Once Upon A...SHOULDA HAPPENED THIS WAY!

[Melgaypet]

I remember how the king that Hook served before Liam's death turned him pirate was conspicuously unnamed. Maybe it would have worked better if this king ruled an Evil Empire that was more technologically advanced than the other backwater kingdoms of the Enchanted Forest. Maybe that could have created a real ambiguity for people like King George and Regina and an explanation for their alliance and why the common people might have supported them, if there was a constant huge threat out there. (This Evil Empire could have even have replaced the Ogres in the apparently multiple and long-lasting Ogre Wars.) If Regina's (and/or Rumple's?) magic was what was keeping this imperialist power at bay...

I don't know if this actually makes sense, the idea just popped into my head

 

[KingOfHearts]

On 6/13/2020 at 1:55 PM, Melgaypet said:

I remember how the king that Hook served before Liam's death turned him pirate was conspicuously unnamed. Maybe it would have worked better if this king ruled an Evil Empire that was more technologically advanced than the other backwater kingdoms of the Enchanted Forest

A technologically advanced empire against magic. I know thats a trope, but the magic vs. science debate on this show needed to go to more places. I I think there needed to be an anti-magic antagonist that wasnt Greg or Tamara. Its strange we never got that. They couldve hailed from the Land Without Color or the Land of Untold Stories. What if the Land of Untold Stories was actually meant to be a safe haven from magic?

I wouldve loved an "all magic must be destroyed" plot that didnt involve tasers or a random unholy grail in New York.

Edited June 15, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

On 6/15/2020 at 2:49 PM, KingOfHearts said:

I know thats a trope, but the magic vs. science debate on this show needed to go to more places. I I think there needed to be an anti-magic antagonist that wasnt Greg or Tamara. Its strange we never got that.

And we should have seen what the Enchanted Forest people thought about the anti-magic forces. After all, their lives had been totally upended by magic. You'd think at least a few of them would have been willing to join the "magic is evil and must be destroyed" cause.

[Camera One]

12 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

But then we might've missed the flashback where Snow needed fake excalibur to believe in herself, or Pied Piper Pan.

I actually didn't mind the fake excalibur flashback, but I was thinking about how "Lost Girl" should have been Emma's first flashback to her childhood.  

What if we saw Young Emma with a kid who disappeared but he actually became one of the Lost Boys?  Or Emma unwittingly saves him from being kidnapped by Peter Pan's Shadow.

[KingOfHearts]

13 hours ago, Camera One said:

but I was thinking about how "Lost Girl" should have been Emma's first flashback to her childhood.  

Emma desperately needed a flashback in that episode, or at least in 3A. The writers shouldn't have waited until the 3B finale to show her young self.

Quote

What if we saw Young Emma with a kid who disappeared but he actually became one of the Lost Boys?  Or Emma unwittingly saves him from being kidnapped by Peter Pan's Shadow.

She probably could've joined a group of runaways for a while who weren't literally Lost Boys of Pan's. Perhaps she could've been in denial at a young age, thinking someone would adopt her or that her parents would come looking for her. But in the end, she's convinced to join the runaways and live life off the streets. She could've befriended a boy who looked a bit like one of the Lost Boys she later meets in Neverland as an adult, which sets off her hesitation when she's fighting one of them in that episode.

Quote

I actually didn't mind the fake excalibur flashback

The flashback didn't really seem to connect for me with Emma's character struggle. I realize in retrospect what the writers were attempting to do, but it didn't seem to flow thematically. Snow concluding she's a ruler and Emma concluding she's an orphan are two very different things.

Edited June 22, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

5 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

The flashback didn't really seem to connect for me with Emma's character struggle. I realize in retrospect what the writers were attempting to do, but it didn't seem to flow thematically. Snow concluding she's a ruler and Emma concluding she's an orphan are two very different things.

Yes, for sure.  They should have saved it for another episode which was about Snow, though the constant flashbacks where Ms. Hopeful had no hope eventually reached its limits.

I suspect they just wanted to burn off a Snow episode early on because the character was boring to write for.  Heck, if that final conversation with Emma was originally written for Hook instead of Snow, there would have been ZERO correlation between the flashback and the current plot.  It really makes you question these writers and their decisions.

5 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

She probably could've joined a group of runaways for a while who weren't literally Lost Boys of Pan's. Perhaps she could've been in denial at a young age, thinking someone would adopt her or that her parents would come looking for her. But in the end, she's convinced to join the runaways and live life off the streets. She could've befriended a boy who looked a bit like one of the Lost Boys she later meets in Neverland as an adult, which sets off her hesitation when she's fighting one of them in that episode.

Those are really good ideas.  That would have been perfect for "Lost Girl".

[KingOfHearts]

6 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Those are really good ideas.  That would have been perfect for "Lost Girl".

I would've rather her come to this sort of realization at a younger age than post-Neal in the Cleo episode. Obviously it's not so black and white that she just woke up one day and decided to totally give up on her parents. Her jadedness was a slow burn over time. But it seemed like in the Cleo episode she was still wearing her heart on her sleeve when she had been beaten down so much already. Cleo shouldn't have been the tipping point. If anything, that would've been Neal.

Quote

They should have saved it for another episode which was about Snow, though the constant flashbacks where Ms. Hopeful had no hope eventually reached its limits.

Of course it doesn't help that 3A had three episodes that were just "Regina vs. Snow" stuff, each in an episode that wasn't really about them. "The New Neverland" was probably the most consistent with its theme out of the three. I think they were just there to remind people what show they were watching during the whole potted plant phase.

Edited June 22, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

On 6/22/2020 at 11:03 AM, KingOfHearts said:

The flashback didn't really seem to connect for me with Emma's character struggle. I realize in retrospect what the writers were attempting to do, but it didn't seem to flow thematically. Snow concluding she's a ruler and Emma concluding she's an orphan are two very different things.

Oh, that was so infuriating. They seemed to be going with the "believe in yourself and who you really are" theme, but then what Emma had to admit was that she was a Lost Girl, so it has nothing to do with believing in herself. It really should have involved Emma as a child, not fitting in at the foster home or orphanage, or living on the streets. I don't think she needed to be with any actual Lost Boys. After all, it's not like the Snow flashback had any connection to the present. Though it might have been interesting, since any kid Emma knew as a kid who became a Lost Boy would still be a kid now, while she's an adult. I suspect that one reason, aside from the fact that they're creatively bankrupt and couldn't think of anything other than yet another round of Snow vs. Regina, was that it would have "spoiled" the aha moment of Emma realizing she had to admit that she really was a Lost Girl if they showed her being a lonely orphan. Maybe she could have been given some kind of "just hope and be good and you'll have a family" speech in the flashback, so she tried that, but it didn't work and she ended up being Lost, so at first we think she just needs to believe in herself, but we don't see her running away until the end of the episode when she has the Lost Girl revelation.

And how did Pan know about her, anyway? Villain Omniscience strikes again. If one of the Lost Boys had been with her in a foster home, that would have explained it.

On 6/22/2020 at 11:10 AM, Camera One said:

They should have saved it for another episode which was about Snow, though the constant flashbacks where Ms. Hopeful had no hope eventually reached its limits.

That was one of my many problems with that flashback, that Snow, the character defined by Hope, had to be tricked into having hope. Plus, I hate that the supposedly strong woman only realizes her strength when a man reveals it to her (by tricking her). And the whole thing about her realizing she's a leader and a ruler is ironic, given that she's a terrible leader and ruler, and that wasn't even a retcon. At that point, we'd already seen her putting her own squeamishness about executing Regina after she had a trial and was sentenced to death ahead of the good of the kingdom and we'd seen her letting mass murdering village slaughterer Regina go with just a spell to keep her from directly harming the Charmings. The rest of the people were on their own. And in spite of her supposedly learning the Valuable Lesson that she was a real leader and the rightful ruler who would go to war to get her throne back, she never made any real effort after the curse. She didn't step up and take leadership of the town until she was forced to, and then she gave it up again. She might as well have just skipped the war if she was going to cede her kingdom to Regina and later apparently lead the push to "elect" Regina as queen of the universe.

Then there's the irony that it turned out that the real Excalibur was the other part of the Dark One dagger and Arthur went evil after pulling the sword from the stone.

[KAOS Agent]

On 6/22/2020 at 10:10 AM, Camera One said:

I suspect they just wanted to burn off a Snow episode early on because the character was boring to write for.  Heck, if that final conversation with Emma was originally written for Hook instead of Snow, there would have been ZERO correlation between the flashback and the current plot.  It really makes you question these writers and their decisions.

I think they were trying to squeeze in all the Snow centrics in early 3A due to Ginny Goodwin's pregnancy, but it was ridiculous to have the Lost Girl flashback be about anyone other than Emma. There were so many options to take this story and that they initially wanted Emma's realization to come about with Hook and not her mother is demonstrative of how little they cared about Emma/Snow, which is just mind blowing considering that was one of the best parts of S1.

[Camera One]

I wonder if they considered a series arc for Snow where she gains the confidence and learns to be a good ruler.  They seemed to have no idea what to do with her after Season 1.   Season 2 glossed over "taking back the kingdom" and any progression of both Shepherd David and Princess Snow becoming the actual monarchs.  In Storybrooke, they had that brief throwaway with Snow as mayor and then reversed it without even showing why Snow decided she didn't want to be mayor anymore.  Were they just that tied to the concept of "Mayor Mills"?  

[Speakeasy]

On 6/9/2020 at 3:26 AM, Camera One said:

You would think gunpowder would make swords obsolete.  But these are characters who, when faced with a villain with unlimited magical powers (much less a gun), pull out their sword.  

Umm..

The American Civil War and the Crimean War both involved sniper rifles, artillery barrages and cavalry charges, in which men on horses tried to ride through the hails of gunfire in order to hit people with their swords. And they still managed it.

That's because guns, even in those wars where they were extremely deadly, had some limitations about how easy they were to reload and fire. Magic is a bit awkward in that regard particularly here because you're never quite sure what it's limitations are. See Zelena and Zarion and that whole unholy mess which I think is the worst example.

I have thought from time to time that modern guns should have had a bigger impact on the show once people got to Storybrooke. There is no way any witch is fast enough to do that 'catch an arrow with magic' trick with a bullet, I'd imagine that in season 2, even if she had her magic back, Regina would be staying  indoors and away from windows for a while.

[Camera One]

8 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

The American Civil War and the Crimean War both involved sniper rifles, artillery barrages and cavalry charges, in which men on horses tried to ride through the hails of gunfire in order to hit people with their swords. And they still managed it.

Yes, sharp weapons continued to be used, and still good for close-range.  But if these kingdoms are side by side, both the Enchanted Forest and wherever Hook came from would both have used a combination of techniques.  But that was not the case.  The Enchanted Forest used swords exclusively.  Historically, there was a shift in warfare after the introduction of gunpowder and the development of muskets in Europe.

Edited June 24, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

9 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

I think they were trying to squeeze in all the Snow centrics in early 3A due to Ginny Goodwin's pregnancy, but it was ridiculous to have the Lost Girl flashback be about anyone other than Emma.

I don't think the pregnancy was a factor for "Lost Girl." She didn't have the baby until the end of May, so she would have become pregnant probably around the time the episode was filmed or maybe even afterward, since it was early in the season and they start filming in mid summer. In fact, as I recall, they used a clip from this episode as a joke about her pregnancy when she was on a talk show. They had one of those promo bugs at the bottom of the screen, with the White Rabbit from the Wonderland spinoff appearing and waving to open a portal, that just happened to open right on Snow's crotch (and she was wearing her War Snow outfit, which is why I think it was probably this episode). They showed the clip on the talk show, and she said, "And that's how I got pregnant." Anyway, I don't think they even knew she was pregnant when they were filming this. It was later in the arc when they knew she was pregnant while they were filming. They mostly just didn't care all that much about Emma and tried to fit in more Regina flashbacks because Regina didn't have a major role in the present-day story, since she had no connection to the Pan stuff.

9 hours ago, Camera One said:

I wonder if they considered a series arc for Snow where she gains the confidence and learns to be a good ruler. 

That would have been an interesting story. She seemed to be better queen material as a child than as an adult. There was stoic Baby Snow rejecting the option to save her mother at the expense of anyone else and then putting her own grief aside to be strong for her kingdom when her mother died. But then she had to have a man teach her how to be strong and believe in herself to fight off the bandits -- though at least she did stand up and take action. And then as an adult she became all wishy-washy and made decisions that were bad for her people but that made her feel good. I think the only times she's stepped up to accomplish something as leader, it was when it was something that's actually outside the range of what should be expected of her as a ruler. The queen shouldn't have to be personally dealing with bandits. That's what the guards are for. She has people to handle that sort of thing. And the queen/mayor shouldn't be personally having to deal with the town infrastructure. There are facilities people for that sort of thing. Dispensing justice would be a queen thing, or at least not getting in the way of the judge and jury to change their verdict. They made it clear that she was the rightful heir, but nothing was really said in the present about the fact that she, and not Regina, was the rightful ruler. She just rolled over and let Regina keep the throne she stole from her.

39 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Yes, sharp weapons continued to be used, and still good for close-range.  But if these kingdoms are side by side, both the Enchanted Forest and wherever Hook came from would both have used a combination of techniques.  But that was not the case.  The Enchanted Forest used swords exclusively.  Historically, there was a shift in warfare after the introduction of gunpowder and the development of muskets in Europe.

And you don't generally have one group fighting with bows and arrows a century after another group in the same area has guns. You might still use swords for close-quarters fighting even with guns, and you might mix longbows with artillery, but when you've got infantry, archery goes by the wayside. The weird thing is that we saw Hook using an antique-looking handgun, so it seems to have been something he brought with him rather than something he picked up in Storybrooke (and he knew exactly what a handgun was and how to use it when Belle brought a gun to the Jolly Roger), but I don't think we saw any long guns like muskets. It's weird to have handguns before long guns. Even when long guns were a pain to use and had to be loaded one shot at a time, archery still wasn't commonly used in conjunction with guns.

[Camera One]

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

But then she had to have a man teach her how to be strong and believe in herself to fight off the bandits -- though at least she did stand up and take action. And then as an adult she became all wishy-washy and made decisions that were bad for her people but that made her feel good.

As of the end of Season 1, there was still room to go in the direction of Snow learning to become a good ruler.  I think it was in Season 2 when they made Snow look worse and worse as a leader, partly because they had to explain why Regina was free to cast the Curse and free to go about being bold and audacious.  I think they were already trying to lay the groundwork for Snow forgiving Regina and them becoming friends (in a most unconvincing way).  

It also comes down to the fact that the Writers couldn't care less about redshirts, instead of truly thinking from the perspective of the characters. 

Quote

Even when long guns were a pain to use and had to be loaded one shot at a time, archery still wasn't commonly used in conjunction with guns.

Yes, the archery!  I knew I forgot something.  

Quote

I don't think the pregnancy was a factor for "Lost Girl." She didn't have the baby until the end of May, so she would have become pregnant probably around the time the episode was filmed or maybe even afterward

There seems to be a pattern of doing the Snowing centrics early on in an arc.  It's like trying to squeeze a round peg into a square hole for no good reason.

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

As of the end of Season 1, there was still room to go in the direction of Snow learning to become a good ruler.  I think it was in Season 2 when they made Snow look worse and worse as a leader, partly because they had to explain why Regina was free to cast the Curse and free to go about being bold and audacious.  I think they were already trying to lay the groundwork for Snow forgiving Regina and them becoming friends (in a most unconvincing way).  

Oh, definitely, it could have worked after season one. We needed to pick up the backstory where they left off and tell the story between the TLK and the wedding, and in a coherent form, like they told the story between their meeting and the TLK in season one, just out of order. But after season one, they mostly went with the thematic flashbacks, so they were no longer really telling a story in the flashbacks, just either giving us a bit of info from the past that would come into play in the present, or throwing in an incident that illustrated the theme of the episode. So we saw bits and pieces of the war, but they don't fit together well. There was the Excalibur incident, Lancelot and Charming's mother's death, and maybe something else? And then Regina's trial. If you try to put them in order to tell a story, it has a lot of holes and doesn't really flow. You can't really go from the Excalibur flashback to Snow letting Regina go after the trial.

And, of course, they really were setting it up for them to all be friends. If they were going to go that route, I wish they'd actually done something with the reconciliation process instead of them going instantly from Regina trying to murder them all to them all being friends. If Regina was supposed to have been reformed, she should have immediately offered Snow's position back to her -- and not just when she was too sad to do the job.

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

There seems to be a pattern of doing the Snowing centrics early on in an arc.  It's like trying to squeeze a round peg into a square hole for no good reason.

I think they knew the Snowings were a popular element in the show, so they had to get them in, but they wanted to get it out of the way and move on with the stuff they really wanted. I wonder if there was more network scrutiny early in the season, so they had to put in the stuff the network wanted early, and they had more leeway later.

[Camera One]

6 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

I don't think there was much of an exploration of what he -or the other villains- could have been if they'd taken a different route. I wonder if it would have been interesting to see an episode with a real alternate timeline, e.g. Rumple goes down the portal with his son, Regina runs away from her miserable marriage or Hook's brother doesn't get killed.

I've said this before, but I really wish Season 6 had been a series of "what might have been" like the three scenarios you mentioned.  It would have been a great way to do cameos as well. 

It would have been fun to see Rumple and Baelfire trying to fit into Victorian England... maybe they still would have been lured to Neverland, and then we could see Rumple and Adult Neal... it could have been a 3-parter.  

[KingOfHearts]

I actually really like Rumple in 3A... for the most part. It's fun to watch him try to be the Rumplestiltskin of the past, only for his heart to be no longer in it. He was just done and ready to die. It's always be a fascinating concept in the show (except with Regina) to see a villain who no longer cares about doing evil but not because they've become a good person all of a sudden. Maleficent was another example. I just wish the writers hadn't Rumple in 3A with the stupid doll thing and basically everything with Malcolm. I could see Pan and Rumple being rivals who used to be friends as children, but not father and son. 

One thing I would change about this show is have more gray characters and situations where standings on the moral spectrum don't matter as much. It was always about picking the side of the angels or the side of evil, but that never worked because the morality was so wonky. It was always fun to see the heroes and villains working reluctantly together, like Hook and Emma in S2 or Team Wicked Hero in S5. Being a hero shouldn't mean riding in on a horse to stop a curse and being a villain shouldn't mean nonchalantly ripping people's hearts out. Robin was supposed to be a chaotic good character who did somewhat morally ambiguous things like stealing for the benefit of others, yet he was portrayed as insufferably stupid or "code" abiding. Ivy didn't need to be a merciless killer if she was going to be redeemed a few episodes later. If the show wanted to be fairly black and white like classic fairy tales that's fine, but it consistently tried to be morally complex and failed in every area.

The writers rarely had the characters doing something for pragmatic reasons. It always revolved around the characters' beliefs in either "hope" or "revenge", to the point they were only doing good for goodness sake or evil for evil's sake. "I'm a villain so I must do villainous things to show evil I am!" or "I'm a hero so I must do good things to show heroic I am!" Real human beings don't tend to make decisions like that. They're not constantly fixated on grand destinies. They want basic things. It's fine if you have a few people who want to save the world or plot revenge, but when everyone starts doing that, there's nothing grounded to weigh it down. Even Emma, who in my opinion was supposed to help ground the show in realism, kind of stopped doing that after S3. OUATIW was even more fanciful than its parent show, but its characters were written so organically that it still retained the human aspect.

Edited July 1, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

One thing I would change about this show is have more gray characters and situations where standings on the moral spectrum don't matter as much.

It's ironic because A&E would probably argue that they excel in grey characters.  Like how The Black Fairy was grey because she became "evil" to protect her son, or The Evil Queen in Season 6 was grey becaue Regina had the light and the dark inside of her, etc.  Belle was pure good but then she chose saving a rock over a human and then lied about it.  

What A&E considered grey was often seeming multiple personality disorder.  Rumple was evil and selfish and horrible, but then in Rumbelle scenes, he's supposed to be so good deep inside and we're supposed to root for them.  The Evil Queen was evil and then she suddenly was the nicest goth lady there was after making her "fresh" start.  On the hero side, there was Snow and Mary Margaret and the revelation to become one or the other.  Or Henry the Cheerleader for her mothers' love lives vs. Henry the "You dirty pirate!" edition.  

[CCTC]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

One thing I would change about this show is have more gray characters and situations where standings on the moral spectrum don't matter as much.

I am maybe about half way through the Oz arc on my rewatch.  While I don't think she was necessarily needed or used well, the gray character Zelina of the later years is more watchable than when she is full "Wicked" during 3B.  As someone mentioned somewhere else, a lot of what she does is tedious as is how many times they writers think they are clever by using "wicked" in a sentence.  Plus, while I think Bex is a decent actress, she did better with the role when she was not trying to constantly vamp, sneer, and be evil and could be a bit more subtle.  If they would have had her have a role as something other than being used as sister-angst for Regina post-Wicked, I think there are a lot of things they could have done with her.   Even though it lasted about five minutes, it was interesting to see her interact with Hook and the Charmings in the land of misfit toys in the season 5 finale.  They should have mixed characters up more in general.

[I just remembered her role in pretending to be Marion and how her child was conceived - they could really have come up with a better story line than that for her, esp. since they kept her around afterwards.  They really did not do complicated antagonists well.]

On the other hand, Lana did a better job early on when she was pure evil -- adding a bit of an injured subtext, but clearly someone evil and insane who we were not supposed to cheer, than she did as a gray character.  At least as a gray character after season 3.  She did have some good moments in 2A and 3A.

Edited July 1, 2020 by CCTC

[Shanna Marie]

5 hours ago, Camera One said:

12 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

I don't think there was much of an exploration of what he -or the other villains- could have been if they'd taken a different route. I wonder if it would have been interesting to see an episode with a real alternate timeline, e.g. Rumple goes down the portal with his son, Regina runs away from her miserable marriage or Hook's brother doesn't get killed.

I've said this before, but I really wish Season 6 had been a series of "what might have been" like the three scenarios you mentioned.  It would have been a great way to do cameos as well. 

It does make sense that their use of the "It's a Wonderful Life" trope would focus on the curse, since that was so pivotal to the series as a whole and all the characters, but it really wasn't well developed or thought out. It would have been highly entertaining to see other alternate possibilities, though I'm sure the show would have had it be for the best that things worked out the way they did. With Regina, it would have been interesting to see what if Daniel hadn't been murdered and if she'd been able to run away with him. Would she have turned out like Anastasia on Wonderland, where she quickly grew tired of being poor and ended up marrying a king, anyway? Or maybe come crawling back to her mother? Or would Rumple still have intercepted her and started teaching her magic as a way for her to escape poverty?

Would Hook have remained the adorkable and earnest type without his brother's death, or would he have become a harsh, tight-assed officer? Or would he have found out about the king's treachery in some other way, and he and his brother turned pirate together?

5 hours ago, Camera One said:

It would have been fun to see Rumple and Baelfire trying to fit into Victorian England...

It's amusing to imagine Rumple as a Victorian street urchin. He was such a coward, that when they ran into some street toughs soon after their arrival, he would have fled and left his son to them, so the outcome would have been more or less the same for Bae -- ending up finding the Darlings after being on his own and wanting nothing to do with his father, then ending up in Neverland. But there would have been no Hook in Neverland, since there was no Rumple to murder Milah. And then no curse.

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

The writers rarely had the characters doing something for pragmatic reasons. It always revolved around the characters' beliefs in either "hope" or "revenge", to the point they were only doing good for goodness sake or evil for evil's sake. "I'm a villain so I must do villainous things to show evil I am!" or "I'm a hero so I must do good things to show heroic I am!"

The heroism often came across as very shallow because it was based on wanting to be a hero. Sometimes that was about living up to some ideal of being a hero (even if living up to that ideal put people in danger). Sometimes it was about wanting glory. It was very seldom about someone doing the thing that needed to be done because it was the right thing to do.

30 minutes ago, CCTC said:

On the other hand, Lana did a better job early on when she was pure evil -- adding a bit of an injured subtext, but clearly someone evil and insane who we were not supposed to cheer, than she did as a gray character.  At least as a gray character after season 3. 

I'm not sure I'd call Regina post 3A "gray," unless it was because her dark past was always going to blend with the pure white she became. I'd only really call her gray for 2A and the very end of 2B (most of 2B, she's pretty darn dark), then 3A. But in 3B and after, she's depicted as being totally good, with her shadier attitudes not seen as being all that bad.

[KingOfHearts]

I honestly think the writers should've given the Underworld more backstory showing what it was meant to be before being turned into Hades' playground. Maybe it was supposed to be more like The Good Place, where people were encouraged to deal with their issues and redeem themselves before moving on. What if Hades had fell in love with someone (or even multiple people) who were passing through, only to never see them again after they went into the light? What if he was snubbed by the other gods and developed a deep loneliness, growing into bitterness? What if he loved Persephone, but in a OUAT twist, Zeus stopped his heart so he couldn't love her? I would've understood Hades much better if we saw what it was like living in Zeus' shadow or being stuck in the Underworld.

The show really oversimplified Hades as a character, which made him come across as vaguely petty. The writers never went beyond "he's in love with Zelena and wants to keep people in his domain." The sibling rivalry with Zeus needed to be articulated more. We only got one side of the story, and not much of it at that. His motive kind of changed for some inexplicable reason halfway where he decided he wanted to leave the Underworld instead of maintaining subjects. His goals were so all over the place. 

Edited July 17, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

41 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

I honestly think the writers should've given the Underworld more backstory showing what it was meant to be before being turned into Hades' playground.

I really think Hades should have gotten a backstory too, with Zeus and other other Olympian deities.  I know the whole "How they turned evil" backstory had been done over and over on this show, and they were hit and miss, it just felt incomplete without one.  Though of course, part of me just wanted to see more Greek myths represented on this show, knowing full well these Writers would probably have used a Stephen King storyline as inspiration instead.

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

I really think Hades should have gotten a backstory too, with Zeus and other other Olympian deities.  I know the whole "How they turned evil" backstory had been done over and over on this show, and they were hit and miss, it just felt incomplete without one. 

It wouldn't even have to be "how he turned evil." He could have been like Cruella, evil all along, so the backstory is about how he clashed with Zeus and ended up trapped in the Underworld. Though not entirely trapped, because wasn't he already under that curse when he met Zelena in Oz? That was the whole point of that flashback, her freaking out because she thought he was just using her to get a True Love's Kiss to break the curse, right? I guess he was "trapped" like the Black Fairy, where he could come and go, but maybe not permanently. Was he already under that curse during the Hook and Liam flashback, or was he operating freely then? He was pretty nasty at that point, so maybe he always was cruel and selfish.

But I guess they were afraid the flashback of what happened between him and Zeus that left him needing Zelena to break the curse might have spoiled the suspense of what would happen after Zelena broke the curse and he came to Storybrooke. If we'd seen the flashback about how he'd been cruel and selfish all along, so Zeus was right to punish him, then we'd have known from the start that he was using Zelena, and it would have made the heroes look even dumber to trust him 100 percent and bring him to Storybrooke. Not that there was that much suspense. We already knew he'd lied to Emma and had been the one to trap them, and in the short time between the TLK and knowing that he was tricking them, we still knew he was an arc villain, so the odds were that he was going to be evil and die. Then again, it's this show, so there was a slight possibility he really would have turned good and would have sacrificed himself, and there was a somewhat larger possibility that he'd stay more or less good and join the cast permanently (though the fact that he was played by a name actor did make that a little less likely).

Without the flashback about what happened to set all this up and why, the arc didn't make much sense. There was no reason behind what Hades did, no narrative drive, and no good reason for Zeus to bring Hook back to life (aside from the fact that he was a popular character and the show would have been in even worse trouble if they wrote him out permanently).

[Camera One]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

But I guess they were afraid the flashback of what happened between him and Zeus that left him needing Zelena to break the curse might have spoiled the suspense of what would happen after Zelena broke the curse and he came to Storybrooke. If we'd seen the flashback about how he'd been cruel and selfish all along, so Zeus was right to punish him, then we'd have known from the start that he was using Zelena,

I think this was the key.  We were supposed to wonder if Hades had changed due to his love for Zelena, so they couldn't spell it out.  I mean, after that romantic bicycle ride, who wouldn't have flipped?  

[Camera One]

They made Will into a series regular in Season 4, and I think we all agree he was poorly used.

If you were in charge of the show planning for Season 4, what existing actor/character would you have elevated to series regular instead?  Assuming this character would get the same amount of screentime that Will had.

The strange thing is Robin Hood wasn't a series regular in Season 4, though it seemed like he had more scenes than Will?  

Edited July 20, 2020 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

11 minutes ago, Camera One said:

If you were in charge of the show planning for Season 4, what existing actor/character would you have elevated to series regular instead?  Assuming this character would get the same amount of screentime that Will had.

Probably Zelena to do the Zarian reveal early on in S4. Instead of Regina doing the Author stuff, her B plot could be about being suspicious of Zarian instead of being angry with Emma. Regina would try to warn Robin, then Robin would accuse her of not moving on, dramatic tension ensues, blah blah blah. Then toward the end of 4A, Zelena reveals herself to everybody and becomes a side villain in 4B. 

Wild, off the wall choice: The Sheriff of Nottingham. I wish we could've seen his mini redemption arc. He could've been in S4 as a "regular" as setup for a potential love interest for Regina. It would've been interesting to see Regina date Robin then date his nemesis.

Edited July 20, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

24 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Probably Zelena to do the Zarian reveal early on in S4. Instead of Regina doing the Author stuff, her B plot could be about being suspicious of Zarian instead of being angry with Emma. Regina would try to warn Robin, then Robin would accuse her of not moving on, dramatic tension ensues, blah blah blah. Then toward the end of 4A, Zelena reveals herself to everybody and becomes a side villain in 4B. 

Similar to your idea would be to make Marian a series regular, which would also create a bigger fake-out, which A&E would love.  But then they would need to tell her the truth about who she really was, so she could play the role properly, and she could go toe-to-toe with Regina to give her something better to do in 4A than lament about not having a happy ending.

24 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Wild, off the wall choice: The Sheriff of Nottingham. I wish we could've seen his mini redemption arc. He could've been in S4 as a "regular" as setup for a potential love interest for Regina.

Love interest for Regina?  But what about poor ol' Robin Hood!

All kidding aside, I would also have liked to see more of the Sheriff of Nottingham.  He was so much more compatible with Regina.

Unpopular secret opinion - what about making Lily a series regular?  Just kidding, LOL.

Edited July 20, 2020 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

23 hours ago, Camera One said:

Similar to your idea would be to make Marian a series regular, which would also create a bigger fake-out, which A&E would love.  But then they would need to tell her the truth about who she really was, so she could play the role properly, and she could go toe-to-toe with Regina to give her something better to do in 4A than lament about not having a happy ending.

It's strange that the Love Triangle of Doom was the better option for Regina's story in 4A. It would've been very soapy (which it was anyway), but it would've been better for her redemption arc for Regina to decide if she's being suspicious because she wants Robin for herself or because he's actually in danger. She would get to a point where she'd let Robin go, but then immediately after get undeniable evidence that Marian is at least up to no good. That would've been a good test for her. Then, of course, she'd have to convince Robin that Marian isn't who she says she is.

All of this needed to happen without Regina being angry at Emma, full stop. The BFF stuff needed to be gutted completely. I could see Regina consulting Emma about investigating Zarian, though.

[Camera One]

13 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

It's strange that the Love Triangle of Doom was the better option for Regina's story in 4A. It would've been very soapy (which it was anyway), but it would've been better for her redemption arc for Regina to decide if she's being suspicious because she wants Robin for herself or because he's actually in danger. She would get to a point where she'd let Robin go, but then immediately after get undeniable evidence that Marian is at least up to no good. That would've been a good test for her. Then, of course, she'd have to convince Robin that Marian isn't who she says she is.

If I were a huge Regina fan, that would have been such a better and more enjoyable storyline to watch, than her lamenting like she's the victim of the universe's conspiracy against "villains" and making rude remarks towards a grovelling Emma or Snow.

[KingOfHearts]

56 minutes ago, Camera One said:

If I were a huge Regina fan, that would have been such a better and more enjoyable storyline to watch, than her lamenting like she's the victim of the universe's conspiracy against "villains" and making rude remarks towards a grovelling Emma or Snow.

There seemed to be this idea that Regina always got "short end of the stick" and could never get her "happy ending", like bad things just happened to her for no reason. (Even when they were direct consequences of something she'd done.) But instead of simply making bad things happen to her because "bad things tend to happen to bad people" as Rumple put it, or for cheap drama, they could've been turned around as stepping stones toward her redemption. Another example would've been Robin's death. Instead of making it about Regina being a victim and having to use Jekyll Juice to remove her evil self, why not use it as a test to show how far she's grown? Instead of her thinking the universe was to get her, why couldn't she decide to push forward and find happiness another way? It would've been a great sign of growth if she had decided to mourn Robin like a normal person and later start the "moving on" process in S6. I'm not saying she should've gotten another love interest in S6 (save that for S7 with the timeskip), but she could've used the time to develop her sisterly relationship with Zelena and find her place in Storybrooke. 

Regina really needed an "Emma moment" to decide her own fate instead of letting circumstances define her happiness. The lack of that step was one of the biggest problems her character had.

It's funny that Zelena moved on from Hades so much quicker yet I'd argue her experience was more traumatic because she had to kill him herself.

Edited July 21, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

On 7/20/2020 at 3:00 PM, Camera One said:

If you were in charge of the show planning for Season 4, what existing actor/character would you have elevated to series regular instead?  Assuming this character would get the same amount of screentime that Will had.

I would have loved to see Marian as a regular, either as herself or as Zarian. The actress really put herself into the role and sold it, and I think she made a lot out of very little material (she's also been really charming in other roles I've seen her in -- she seems to be the go-to for playing the best friend in Hallmark movies). Either as Marian or Zarian, don't put her in the coma with the ice heart (that never made sense, anyway -- if Ingrid wanted to make people turn against Elsa, why choose some random person who just showed up in town whom nobody knows or cares about?). Have her standing up to Regina and making sure the town knows what she did. Make Robin really confront Regina's role in what happened to Marian. Heck, have Marian (or Zarian) run for mayor. If they want to make Regina out to be a victim, let her actually be persecuted. Especially if it's really Zelena. Zelena would have taken away Regina's position, wealth, privilege, etc., not her boyfriend. She was jealous of all the stuff Regina had because Cora chose her. There was never any sign that she cared about a boyfriend.

I'd have preferred to skip the whole Zarian thing. Marian's fate still pisses me off, that she had barely escaped execution only to be killed in such an offhand manner, and the awesome, strong woman who came to Storybrooke wasn't really Marian. Which I still don't believe they planned because nothing about the way she acted in 4A makes sense if she's really Zelena. She kept up the act even when no one else was around and she was on the verge of being killed when she could have used her powers to save herself. We really should have seen some reaction from her to finding out the person she was impersonating was married to Regina's boyfriend. It seemed like she just grabbed a convenient ride back to Storybrooke by taking over the woman Hook and Emma were taking with them, and it was a happy accident that it was someone who could hurt Regina. Otherwise, there's the villain omniscience again, with her knowing everything about Marian's life without having ever met her before. She knew Roland's name, knew that Robin was her husband, etc., stuff that Zelena had no way of knowing. And if impersonating someone magically made Zelena know everything they knew, then you'd think she'd have used that. During 3B, she could have just magically become Regina or Snow and known everything they had planned.

If they wanted to bring Zelena back, they could have done it another way.

[tennisgurl]

On 7/21/2020 at 5:22 PM, Shanna Marie said:

Have her standing up to Regina and making sure the town knows what she did. Make Robin really confront Regina's role in what happened to Marian. Heck, have Marian (or Zarian) run for mayor. If they want to make Regina out to be a victim, let her actually be persecuted.

Ironically, having Marian around to be the one (normal) person who is pissed at Regina for everything she did could have done wonders for Regina's redemption arc. One of my big issues with her own redemption arc (well, one of several) is that she faced so little consequences for what she did, and never really had to face anyone she had previously hurt or try to make amends. Her victims either forgive her super easily (the Charmings) or they are treated like villains and are killed out of hand (Percival, Greg) which makes it harder to really see her show remorse, which makes it harder for the audience to really start to forgive her. We are just told she is all good now, instead of being shown working for it, which makes for a very shallow arc. She never really seems to face consequences for what she did, or even any guilt (no regrets!!) about what she did, so have Marian around to remind everyone of what she did could do a lot for her finally understand what she did wrong and finally have to take some responsibility. Have Marian telling everyone that Regina almost had her killed (and did in the original timeline) and then Robin reacts like a normal person and is horrified and disgusted by what his new girlfriend did, have Roland be confused and scared and have him ask Regina why she hurt his mom, and Regina realizes she has no real answer. This gets the town to start thinking more about what all Regina did, maybe asking her about any lost loved ones and asking if she had them murdered as well, and while they dont go all torches and pitchforks, things do get very awkward, and she is actually forced to face the consequences of her actions. She could then actually try to show Marian that she has changed (and no, just barley resisting murdering Marian does not count) and that could actually get her to confront what she did and show some real remorse, not just because being on team good guy gets her stuff she wants, but because she finally learns how empathy works and realizes that she did horrible things and needs to make things better. Having Marian around could actually force some real development for her, instead of just telling us how good she is over and over until we get gaslighted into buying it. Then when she has actually proven that she has changed, Marian could forgive her because Regina actually put the work in, which would actually be a decent arc. This could allow us to feel bad for Regina, having people turn against her and having her feel real pain and guilt, and allow her to really work to be better, letting the audience root for it more. Regina is so hard to root for because, as much as this show tells us how much she suffers, we dont SEE it, and we dont see how she grows as a person and becomes stronger and a better person because of it. Putting Marian in her coma, then having her be revealed to be Zelena so that Robin can run back to Regina guilt free, is such a ridiculous cop out when they could have done so much with her. I dont know what they would do with Marian long term (I feel like they would still stick Robin with Regina no matter what) but at least she could have gotten something!

Poor Marian, of the many characters who got screwed over on this show*, she was one of the most. The poor women who separated from her family, imprisoned for doing the right thing, in one timeline executed and in the next one killed quickly after being rescued, and then her husband fell for her killer and he and her son forgot all about her, with her husband basically being relieved that she was dead and could now go off and be with her original killer. And of course, when her husband seemingly found her he cheated on her while she was in a coma after she found out he moved on with the local dictator, but that was Zelena anyway, at least she died not knowing what a fickle son of a bitch her husband was.

Oh but of course, no one was screwed over more than Regina! *pukes* 

Edited July 28, 2020 by tennisgurl

[Shanna Marie]

On 7/28/2020 at 2:59 PM, tennisgurl said:

Poor Marian, of the many characters who got screwed over on this show*, she was one of the most. The poor women who separated from her family, imprisoned for doing the right thing, in one timeline executed and in the next one killed quickly after being rescued, and then her husband fell for her killer and he and her son forgot all about her

Don't forget her son hugging her murderer after her husband was killed by her murderer's boyfriend, who raped her husband while pretending to be her and conceived a child with him. If anyone on this show got the short end of the stick, it was Marian.

And she really was a cool character who would have been an asset to the show. Zelena could be fun, but it was hard to accept her as a "hero" after what we saw her do fairly recently and to these characters.

I just found myself imagining Marian as a deputy sheriff or running for mayor against Regina.

[Speakeasy]

It is very hard to believe the Zarian storyline was the original idea, seems more likely to me that they wanted to bring Marian back for a love triangle, couldn't get the actress booked for enough episodes so they had to put her in the corner then out of the shoe again, then they decided to being Mader back so they threw this whole thing together.

The way she replaced Marian in the flashback is very jarring because it's a level of offhand power I don't think has been shown before-she just reintegrates after dying and turning into goo then vaporises her and somehow glamours up to be completely indistinguishable from this woman she's never met-down to her metahysical metaphorical organs I mean if she can do that why does she never show or use that level of power again. Every other witch-kill at least leaves a body.

I mean if she could do that why not kill Hook and Emma when they open the portal and glam up as Emma, who everyone in town knows and respects, has a position of authority and who is loved and trusted by Regina's beloved son? Wouldn't that put her in a better position to mess with her?

Eh.

I had another way that the Zarian debacle could have made more sense-wjat if when Lena turned into goo she fell through the portal and then basically ate Marian, absorbing all her memories and mannerisms in the process... BUUUUUT....

This was a disguise that was a bit too good and she actually effectively became Marian while the Zelena personality struggled to reform and reassert itself. She only really became Zelena again after she and Robin left town. But even so she might have a bit of Marian in her.

What I would have followed that up with is a S7 flashback in which Zelena wants to atone for her misdeeds in some way to be a better mother, so she makes her own version of Jekyll's potion to separate Marian out of her so she can get another chance at life. 

[KingOfHearts]

I always knew Zelena's pendant was going to relate to her coming back. It was foreshadowed by Glinda ("in many ways, it is your life now") and seemed like it was tucked a way for a reason. It probably should've been activated toward the end of S4 or the beginning of S5 under different circumstances. Like the heroes needing Zelena out of desperation (with an anti-magic handcuff ready, of course) or someone like Rumple resurrecting her for something. There were many creative ways her life force could've been drawn out of the pendant. 

15 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Zelena could be fun, but it was hard to accept her as a "hero" after what we saw her do fairly recently and to these characters.

I don't think I really considered her a hero until her centric toward the end of S6, but I can give that a pass because it was under the assumption the show was about to end and the writers wanted to wrap up her redemption arc. S7's time jump was a bit of saving grace for both her and Regina because they had time to become actual "heroes." For the most part, I liked Zelena either being gray (as in S5) or at least reluctantly on the side of the angels. She wasn't about moral complexes or concerned about being a "hero". That made her more human and less flat like the other characters. Unfortunately, the road to get to that point was rough and happened late in the game.

That's one of my biggest problems with the show - I wish the characters were more human and didn't do things purely based on whether they were on the side of good or evil. Not everybody needs to switch between being a murderous psychopath or Joan of Arc. People are more complex than that.

Edited July 30, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

Given what we know about A&E, I doubt they ever considered truly exploring Marian as a character.  It fits their pattern to have her put on ice (literally) soon after Season 4 began.  Marian was meant to be a roadblock between Regina and Robin Hood, without reflecting too badly on Regina.  They hardly had any scenes with just Robin and Marian alone... his "explanation" to her about Regina was all off-camera.  It would also have been natural to give Emma and Marian some scenes, and to have Snow be Marian's old friend.  4A could have been Snow realizing she should/want to lead and become Mayor, with encouragement from Marian and Elsa.  Then 4B could have been Snow as Mayor trying to deal with the Queens of Darkness instead of that horrid eggbaby plotline.

 

[tennisgurl]

In retrospect, I just cant buy that Zarian was always the plan. There was nothing at all that foreshadowed Marian not being exactly who she seemed to be, I have no clue how Zelena was able to fool everyone, including Marians family, for so long considering she didn't even know Marian as far as we know, and in the end, it just made so much of the drama from that story totally pointless. It was an awful subplot, but making it all useless doesn't fix anything! She really lucked out that she got put into an ice coma so she didn't have to keep it up for as long I guess. The whole thing absolutely reeks of ret-con, probably to get Robin back with Regina easily without any baggage with that pesky wife of his that his new girlfriend had imprisoned and killed, or just because they got bored with her, as they usually do. Marian being Zelena is just random. Of course, if they made Marian too likable, the audience might want her to end up with Robin and not Regina, or start to like her too much, and killing someone the audience likes might make Regina look bad, and we cant have that, so...

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

That's one of my biggest problems with the show - I wish the characters were more human and didn't do things purely based on whether they were on the side of good or evil. Not everybody needs to switch between being a murderous psychopath or Joan of Arc. People are more complex than that.

A&E really liked to go on about how morally grey their show was, playing sad music for the villains and adding in "evil" acts for the heroes and lecturing us about how the heroes are just as bad as the villains, but really, the show was never as morally grey as they seemed to think it was. Adding sad backstories to the bad guy doesn't make them any less bad guys (no matter what the show tries to tell us) it just gives us context, and the stuff that they give the good guys as their examples of being bad are either so ridiculous and contrived that they never really feel real to the characters (eggnapping) or are so understandable that they dont seem anywhere near as evil as the show wants them to be (shooting Cruella) and as to the show being morally grey? In a morally grey ethical dilima, the characters should be able to make reasonable arguments about multiple choices, or do something that was perhaps morally wrong, but at least understandable, or the narrative itself should allow the viewers to decide on what was right and what was wrong, or if there even if a right answer at all. Like the question of whether or not heroes should kill people. Thats a decent ethical question, often depending on context, the nature of the killing, the situation, etc. and in many stories its left up to the audience when killing is appropriate and when it isn't, and often time even the characters dont know for sure. This show holds our hand to explain to us what exactly they think is right, and what exactly is wrong, there is nothing grey about it. Killing Cruella was wrong. Killing Cora was wrong. Killing Percival was right. Bringing the worlds all together was right. I have to add a big old "according to the show" in front of all of those, because I have no idea why many of those are considered particularly right or wrong, because so many of them seem arbitrary and based on who is involved (usually its whatever is convenient for Regina) but this isn't moral greyness, its just the writers sticking a Good or Bad label on actions so that the audience doesn't have to think too hard. Like Snow manipulating Regina to Cora, something actually morally ambiguous, which the show tells us over and over was wrong and bad and they should have found Another Way (what that way would be I dont know) instead of letting us decide whether or not what she did was justified. Personally, I think that Snow letting Regina go after they captured her with a slap on the wrist was very morally questionable, basically taking her own feelings for Regina into account before the safety of the world, but the show considered that to be a good thing, even if it led to basically every problem ever on the show. But the show knows exactly what it wants us to think about every situation, and never wants us to really think, just accept exactly what they tell us.  

It also really hurts the whole "the villains have done good thing and the heroes have done bad things" bits because their levels of guilt and and their guilty actions are so disproportionate. The good guys do "bad" things that are very understandable or comparatively minor in the bad department and they are completely vilified by the narrative and other characters and they drown themselves in guilt over these supposed evil acts, while the villains misdeeds are whitewashed by the narrative in a sea of tears over their sad sad stories while they cant even be bothered to act even a quarter as remorseful as the heroes do for cutting someone off in traffic or something. Something that is basically this whole attitude in a nutshell is probably the Eva vs Cora feud, especially giving Emma that terrible godawful "I thought we were supposed to be the good guys" line. On the one side, you have Eva, who was rather mean girl-ish and catty as a young woman and told her fiance that Cora was pregnant with another mans child, which was true, and she grew into a kind and loving queen and mother who taught her daughter to be good to others, and was murdered while still quite young by Cora. On the other hand, you have Cora, who was bitter and angry, who wanted to advance in the world so she lied to an engaged prince to marry him and pass off her child as his, and also rob the royal treasury, then abandoned the child in the woods in another world, then went on to emotionally abuse her next daughter, murder Eva for both revenge for thwarting her scheme, and so that her daughter would be queen, murdered her daughters boyfriend, murdered and tortured countless others, ripping out Auroras heart, including Lancelot and Joanna, especially brutally murdering Joanna in front of Snow, turned that poor fisherman into a fish, and removed her own heart because she didn't want any possible love to get in the way of her personal ambitions, and there is honestly stuff that I am probably forgetting. 

Arent the actions of Eva and Cora basically the same? Arent they both the bad guys? 

[Speakeasy]

So, King George-leys think about what he could have been in season 2 onward

In season 1 King George is clearly a nasty piece of work, but unlike Regina or Rumplestiltskin, our headline villains, he seems to be driven by practical concerns rather than emotional ones. He needs an heir so he bargains with Rumplestiltskin and he needs his heir to make an alliance so he blackmails David. He does horrible things to David in order to get his way, but you could easily make him a man who thinks he's, if not a good person, then a person doing what needs to be done.

Tywin Lannister, basically.

But Tywin Lannister lives in a world where dragons are mostly dead and things mostly make sense. George doesn't. All the military acumen and shrewd investment in the world won't help against people or things that can topple your castle and turn your army into geckos with a flamboyant wave.

So in spite of all his political power he is, from a certain perspective, an underdog, a man trying to establish some kind of order in a world of madness. Look at that scene where Regina interrupts Charming's execution, he's talking back to her like she's just an annoying friend who's calling him at work, when she could snap him in half with a gesture. He might be evil but that's pretty ballsy, that's 'shout at a tiger and it'll assume you're scarier than it is' type logic.

In Fairytale Land he was a king, in America he's a lawyer. I think that was a big missed opportunity in season 2. He has no superpowers, but he has contacts, he knows all the important people from the Enchanted Forest, and there must be some people who'd respect his rank as a king anyway. Furthermore, he knows the law and the way the real world works. If he can avoid getting vaporised by an angry magic person that makes him pretty dangerous, he could be a political force in the town and - depending on how you wanted this to work- he could threaten to get the real world involved, which is not something anyone wants. The existence of Storybrooke is existentially terrifying for every and any government in the world, it shows that borders, records, human memory and the laws of physics are basically useless in stopping people and creatures, some of them literally monsters, from SOMEWHERE ELSE arriving and doing whatever they want.

If there's going to be an anti magic faction in season 2, don't half ass the idea of some secret society of witch Hunters. Here you have a powerful, connected character with existing beef with the heroes who has every reason to want the magic gone, both for personal gain and potentially as a matter of principle. 

Murdering some random and trying to pin it on the friendly werewolf is not what I'd expect from a guy with his skill set.

Edited August 25, 2020 by Speakeasy

[Shanna Marie]

George really did get the short end of the stick as a character, when there was a lot of potential for him. On paper, and if you only consider season one, he would seem to be the villain most likely to get the "did bad things for understandable reasons, becomes reluctant ally against a common foe, gradually gets redeemed" treatment. You could argue that a lot of the things he did were for the greater good. If a king doesn't have an heir, it leaves the kingdom vulnerable to either civil war or invasion. Then there was the empty treasury. He was trying to save his kingdom when he secretly adopted a son and raised him as his own. Do we know if he knew what Rumple did to get a child for him, or was it like when Regina adopted Henry? He had a plan for saving the treasury by marrying his son to Midas's daughter. Then it all fell apart, but then there was a twin. And then that twin really ruined everything by ditching the marriage agreement for a woman he'd met once. If you're looking at things from the perspective of the ordinary people of the kingdom who might be in trouble because this guy wasn't willing to sacrifice his own happiness for the greater good, then David's the bad guy here. This is where I have to wonder where David's farm was. Did he live in Regina's kingdom, and so he was being drafted to be the prince of some other kingdom, or did he live in George's kingdom, so it was his own country he was being asked to save?

While George was pretty ruthless in season one, he got the character assassination in season 2 and beyond, not just being pragmatic but being downright evil. They stripped away him being a good father who truly loved his adopted son and turned him into a cruel murderer. And then he got far more punishment than Regina ever did, getting locked up for his crimes.

I guess he wouldn't have made a good Big Bad because he would have been relatively easy to defeat, but he might have made an interesting antagonist as leader of an anti-magic movement. Even if he'd eventually ended up having to team up with the good guys, I can see where he might always have issues with David because of the way he reminded him of his son (before the "evil adoptive parent" retcon) and because of the way he ruined his kingdom.

And I wish we'd seen how they defeated him and how they dealt with him after the war. Did the curse free him to become a lawyer, or did they not lock him up then? And how was David ruling George's kingdom? Were he and Snow ruling there by right of conquest, because they won the war, or was he ruling by posing as Prince James?

[CCTC]

Different direction than what has been discussed (which are good ideas), but I thought it would have been interesting for George to team up with Cora.  That would have allowed Regina to be more conflicted rather than just insta-reuniting with her Mother.  I would have extended Cora's stay a bit with her and George gaining the upper hand leading to or being the season finale.  Cora had potential to be a true big evil and seeing that would have been more interesting than what they showed the rest of that season following her death.

[KingOfHearts]

8 hours ago, CCTC said:

Different direction than what has been discussed (which are good ideas), but I thought it would have been interesting for George to team up with Cora.  That would have allowed Regina to be more conflicted rather than just insta-reuniting with her Mother.  I would have extended Cora's stay a bit with her and George gaining the upper hand leading to or being the season finale.  Cora had potential to be a true big evil and seeing that would have been more interesting than what they showed the rest of that season following her death.

Cora's death is so strange to me in retrospect. I don't understand why they slotted it in the middle of the season unless they were just as so enamored with Snow going "dark" they just had to do it right away. I sort of doubt A&E were just itching to get to the Home Office and all of the other crap in 2B. It may have been more the fact they were bored than excited to move onto other things. The way S2 was written, it seemed like Cora would get drunk on power from the Dagger and Regina would betray her at the last minute, like Zelena did to Hades in 5B. (Which would've ended up being a good parallel later.) Cora was definitely overpowered and needed to be stopped, but she was always more fascinated with control than random murders. She only seemed to kill people when they were in the way. I don't even remember her really hating Snow.

It should've culminated with Regina seeing more and more of herself in Cora, and realizing nothing would ever be enough, whether Cora actually loved her or not. Again, it would be very similar to what happened with Zelena and Hades, just much slower.

Edited August 30, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Cora's death is so strange to me in retrospect. I don't understand why they slotted it in the middle of the season unless they were just as so enamored with Snow going "dark" they just had to do it right away. I sort of doubt A&E were just itching to get to the Home Office and all of the other crap in 2B. It may have been more the fact they were bored than excited to move onto other things.

I'm guessing it was a combination of all of the above.  We know how easily they get bored.  This season showed that A&E couldn't handle a full season-long story once the initial premise (the Curse) broke.  

Maybe they finalized their plans to set 3A in Neverland, and decided to use the final third of the season to get to that endpoint. After Cora died, they had an Owen flashback, a Tamara flashback, paused for Lacey and then it was already the threat of Owen/Tamara in present-day (along with the Regina massacre flashback) and the 2-hour Peter Bae finale.

[Shanna Marie]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Cora's death is so strange to me in retrospect. I don't understand why they slotted it in the middle of the season unless they were just as so enamored with Snow going "dark" they just had to do it right away. I sort of doubt A&E were just itching to get to the Home Office and all of the other crap in 2B. It may have been more the fact they were bored than excited to move onto other things.

That is one of the more baffling decisions in the series. Cora was such a Boss Bitch Big Bad. She had a link to multiple characters. She was derailing Regina's redemption, so that there was a kind of tug-of-war of the soul between Snow, Emma, Henry and the Charmings and Cora over how Regina was going to turn out. And then they killed her off midway through the arc. Just about any villains were going to be boring in comparison after her, and the Home Office stuff didn't stand a chance.

I wonder how much the tendency in later seasons to make every villain be somehow related to one of the main characters came from them wishing they hadn't killed Cora off so soon and trying to replicate what they had with her as a villain.

The real irony is that Cora was killed because she was a magical threat, and the fact that Snow used magic to kill her was part of what made her heart dark -- and then the next storyline was about how the anti-magic people were terrible.

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

Maybe they finalized their plans to set 3A in Neverland, and decided to use the final third of the season to get to that endpoint.

I thought it wasn't until the end of the season that they got clearance to use Peter Pan and Neverland, and that was why the threw out the Home Office plot, brushing it aside with that weak "it was a scheme of Pan's all along" explanation (that didn't fit what we'd seen at all). They killed Cora off to do the Home Office/anti-magic stuff, only to go "never mind" about that and not really explore it.

They could have kept Cora to the end of the season, had her be the one to trigger the failsafe to get herself and Regina out while killing everyone else, and then Regina's redemption could have been her realizing that her mother had manipulated her into everything and then choosing everyone else against Cora, even though she would have come out okay if she'd gone along with Cora.

But then we wouldn't have had years of Snow groveling apologies for killing Cora.

[Camera One]

I was reading this interview from January 2013 after the screening of "The Cricket Game":

Quote

Executive producer Adam Horowitz said of what's ahead for Cora: "Things in that storyline will progress very quickly." (Charmed vet Rose McGowan was cast as a young Cora in the upcoming origin episode centered on the evil mother.)

Cora's storyline lasted 7 episodes in 2B, so it seems like they planned to leave the remaining 6 episodes for something else.

[tennisgurl]

Yeah, thats A&E for you. They actually create a great villain in Cora, who perfectly fits into the themes of the show, has a complex but believable history with a number of characters, who is a threat that can both do magic and manipulate the people around her...and kill her as soon as possible to make room for that truly god awful "Snow gets darkness on her heart because she killed one of her mortal enemies to stop her from committing mass murder and thats bad I guess" and the even worse Home Office story and the worst and most embarrassing big bads this show ever had. Its their entire creative process in a nutshell. 

[Camera One]

I was thinking about Season 7.  What if it had been a complete reboot, with no returning characters, but the story was pretty much the same as what we got?  Would it have been more or less successful? 

It could be set in the same "universe", but with no direct connections to Storybrooke characters.

This would mean the actors who played Regina, Rumple, Whook (and Zelena) would all play new characters, and Henry was also a new character, so there would be some tweaks.  Instead of the Dark One dagger, "Weaver" would be getting rid of another object that forced immortality on him.

I was curious if plugging in other fairy tale/Disney characters for each of them would have worked.

Edited September 1, 2020 by Camera One

[Speakeasy]

On 9/1/2020 at 4:32 AM, Camera One said:

I was thinking about Season 7.  What if it had been a complete reboot, with no returning characters, but the story was pretty much the same as what we got?  Would it have been more or less successful? 

It could be set in the same "universe", but with no direct connections to Storybrooke characters.

This would mean the actors who played Regina, Rumple, Whook (and Zelena) would all play new characters, and Henry was also a new character, so there would be some tweaks.  Instead of the Dark One dagger, "Weaver" would be getting rid of another object that forced immortality on him.

I was curious if plugging in other fairy tale/Disney characters for each of them would have worked.

This is a pretty interesting idea, I don't think it would have gotten on to tv and o don't think it would have been successful if it had because you'd have 5he same (kind of) show with the same actors playing different people and a lot of long term fans would find this confusing and infuriating.

Still as an idea it's pretty interesting and it might have been a good way to drop all the baggage of the last 6 seasons-which had at that point reached a level of convolution usually reserved for superhero comics. As far as which characters would be which... Wish Hook and Alice could pretty easily just be Rapunzel and Rapunzel's dad-this gets rid of an inconsistency that's been noted here, that Killian Jones is defined by the fact he's determined to the point of self destruction, so he wouldn't leave his daughter alone because of a heart attack curse laid on him. If he wasn't Killian Jones but some hapless farmer who, somehow, had lost his daughter to a terrifying witch, itd be a lot more believable that he'd be scared off and that the rest of his arc could be him trying to atone for abandoning his child (which a lot of normal people would do if Gothel was, as in the Grimm version, 'feared by all the world')

I'm not sure who Regina and Henry could be, maybe it would be best not to make them mother and son, at least if we're using the same actors - although maybe she could be some kind of immortal being. Have to think about that one.

Rumpy-Rumpty Tumpty...

Could you make him Humpty Dumpty if he'd been healed by some dark magic that was keeping him alive when all the King's horses and men couldn't? (Never been clear on what they thought the horses were going to contribute there anyway...)

Actually seriously I wondered if you could bring in The Black Cauldron-its not something Disney is proud if anymore but it's a pretty fun and distinctive little movie. Rumple could be someone brought to life by the Cauldron, maybe he's the Horned King or one of his minions, who wants to destroy it so he can die. I think there's a possibility there.

Not sure what you'd do with the rest of the characters. I thought their take on the Cinderella story, where Cindy's mother was the stepmother, was kind of interesting, but it really tangles (eeyyy!) things up by making that part of the Rapunzel story as well.

Tiana and Naveen and Facilier could just be jettisoned entirely or swapped out for basically any prince, princess and evil wizard. Make them Prince Ivan, Maria Morevna and Koschei the Deathless and aside from some viewers being confused by black people having Russian names you'd lose (and gain) nothing.

[Camera One]

8 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

I'm not sure who Regina and Henry could be, maybe it would be best not to make them mother and son, at least if we're using the same actors - although maybe she could be some kind of immortal being. Have to think about that one.

I like those ideas and the incorporation of "The Black Cauldron".   In this scenario, we have to keep Jacinda, Tiana, etc, so will need to work around the existing stories for them.

I was thinking maybe Henry could be Taran from The Black Cauldron, wanting to be a hero.  Alternatively, he could also be Christopher Robinson, who "believed" as a kid but grew up and leaves his family to have an adventure.

Not sure about Roni.  She would have to be someone who cares about the Henry character, and someone with magic who mentors Drizella. 

Maybe she could be Mary Poppins who was a nanny to Taran or Christopher Robin when they were young.  Then we could have a flashback with Henry and his siblings Jane and Michael.  Zelena could be Madame Mim who turned good, maybe by falling in love with Hansel's father.

A kooky idea is if Roni is the Owl in Winnie the Pooh (Christopher's surrogate parent) and she's a shape shifter.  The Disenchanted Forest could be Hundred Acre Wood.  Weaver and Gothel are looking for The Guardian of the Magical Honey Pot™.  They could adapt the Grimm Story "The Queen Bee" as well... that could involve the Princess and the Frog and Mother Gothel.

Edited September 2, 2020 by Camera One

[tennisgurl]

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

A kooky idea is if Roni is the Owl in Winnie the Pooh (Christopher's surrogate parent) and she's a shape shifter. 

That could have been fun, I love the idea of bringing in some more unique characters. I dont know how the seventh season could have worked with no new characters, but I think its possible that it could have worked. Have it be set in the same multiverse, and maybe begin and end the season with some of the Once characters commenting on how wacky it is that these people look like them but are from a different universe, or something like that. It worked for American Horror Story and a lot of the anthology series that followed, so why not here? 

I always wished that they used more of the talking animal characters. Make some of them shape shifters so that they can be mostly human but also have animal forms, if its budget that they are worried about, or have it be like Gus, who was a mouse who was turned into a human by the curse. That would actually be a pretty interesting, would a talking animal who became a human in Storeybrooke want to go back to their animal form, or would they want to stay human, and want to stay in Storebrooke to keep their human form? Did Jiminey/Archie like being a human again when he got his memories back in Storybrooke? Did he ever expect to be human again before the curse? He was a cricket for a long time after all, did he just decide he liked that better than being a human? Talking animals are such a big part of Disney, it always felt weird not to have any around.

[Camera One]

27 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

Did Jiminey/Archie like being a human again when he got his memories back in Storybrooke? Did he ever expect to be human again before the curse? He was a cricket for a long time after all, did he just decide he liked that better than being a human? 

You'd think they would have explored that in Season 2 or 3 or something.  But nope, Archie gets to become a glorified extra instead.

Quote

Talking animals are such a big part of Disney, it always felt weird not to have any around.

In the flashbacks (resistance, becoming queen, etc.), Tiana could have been Nala from "The Lion King" and nothing much would have changed.  She was a little more Tiana-ish wanting to open a restaurant in the present-day.  Sort of, but Nala could have done that too.  I guess Dr. Facilier could have merged with Scar.

Edited September 2, 2020 by Camera One