Reply To: 3×18 Episode and BTS Stills

My only explanation for how the writers could veer into such dangerous waters is to suggest that they must be writing a grotesque story in a similar vain as Nikolay Gogol’s The Nose, Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In grotesque literature, the characters are meant to evoke both disgust and empathy. Rumplestiltksin is such a character who embodies both sets of pitiable and disgusting qualities. As despicable as Zelena’s actions are, the writers are trying to make her pitiable. By revealing that Cora chose to wed her youngest daughter to the father of her eldest daughter, we’re meant to recoil in disgust while also empathizing with Zelena and Regina’s horrible circumstances. Cora, the spurned lover of Leopold, sacrificed the result of their torrid love affair and then lived vicariously through the marriage of her legitimate daughter to that same king.

This is a very risky gamble, however, since the audience may not respond well at all to the grotesque. When done well, characters like Rumplestiltksin actually evoke feelings of great empathy, but when done poorly, characters like Cora mostly just evoke disturbing feelings of disgust. We’ll see if the writers can successfully transform Zelena into a tortured soul who yearns for redemption or if she’ll descend further into her psychotic madness. Zelena sexually controlling Rumplestiltskin via his dagger may be the bridge too far to making the audience ever empathize with her, and she’ll become Cora 2.0, who already did the whole master-apprentice love affair thing in season two.