Once Upon A Time was my quarantine show. Years ago, I watched the first few episodes and got too busy to finish it, so this was a long time series on my watch list.
(Mild spoilers for the series, but I think I kept things vague enough that nothing major is revealed.)
So for those of you who don’t know, Once Upon A Time (OUAT) is a show about fairytale characters who have been cursed, trapping them in a small town called Storybrooke. All the characters trapped in this town have amnesia except for the Evil Queen from Snow White, who cast the curse. As the curse fell across the land, Snow White and Prince Charming send their newborn daughter to our world to escape. Their daughter, Emma, was prophesied to return and break the curse after she turns 28.
The show starts when Henry, the son Emma put up for adoption, brings Emma to Storybrooke to break the curse and stop his adoptive-mother Regina, the Evil Queen. OUAT episodes usually consist of storylines that take place in modern-day interwoven with pre-curse flashbacks that give context to the current problem.
This thing is…this premise only lasts for the first season. After season one, the original curse is lifted, and the show becomes a story about the various magical threats that disturbed the peace of the town. While it was cool to see interesting concepts like Evil Peter Pan and his dictatorship over Neverland, but things like this are what was starting to make the show confusing.
For one, it is never clear if the characters wanted to stay in the town or not. Sure, everyone gets upset every time Storybrooke gets threatened, but those threats usually promise to kill all the residents as well. The only time leaving the town is seriously brought up by the residents is during these times when evacuation is being discussed. But, new story arcs usually have an early scene where residents would try to leave only to be stopped by some magical force. The fact that characters tend to do this before a threat is revealed implies that they do, in fact, want to leave. But nothing is ever concrete on this front.
Another problem is the number of times the cast loses their memories. It was pretty much once a season. Usually, they got cursed again, and because a curse effect is a case of amnesia, no one remembers enough to quickly break the curse. Honestly, if people did remember, the plot could probably be solved in one episode.
Way too many characters are related. By the end of the show, so many characters were on the same family tree that they might as well change their name to the Hapsburgs. The show does eventually point out how weird it is when Emma is introduced as both Mila’s son’s baby momma and her ex-lover’s current lover. Honestly, the town would be pretty peaceful if the Charming-Stiltskin Clan didn’t have a revolving door of disgruntled family members flooding in to run amuck.
Speaking of relations, the most annoying and emersion-breaking development of the show is the constant backtracking to connect every plot to the main characters. The show will retcon characters who have never met each other to interact at some point in the past. Hook apparently had a couple of run-ins with Snow White. Charming somehow knows Kristoff and Anna. The only character this makes sense for is Rumpelstliskin because he is an ancient oracle who was trying to craft a future that reunited him with his son.
Also, the way time passes in the show changed around when the characters start having kids. Before the babies are born, one season equals one year. After they’re born, suddenly we have three seasons with these kids as infants. It’s almost as if these plots only last a couple of weeks each season. Because the characters weren’t really discussing the passage of time, I didn’t realize it was happening at first. I think the moment I realized was when they called Henry 14 even though his actor was 17-years-old.
Bonus Round! Mulan (and Philip) doesn’t age, and it’s weird. Belle meets them pre-curse, and Mulan looks like she’s 25-ish. 28 years pass, while she wasn’t in the curse, she still looks 25-ish. What? The show seems to be implying that people didn’t age in the Enchanted Forest while the Storybrooke curse was going on. It would have been nice if anyone could have said that in the show.
Edit: I was wrong. In season 2 episode 1, Mulan actually briefly explains that everyone was frozen in the Enchanted Forest as well. The weird thing is that this episode implies that no one in the EF could act until time started again (Philip couldn’t wake Aroura until after the curse broke). I guess it was an attempt to keep everyone connected by having Belle know Mulan, so again the interconnected web of characters does more harm than good.
I want to say despite all these problems that I enjoyed this show…but that would be a lie. After they finished Rumpelstliskin’s character arc in season 3a, it seemed like the show was done telling the story it had planned and was now making up things as they went along.
It felt a bit like a chore to watch the show after that. By the time I realized it wasn’t enjoyable anymore, I was halfway through the series. So, after a short break, I jumped back into the series. And I’m glad I did.
Season 7 of OUAT was probably my favorite in a long time. Yes, it had problems, the confusing decision to focus on an alternate dimension Hook, but the fact that it went back to OUAT‘s original roots was what did it for me. The final season reminded me of what excited me about Once Upon A Time in the first place.
(All images came from this OUAT wiki.)
I Think Thinks 