Now, let me preface this with the fact that I don’t normally push for cancelling a show; it puts cast, crew, and writers out of a job. Sure they will most likely move onto something else, but it’s still losing a job. With that said, let me begin with my reasons as to why this show should have been cancelled.
Disclaimer: Everything in this post is my own opinion, and may not match what others believe.
Let’s start with the most recent episode, and the finale that is about to air. They are promoting the finale as ‘Emma must believe…” which relates to her confrontation with the black fairy and winning “the final battle” as they put it. I ask you this, why does she have to believe now? She’s been through 6 years of stories at this point. Most of which fantastical and strange. Emma has seen a lot since beginning her journey as the “savior”. Having her have to believe again, for any reason, undoes almost 6 years of character growth. There’s no purpose in it.
Couple this with the ending of the musical episode that has just aired (which actually wasn’t as bad as I dreaded) where she married Hook (a dumb decision on Adam\Eddie’s part) and sung about this being a happy beginning and finding the power to stop the Black Fairy from taking her heart by virtue of a ‘wish’ years ago. It makes no sense, dramatically, or character wise.
Adding to this poor decision here, is the fact that Jennifer has decided not to return (save one episode potentially) to the next season. This makes even less sense story-wise given that Colin is staying on, which leads many fans to speculate that Emma will die. Whether this will be in the finale, or whichever episode she returns in, is yet to be seen. Also not returning is Ginnifer and Josh (Snow and Charming respectfully). This one leads me to think that Emma will be killed, and Snow\Charming won’t want to be around because of the memories. But I guess we’ll see.
The creators behind the show for next season have decided that Rebecca Mader, Jared Gilmore, and Emilie De Ravin will not be asked back with Jared’s character apparently being recast–for whatever way that makes sense (It doesn’t).
In the beginning Once Upon a Time started off as a great show, with a great premise. Fairy tales in the real world, and no magic. Even when they began to bring magic in initially, it worked and made sense (for the most part). but it went too far. Sometime around season 3 it began to go off the rails, and it was clear that the story was going out of control. Characters were under utilized. Plots were simple, and not well thought out. A lot of which ended up just being “the dark one” because he’s the dark one.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Robert and I think he does a great job with what he’s got. But not everything needed to come back to his dark one character. It reeks of laziness really.
The worst one (and this is completely my opinion) is the waste of story that they did with Robin Hood (played by Sean Maguire). They brought him in with so much potential, but ended up doing nothing with him. Like so many of the cast, he was relegated to being a background player and only jumping in when they needed something–which was usually minimal and served little purpose. They finished Robin’s story arc by killing him, but not just killing him. They “destroyed his soul” meaning that he couldn’t return in any way possible. Pointless. At the same time in the episode where he died, Adam and Eddie had Hook brought back from the underworld by Zeus. Why? For nothing. It took away his “heroic” if you want to call it that, of helping to defeat Hades. There was no purpose to the sacrifice and it meant nothing by the end.
Meanwhile, Robin who was underused and had little to do with any story (even his own) got the short end of the stick. Killing him also took Regina further away from having ANY happy ending at all because… “Regina must not get one” <= that’s what I take from Adam and Eddie all the way through their show because it’s happened constantly.
Overall this show’s storylines have gone completely away from what they had originally. It’s seemingly clear (or at least it feels like it to me) that they had no forward plan past the second season. I don’t even know where they came up with the rape story line for Zelena and Robin. If you think it wasn’t rape, go back and watch those episodes while pretending it was a male doing the same thing to a woman. That was as typically disgusting as the CaptainSwan story line. The continued push of two characters that actually had no romantic chemistry there and began with Hook’s complete desire to stalk Emma until she gave in.
In the end, this story has run it’s course and devolved into a mess of crappy story lines and plots that get continually reused with no resolutions.
So that’s my thoughts. I’ll give them one episode of season 7 to see what they do, otherwise I’m out and done with Adam and Eddie’s show.
Do you agree? Do you think it’s mad?
(FYI, I don’t ship anything, so don’t attack me for being against anything in particular)
Dreaming Screenwriter 