the four of them - send Rumple and Whook to the old hovel, and Regina and Henry to his castle, but ultimately, why?  Rumple and Whook ended up going to Rumple's castle anyway, with a pit stop at Whook's place.  

Why would he want Regina hanging around the Henry he wants to manipulate? 

How did he know that Henry would come to the conclusion that he needed to get the pen while he's frantically flipping through library books?

Yes, thank for reminding us that Squid Ink is basically useless and no one who uses Squid Ink gets important stuff done during the 30 seconds it actually works.

Sabine's speech was worse on rewatch.   If these people are ignoring Sabine now, then they probably didn't think much of her back in the Disenchanted Forest either.  If their memories were back, they should be in awe of being in the presence of their wonderful leader.

In the first few scenes, Henry, Jacinda, and Lucy were pretty much acting exactly the way they did before getting their memories back.  I didn't see any difference that they knew they were family.  It just made the whole Curse breaking feel very anti-climatic.

So The Apprentice was shaming Henry - "You haven't written in quite some time.  The Author's true job is to record story, not create them.  You choose each time, how you will use the Pen"  So what's Henry supposed to be writing about exactly?  When he writes while asleep, it's that a choice?  It's the second last episode and the Author still makes no sense.

Thank goodness for Tilly's super informative "feeling".  "Something is wrong!  My father is in trouble!  They're in the Wish Realm!"  Who needs a telephone, eh?

Edited January 11, 2020 by Camera One

[tennisgurl]

Show of hands if your not surprised that Henry being an impulsive idiot is going to apparently doom the multiverse? *Hands raise* 

More importantly, our true hero has arrived, WHenry! I really wish WRumple hadn't interrupted Regina when she started to try and explain to WHenry why she murdered his family. I would have loved to hear that one! Honestly, I was and still am surprised and shocked that they remembered WHenry, and have brought him back like this, understandably pissed at Regina for what she did to his family, which was basically just played for laughs during the actual scene and has been ignored every since. Its amazing, especially this late in the game, to see Regina have to face some actual consequences for her actions, especially for what she did after she was supposedly a good guy. 

Spoiler

It all gets thrown out by the finale of course, but it was great for about a minute at least. WHenry is still probably the best idea they had this season.

 

Edited January 11, 2020 by tennisgurl

[Camera One]

Having a cold and distant WHenry for Season 7 would have been more interesting and could have led to actual character exploration. 

In the flashbacks, we could have watched him deal with his grief over the disappearance of his mother and the death of his grandparents.  Maybe he does capture WRegina, but he can't execute her because... well, after all, he was raised by Snowing.  And perhaps WRegina is not out for revenge anymore considering WSnow was now dead.  Maybe that actually made her reflect on what she did to WSnow and realize that WSnow wasn't to blame and WCora was.

And then they are Cursed by an even bigger evil (Mother Gothel) and WHenry is forced to rely on WRegina for her magic, so they are forced to have a working relationship.  But their attempt to stop the Curse fails, and they are sent to Hyperion Heights.

The WHook storyline could stay intact.  Not sure where Jacinda and Lucy (and Victoria, Ivy, Anastasia, Dr. Facilier, and the rest of the annoying supporting cast) would fit into that story, though.  

Edited January 11, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

They could have called this episode "what might have been." Jacinda and Lucy in a snowglobe improved them considerably. It was the best they've been all season. While Tiana's speech was lame, in the scene between her and Naveen I found myself wishing that they'd been more front and center all season, with an actual story. They had a lot more chemistry than Henry and Jacinda. WRumple makes a far better villain than anyone else we've seen this season, and focusing on our original cast in the jaunt to the Wish Realm added a spark that's been missing most of the season. If they'd focused all season on Rumple, WHook, and (I can't believe I'm saying this) Regina instead of Adult Henry, Jacinda, and Lucy, the season would have been a lot better, and I bet it wouldn't have bled viewers so badly. Why keep the original cast members, only to sideline them? If we've been following this show for six seasons, we're not going to be eager to jump over to an entirely different cast all of a sudden.

It's weird that they just learned that they've traveled back in time, and yet nobody says anything about trying to get back to their own time.

Odd little thing I noticed: Rogers' prosthetic was something he could just unscrew to remove, but it's apparently capable of fine motion good enough to hold an iPhone (something I have trouble with even with real hands). With as much motion as he had in that hand, there should have been all kinds of circuits and electronics. It shouldn't have unscrewed at the wrist. It would have gone farther up his arm because there would have been electrodes in it that attach to the arm so that moving his muscles could make the hand work (I once got to try a demo version of one they had so that people with intact limbs could see what it was like to work a prosthetic hand). And in spite of having that functional hand, he goes back to the hook? Also, he suddenly has a totally new jacket that I suspect was remade from the longer jacket Hook Prime briefly had in season 6. I suppose they needed a coat modified to disguise the arm length difference because of the hook, and they might as well reuse one rather than making something new for the last two episodes. I think they added some zippers to it.

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

Having a cold and distant WHenry for Season 7 would have been more interesting and could have led to actual character exploration. 

That's more or less my current mental scenario for my alternate season 7. The pre-curse backstory is all in the Wish Realm, with WRumple conning WHenry into working with him to go after WRegina (not telling him that it's actually not the same person who killed his grandparents). Maybe there's a Gothel-like person, or else Gothel but with a different backstory, goal, etc., but in that realm in a distant land, so we still have the Alice story within the Wishverse. When Emma sends WHook back to the Jolly Roger, he ends up back on the ship that WRegina has been running all this time. They end up sailing through some magical vortex that de-ages them. Somewhere along the way, the curse gets cast. In the present, cursed WHenry finds the storybooks about seasons one through six and thinks they're about him and the people he sees in his neighborhood. They all start working together as friends, and only after the curse is broken (not in the finale, but sooner) does he realize that Regina was never his mother, WHook was never his stepfather, etc. Sorry, no Jacinda or Lucy. I'm afraid there's no room for Robyn, either, since she'd be the wrong age at this point in the timeline (taking place soon after the Wishverse episodes in season six), even if she still exists in the Wishverse. Maybe that actress plays some other character who's more like Margot, less like Robyn, and she has a relationship with Alice.

Something that occurred to me when I was thinking about how different WRumple and our Rumple were, possibly due to Belle's influence (let's just go with it and pretend Rumple Prime is actually a "good man" now): Why didn't the Charmings in either reality find Belle? She was a prisoner in Regina's castle, and they captured Regina. Did Snow not want to go back to her old castle at all, not even to look for some of her stuff? Did they not think to search all of Regina's strongholds? How did they not find Belle before the curse/before she wasted away when the curse wasn't cast?

[Camera One]

I'm trying to figure out why this episode was a bit better.  For me, I don't think it's because we were focusing on the originals.  I didn't enjoy Regina and Rumple's interactions in Hyperion Heights all that much.  

Maybe it was the fact that Whook had his memories back (I suppose Henry as well), so they could all discuss a problem in the open.  Maybe it was because they had a common goal.  Maybe because it was more fun to see them on an adventure in an alt land.  I think it was a probably a combination of the above.

So The Apprentice didn't bother looking for The Author in the Wish Realm?

52 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

That's more or less my current mental scenario for my alternate season 7. The pre-curse backstory is all in the Wish Realm, with WRumple conning WHenry into working with him to go after WRegina (not telling him that it's actually not the same person who killed his grandparents).

Would that be Teenage Henry or Adult Henry?

[Shanna Marie]

22 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Would that be Teenage Henry or Adult Henry?

Teen Wish Henry. In my scenario, it picks up right after the wishverse episodes and follows the Wishverse adventures. Adult Henry remains in the distant future that we will never be forced to see, unless 15 or so years from now they decide to do Once Upon a Time: The Next Generation with an all-new cast (maybe with some cameos from the naturally aged original cast, possibly with one of the original cast in some kind of mentor role). Going in chronological order, WRumple starts conning WHenry and WHook and WRegina team up (de-aging along the way) to find Alice. Stuff happens that brings them all together, and a curse is cast that sends them to maybe a neighborhood in New York (one that's on the tip of either Manhattan or Long Island, so it's actually isolated and doesn't interact with the rest of the city, which doesn't know it exists. They can't  leave the neighborhood but their cursed memories make them not aware of it, so they just think it's a dead-end kind of place that nobody escapes). WHenry, a nerd who hangs out in the library, finds the storybooks, then passes cursed WRegina on the street, sees cursed WHook, starts to wonder if there might be another curse, eventually brings them all together. Alice and whatever other characters are also there. Based on the books, they decide that they must be these people, so they have to find a way to break the curse and get back to Storybrooke to their family, but who cursed them? Stuff happens, the memory part of the curse breaks, and they realize the books weren't about them. They're the wish versions of the characters and they have totally different stories. There's some conflict because some of them were enemies, but they've become friends during the curse. They decide to team up to take on the villain (Gothel? Wrumple?) and get back home. Maybe in the finale (since I doubt the series would have survived, anyway), they end up in Storybrooke, where we get to see the original cast again.

I think the flashback story would have had to be told in mostly reverse chronological order, like in season one, starting with the curse and working backward until we see that these are actually the Wish people. We would learn that a bit before they do, so there's some dread of knowing it might not go well when they realize what's going on.

Speaking of WHenry: What was he doing in the Disenchanted Forest? Isn't he king of the Wishverse Enchanted Forest? Why is he galavanting about from realm to realm? I guess he really takes after Henry Prime in being more concerned with looking like a hero and having adventures than in actually doing something useful. And he takes after his alter ego's adoptive mother, who's prone to ditching her responsibilities on a whim.

32 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Maybe it was the fact that Whook had his memories back (I suppose Henry as well), so they could all discuss a problem in the open.  Maybe it was because they had a common goal.  Maybe because it was more fun to see them on an adventure in an alt land.  I think it was a probably a combination of the above.

I think some of it was that they had an actual goal. For most of the season, aside from Rogers looking for Eloise, there was no real goal. The heroes were all passive, mostly just reacting to things, and not even really doing much about them, not in a way that was really about the story. The most active thing they did all season was start the food truck, and everything that was about striving toward something in the past happened offscreen. They just talked about what they wanted but didn't do anything. In this episode, they were actually doing something. They were going somewhere, had some kind of plan, and were taking steps toward that plan. They were striving, and the solution didn't just fall into their laps. Plus, it was fun to see the familiar cameo characters.

[Camera One]

46 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Speaking of WHenry: What was he doing in the Disenchanted Forest? Isn't he king of the Wishverse Enchanted Forest? Why is he galavanting about from realm to realm? I guess he really takes after Henry Prime in being more concerned with looking like a hero and having adventures than in actually doing something useful. And he takes after his alter ego's adoptive mother, who's prone to ditching her responsibilities on a whim.

That really made no sense.  As per the discussion back in 2018 (yikes, how time flies), I suspect it was a way to throw in a red herring.  Wish Rumple says to Henry, "I came all the way from the Wish Realm", to suggest that it wasn't Wish Henry, but the Original Recipe Henry.  

Then, at the end, we find out the "twist"... Wish Rumple was speaking to Wish Henry.  So as you said, why would he be in the Disenchanted Forest?  Or the Dis-Disenchanted Forest or the Dis-Dis-Disenchanted forest with the German Snow White, depending on how many there were.  

Considering King and Queen Snowing died and the heir Emma had disappeared, King Henry would need to rule the Wish Realm.  He wouldn't have had time to go galavanting.

Plus the Disenchanted Sleeping Beauty knew Henry and treated him like he was being friendzoned.  So this would mean Wish Henry had spent an inordinate amount of time in the Disenchanted Forest.  

The Henry in the prologue also certainly didn't seem like someone who was angry and bitter over his murdered grandparents and grieving over his disappeared mother.  

Plain and simple, the Henry in the prologue acted like Storybrooke Henry.  I think you pointed out in a previous post that Wish Henry at the end seemed to be speaking with a hint of a British accent with formal speech.  

Now, I could have seen Wish Henry going to a neighboring kingdom in the Wish Realm to try to wake Sleeping Beauty.  And he could well have been friends with her before the Sleeping Curse, and maybe Emma/Snowing were even considering a possible arranged marriage for Henry with the girl.  

46 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Teen Wish Henry. In my scenario, it picks up right after the wishverse episodes and follows the Wishverse adventures. Adult Henry remains in the distant future that we will never be forced to see

Wow, no Adult Henry.  That would have been quite a different Season 7.  You would be getting rid of the Main Guy!  I am guessing Jared actually wanted to stay, so they could have done that if A&E had wanted.

Edited January 12, 2020 by Camera One

[tennisgurl]

Honestly, this isnt an awful episode. Rumple and WHook have an interesting dynamic, and it was great to see the characters actually doing things, and not just frantically reacting to whatever the villains do or getting jerked around by them, literally and metaphorically sometimes! I also enjoyed the cameos, and the show did at least pick some of the shows best characters/actors to bring back (Pan! Cruella! Ariel!) even if most of them didnt really do a whole lot. 

Normally I would be upset that our main heroine is apparently spending the series finale as a damsel for her husband to run around trying to save to advance the plot, especially on that they kept trying to push as some kind of badass, but considering its Murderella and Lucy, two of the shows most annoying and useless additions to the cast, I can only be happy that they wont be running around making things worse. Its kind of hilarious, like even the writers realized what a fail those two were, and quickly shoved them off-screen. 

How are the writers on this show so bad at writing inspirational speeches? Every one is worse than the last one, and while at least the actress playing Tiana is pretty good, so its a bit less embarrassing than other speeches, but its all such hallow nonsense. 

 

[Camera One]

I did laugh when Henry told Regina, "Mom, stop, you're making it worse!"  When Regina kept trying to zap the globe with magic creating a swirling blizzard to the point we couldn't even see Jacinda and Lucy.  

[KingOfHearts]

I remember thinking there wasn't enough Storybrooke in the last two episodes. Not because I was hoping to see a rendition of The Last Supper or anything, but because it was teased so much in promos and spoilers. This episode is literally called "Homecoming", but iurc, most of it takes place in the Wish Realm.

The curse should've been broken much earlier in the season. Dealing with the fallout should've been the majority of 7B. I thought it was dumb when half the characters had their memories and the other half acted EXACTLY like their fairy tale counterparts. There was no tension because everyone was basically the same. 

[Camera One]

16 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

I thought it was dumb when half the characters had their memories and the other half acted EXACTLY like their fairy tale counterparts. There was no tension because everyone was basically the same. 

I agree that was a big part of the fail.  In Season 1, the Curse stripped away the core aspects of a character's personality and Emma helped bring their personalities back to the surface.  That created more of a dichotomy.

In Season 7, the Curse did not change anyone's personality.  There were no real ramifications of their memories coming back.  Friends who were friends stayed friends, and finding out they were actually family felt like a moot point.  It was very anticlimatic.  The only pairing that worked was Rogers and Tilly because their memories reminded them of the poisoned heart and their inability to be close to one another.

Going to Storybrooke felt unnecessary and shoehorned in just because it's the series finale.  So now it doesn't matter if you go and change the past, but Regina avoided doing that all season?   Apparently, you can telephone someone in Storybrooke no problem.  "Hi Regina from the past, would you mind grabbing some magic and coming out to Seattle.  Thanks!"

Edited January 12, 2020 by Camera One

[Camera One]

I was just thinking.  Did we ever get a conversation where Alice talks about how she felt about her mother being such a disturbed psycho?  She never got to find out her mother's sad story of the tree nymphs... the days of the glade and her best friend Yarrow.  In Season 8, we could have seen Alice try to resurrect the tree nymphs... reawakening the trees and communing with her grandmother tree's spirit.  Can you imagine a "Once Upon a Tree Nymph" spinoff?  It could feature Pocahontas.  Along with a "Once Upon a Beignet" spinoff with Tiana and Naveen trying to expand their business across North America.  What about a spinoff with Ivy and Anastasia's adventures back in the Disenchanted forest called "Once Upon a Murderous Sister"?   So much lost potential!   Disney+ could fill its slate with "Once" spinoffs.  

Edited January 12, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

15 hours ago, Camera One said:

Wow, no Adult Henry.  That would have been quite a different Season 7.  You would be getting rid of the Main Guy!  I am guessing Jared actually wanted to stay, so they could have done that if A&E had wanted.

It would have been totally different, which is the idea. I don't know why they felt the need to do that huge time jump that was only a time jump for some characters, and then there was time travel so that it was a time jump but not really because it was set in the same time. If I'm being uncharitable about their creativity, I'd say that they only had one trick in their writing book, and they weren't creative enough to find a way to play on their set-up and themes without doing a carbon copy of season one. They could only do the kid shows up and says "You're my parent" story that maps to season one. Aside from that reason, I wonder why they felt the need to age Henry beyond Jared. I know that one of the reasons they dropped most of the cast was that they would have had to negotiate new contracts, and there are certain raises built into the union rules before you even start negotiating, but there are a lot of variables in play. Would the new adult actor have been that much less expensive than re-signing Jared? Or were there other expenses related to having a minor? I know there has to be on-set tutoring and they can only work so many hours. But then they had Lucy, so they still had the minor issues.

In my fantasy season 7, we still get the "you're my parent" scene, except it's cursed teen WHenry, who's found the storybooks, approaching cursed WRegina, thinking he's Storybrooke Henry and she's Storybrooke Regina.

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

In Season 7, the Curse did not change anyone's personality.  There were no real ramifications of their memories coming back.  Friends who were friends stayed friends, and finding out they were actually family felt like a moot point. 

There was also nothing keeping them from being with their real loved ones, the way there was in curse one. Jacinda and Henry had no other entanglements under the curse that kept them from being together. Sabine had the same personality as Tiana, so she and Jacinda were still friends. It wasn't like Red and Snow being so drastically changed that they had nothing in common until Emma showed up and the curse weakened enough for them to start becoming more like their real selves. And, as we saw in this episode, apparently they were all able to keep their stuff from their home world. A lot of things, like Hook's hook, ended up in Rumple's evidence locker (even though he had nothing to do with the curse), but then somehow Remy was able to hang onto a magic bean?

The other issue is that the nature of the curse and the reasoning behind it was so unclear. Curse one was actually a curse. It was a punishment designed to make people suffer, so it ripped them from their lives and put them in an entirely different place, in situations designed to make them miserable, with personalities that were different from their real selves, separated from their loved ones. We later learned that the memory part of it was separate (I wonder if that was a retcon when they re-cast the curse in season 3), but in season one, it kind of worked that "breaking" the curse was restoring them to their true selves. Emma had already broken the frozen time by coming to town, and there was some gradual weakening, but the final straw was them getting their memories and personalities back, so they could be reunited with their loved ones and start having some control over their lives.

The season seven curse doesn't work quite so well. Even when we learned the reason behind it, it made no sense. Gothel didn't seem to have any particular reason why she needed to drag all those people with her. She was punishing the entire planet, not really those specific people. She could have accomplished her goal more easily with a magic bean, Pan's shadow, Wish Jefferson's hat, or one of the Sorcerer's doors. The only reason for the memory changes was possibly to keep them from opposing her (but, again, why bring the people who might oppose you with you?). Everyone was pretty much their usual selves, just without the knowledge of being from another world. Nothing kept friends or families apart. They weren't miserable. That meant that breaking the curse wasn't very dramatic. Most of our characters already had their memories. It amounted to "Okay, I'm actually married to this person I'm in love with." It seems that in this curse, breaking it gave the magical characters their powers back, but, again, why put that in the curse, other than to keep these people she didn't have to bring with her from opposing her?

But I think most of this problem was due to the storyline being heavily altered along the way. Gothel showed up fairly early in the season, but I suspect her role shifted once they decided the stepmother/stepsister story wasn't working so well. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to have put a lot of thought into the random explanation they came up with for the events they'd already written.

6 minutes ago, Camera One said:

What about a spinoff with Ivy and Anastasia's adventures back in the Disenchanted forest called "Once Upon a Murderous Sister"?  

We don't know if they went back to their time or just went to the place, but at the same time, so they were living in the past while they were also there as kids (or however the timeline worked -- Anastasia died before the first curse would have been cast, so Drizella should have been at least 50). The whole timeline is going to collapse when redeemed Drizella intervenes in her past self's life to keep her from going down the wrong path.

[Camera One]

25 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

If I'm being uncharitable about their creativity, I'd say that they only had one trick in their writing book, and they weren't creative enough to find a way to play on their set-up and themes without doing a carbon copy of season one. They could only do the kid shows up and says "You're my parent" story that maps to season one. Aside from that reason, I wonder why they felt the need to age Henry beyond Jared. I know that one of the reasons they dropped most of the cast was that they would have had to negotiate new contracts, and there are certain raises built into the union rules before you even start negotiating, but there are a lot of variables in play. Would the new adult actor have been that much less expensive than re-signing Jared? Or were there other expenses related to having a minor? I know there has to be on-set tutoring and they can only work so many hours. But then they had Lucy, so they still had the minor issues.

In A&E's fairytale world, this would have been a "fresh" reboot that could have lasted more than 1 season.  They probably saw the potential of Adult Henry/Jacinda being like a new combined Emma/Snowing for the next two or three seasons while they gradually became "family" with Anastasia, Victoria and Mother Gothel.   I think they did indeed latch on to the idea of Adult Henry opening the door to Child Lucy and thought that was a great premise.  They needed an adult so they could write more adult things with the character.

But as you said, it was just so uncreative and retread, so it felt like a watered down version of what we had already seen.  Throw in a new cast that didn't quite work, and viewers fled. 

They really only used the Wish Realm because of the situation where Colin signed on but Jennifer Morrison didn't.  If that hadn't been the case, I don't think they would have revisited the Wish versions of characters.

This episode had to air before I sort of wanted to see more of Wish Henry.  He ended up being rather entertaining and different.  I think the success of Wish Hook also opened the door to the possibility of the Wish characters having potential to have interesting stories with the same actor.

I really wonder if we could have gotten a Season 8 if we had Real Emma and Hook separated in Seattle.  Though you'd think they would have kept Belle, since we never heard about the actress wanting to leave.  Few people would care that Snowing would be gone.

Edited January 12, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

6 minutes ago, Camera One said:

But as you said, it was just so uncreative and retread, so it felt like a watered down version of what we had already seen. 

I think that's the thing that kept it from being a real reboot that would have had the momentum for multiple seasons. Repeating the same old thing with new people wasn't very interesting. It was still too convoluted and with too much history for new viewers to get invested -- you'd have to understand who Henry was, his family situation, the Wishverse, etc. -- and the new viewers weren't going to get any impact from all the echoes from past seasons. Existing viewers were only getting tantalizingly limited glimpses of the characters they actually cared about, while all the retreads and callbacks only invited us to say "I liked this better when it happened in season one."

9 minutes ago, Camera One said:

They really only used the Wish Realm because of the situation where Colin signed on but Jennifer Morrison didn't.  If that hadn't been the case, I don't think they would have revisited the Wish versions of characters.

I think he was still under contract, since he joined the show a year later, so he had a year left on his contract that the season one regulars didn't, and that meant they didn't have to renegotiate or give him a raise. I wonder if they'd have bothered with any of this setup if Jennifer Morrison had signed. They could have kept the original situation and just continued the series. Belle and the Charmings were mostly offscreen, anyway, so they could have talked about them as though they were around but not seen without much changing the stories. There would have been a lot less risk in continuing the series as it was than there was with rebooting it. Without the supposed main character, they had to move things to a new location if they wanted to keep her "happy ending."

Most of the cast purge was because of expenses. The characters who'd been around since season one were about to become more expensive, so starting over with fresh cast members would cut costs. Emilie should have been in the same boat as Colin, though perhaps the fact that she appeared in season one, even if just as a guest star, had some impact on her contract. Regina and Rumple weren't in all the season seven episodes, so it's possible that what they negotiated for them was less work for the same money. I think Rogers/WHook was in all the episodes and at about the same level of involvement as Hook Prime had (some episodes spent reacting in the background, taking the lead in a few).

I do think something good have been made with what they had to work with (and perhaps some better casting choices) for this season. You can see it in this episode. It just would have required much better writing and maybe some willingness to branch out rather than repeating the same things and expecting that to be deeply meaningful.

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

I wonder if they'd have bothered with any of this setup if Jennifer Morrison had signed. They could have kept the original situation and just continued the series. Belle and the Charmings were mostly offscreen, anyway, so they could have talked about them as though they were around but not seen without much changing the stories. There would have been a lot less risk in continuing the series as it was than there was with rebooting it. Without the supposed main character, they had to move things to a new location if they wanted to keep her "happy ending."

I feel like A&E were getting kind of bored with Storybrooke as a setting.  A reboot was more risky but potentially had more reward with possible additional seasons. 

Technically, the setting of Hyperion Heights within Seattle with a mix of Cursed characters and regular people should have led to a wealth of new scenarios to explore.  

Having the characters we know and "love" be Cursed would have led to an automatic separation which made it easier to write.  At this point, A&E were grasping at straws to find new stories for Emma/Hook, and even Regina and Rumple.  So a reboot was attractive in that sense.

But as we all know, "should have/could have" and "what you get" have a huge gulf when it comes to A&E.

[Shanna Marie]

On 1/12/2020 at 4:09 PM, Camera One said:

Technically, the setting of Hyperion Heights within Seattle with a mix of Cursed characters and regular people should have led to a wealth of new scenarios to explore.  

Technically, everything they've had should have led to a wealth of scenarios to explore.

They must have become bored with Hyperion Heights because this episode really perked up when mostly going back to the original cast and going to a new location. Then again, I believe it was a David Goodman script, and although he's had a few clunkers, he's usually pretty reliable. I'm sure the big picture was dictated by A&E to some extent, as I doubt one of the writers would have been allowed to just make up their own story for the penultimate episode of the series.

[Camera One]

3 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

They must have become bored with Hyperion Heights because this episode really perked up when mostly going back to the original cast and going to a new location. 

Hyperion Heights is super boring.  You'd think they were held prisoner in that neighborhood of "Seattle".

Edited January 14, 2020 by Camera One