OUAT Rewatch: Overall Thoughts
~ The difference between binge-watching and watching it week by week, season by season is huge. I was more patient with the drawn-out storylines and filler episodes.
~ I don’t think a series like this would have been made after the Trump presidency, covid pandemic, and other events since the mid/late 2010s. Its themes of hope and redemption already seem old-fashioned and idealistic, but I think they may be needed now even more than when it first came out.
~ There are great themes throughout the show: seizing the present moment, being open to love, giving people second chances, looking to the future with hope rather than fear.
~ This time around, I was more aware of the music score and how different characters have their own leitmotifs. I love it!
~ For many shows, the pilot/premiere episode is not great, and it takes a while for the story to find its footing. But the first episode of OUAT is absolutely perfect and one of the best in the series.
~ The first few seasons and last couple seasons were great. I much prefer the seasons when the characters are in Storybrooke dealing with a variety of problems and antagonists, rather than introducing a particular world and/or character and focusing entirely on them for half a season. The writing suffered most in Seasons 4-5, to the point that it felt like the writers were creating drama purely for the sake of drama, even at the cost of consistency in themes, plotlines, worldbuilding and characterization. But even in their worst parts, there are still great moments here and there.
~ Although I don’t always like the costuming choices, some of them are great! The Camelot styles are probably the closest to the European medieval fairy tale style one would expect.
~ It’s great to see a show with so much emphasis on parenthood and family, including the breaking of intergenerational cycles of trauma.
~ It’s great to have a female-centric show (Emma, Regina, and Snow White are the main characters for most of it), but it sometimes feels as though they would have benefited from more women in the writers’ room and wardrobe department. This is most painfully felt through the duos and trios of sisters during the “Frozen” arc; it sounds like men trying to write about the bond of sisterhood with no actual understanding of that dynamic.
~ The most compelling thing about the first few seasons is Emma’s effort to connect first with her son and then with her parents. The later seasons explore other aspects of her identity, particularly her fear of losing the people she loves.
~ Cora Mills is the best villain. All the others are just trying to live up to the standard she set, and they all start to sound repetitive after a while.
~ As someone who was obsessed with “Peter Pan” as a kid, I wouldn’t have expected to enjoy a story that depicts Captain Hook as a hero and Peter Pan as a villain, but it works so well! Colin O’Donoghue’s Hook is fantastic, and Robbie Kay’s Pan is truly sinister.
~ Rebecca Mader was great in “Samantha: An American Girl Holiday,” but I hate her as the Wicked Witch. She’s so sickly sweet and poorly written in her first few seasons, only becoming tolerable later on.
~ As a lover of “Beauty and the Beast,” I loved Belle and her relationship with Rumplestiltskin in the first few seasons, and was saddened to see both the characters and the relationship decline later on. They try to make Belle a strong, active character, but she is still too often swept off the chessboard, and their relationship devolves into toxicity and abuse before finally being resolved in the end. It feels a bit demeaning, like it’s living up to modern, literal interpretations of B&B rather than leaning into the symbolism and psychology of the story.
~ Emma and Hook’s relationship strikes a beautiful balance between epic love story worthy of legend and ordinary couple navigating the day-to-day difficulties of dating. I think Emma’s struggles with trust, vulnerability, and commitment are very relatable to young adults today.
~ Rumplestiltskin did not need that many love interests. Seriously. I lost count of how many women Robert Carlyle got to kiss in this show. He’s supposed to be a physically and morally repulsive villain, the Beast that only Belle can truly love. Making him an object of so many women’s desire undermines that.
~ The script throws around a lot of religious/spiritual words—like hope, faith, grace, redemption—without really digging into what they mean.
~ The worldbuilding is inconsistent and illogical, particularly with the Dark One, the Author, the rules of magic, and the existence of different realms.
~ I don’t like that they treat the Disney versions of so many stories like they are the official canon, rather than retellings of much older stories. The incorporation of characters from more recent movies like “Brave” and “Frozen” is kind of hit or miss. I will say, though, that the casting for Anna, Elsa, and Merida was spot-on!
~ The writers and characters go back on their own word a lot. The biggest example: the first few seasons emphasize that “magic comes with a price,” but the later seasons use magic as a cheap plot device and shortcut.
~ It’s great to see redemption arcs for many villains, but many of them involve character regression just for the sake of stretching out the drama. And because sometimes they simply kill of characters
~ The writers seem unable to decide whether they want the show to be idealistic or realistic.
~ I don’t like how the show leans into negative stereotypes and misconceptions of foster care. I remember watching the show back when my own family was hosting foster kids; it was extremely awkward hearing the characters such awful things about foster homes.
~ It seems like the writers struggled to decide which characters should be leads, supports, recurring, or limited to a certain period. They kill off characters that might have been better off staying alive, and resurrect characters that might have been better off staying dead. It makes me wonder if they looked at Grimm’s fairy tales and thought “Hey, these are full of people dying and coming back to life, we could use that!”
~ The show sometimes seems to reinforce the very labels it tries to transcend, particularly the concepts of “hero” and “villain.” It tries to be deep and nuanced but sometimes ends up sounding shallow and dissonant instead.
~ I was prepared to thoroughly dislike the seventh season, but I found myself enjoying it a lot! It managed to capture at least some of the sense of intrigue and suspense that characterized the first season. My main critique is that it should have been a separate spin-off, not tacked on to the rest of the show. It doesn’t really build on the previous seasons’ storylines; it just puts the action in a new setting and mixes old protagonists with new ones.
