Once Upon a Time should have ended after Season 3 because it nicely wrapped up Mr. Gold and Regina’s storyline while remaining consistent with the characters and themes of previous seasons: evil was rooted in unresolved pain from past relationships. Season 4 ruined one of its strongest characters, Mr. Gold. He was all over the map from episode to episode-one minute he wants to escape with Henry, and the next he is threatened by him instead of mingling that conflict gradually until he comes to a decision on how he wants to act.
I expected that one day, Emma would be powerful, but it wasn’t developed in a consistent way. If Xena: the Warrior Princess could do it with Gabrielle, Once Upon a Time does not have an excuse. At this point, Once Upon a Time is introducing new characters in an effort to create new past relationship problems to deal with instead of organically progressing from what was already established in prior seasons. For instance, what happened to Regina’s white magic? Sorry, Once Upon a Time, I didn’t forget. Instead Once Upon a Time just wants to make characters evil in the most stupid way possible. Instead we are given crazy foster mothers, randomly resurrected characters and an assortment of new, uneven evil characters because apparently we’ve run out of crucial past relationships to explore. Is it just me or did you feel a little put off when Cruella de Vil was called Feinberg at certain points? Optics. There is a ton of angst and fury over Maleficent’s dilemma, but once resolved, it is dropped like a hot potato. Where did Kristin Bauer go?
Once Upon a Time has become an acting exercise, a money machine and is not taking any meaningful efforts to develop any of the characters other than Regina, and even she is trapped in constantly being considered potentially evil. Once Upon a Time, you jumped the shark with Marion. Sorry. I’ll keep watching because I’m a completist, but I’m wasting my time.