The narrative purpose of the 'dual-time storytelling formula' for Season 2

Hi, everybody. First-time poster.

I’ve been sitting on this topic for about 24 hours or so, but was inspired to come and make it my first post here because, ironically, of the most recent episode of Season 3.

I was listening to the ONCE 131/WONDERLAND 012 podcast when I came to the conclusion that there has been a fundamental misunderstanding about the overall narrative purpose for the series’ narrative formula of telling both a past story (through flashbacks) and a present-day story, with said misunderstanding being that said purpose has remained exactly the same as it was in Season 1, which, when  you look at everything we’ve gotten to date, really isn’t the case at all.

In Season 1, this formula – which I’m going to refer to as ‘dual-time storytelling’ – was primarily designed to establish the characters and mythology of the series and aid in the progression of Emma’s ‘hero’s journey’, and given the way Season 2 started, it would’ve been easy to assume that the ‘narrative purpose’ for using the formula hadn’t changed when, in fact, it had.

If you look at Season 2, it was really designed to tell two stories, one of which was designed to carry over into the first part of Season 3 rather than being, as was the case with Season 1 and Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, resolved within the course of 22 episodes, and the way that the PTBs used the series’ dual-time’ storytelling formula throughout the course of Season 2 is actually very reflective of that.

Based on everything that we were given, the underlying narrative purpose of the ‘dual-time storytelling’ formula for the first portion of Season 2 was to flesh out certain already-established characters while setting up a storyline that would and could sustain the show until they were ready and able to start telling the second story, which is the one that would carry the show through the first half of Season 3 (which, incidentally, is very similar to what was done in the second season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which, like OUaT S2, starts out telling a vastly different storyline than the one that ultimately concludes the season). This is done so subtly, though, that, unless you’re aware that this was their intent, it becomes easy to take things at face value and believe that Season 2 is fairly disjointed, although, in the grander scheme of things, it’s actually supposed to feel disjointed in a lot of ways because it’s doing something entirely different than what was done in Season 1 and what has been done thus far in Season 3.

In summary, Season 2 is telling two stories simultaneously, one which is designed to reach a definitive conclusion within the course of its 22 episode run, and one which is designed to carry over into Season 3 and that therefore by design doesn’t actually begin until around the mid-way point of the season itself, while also fleshing out certain characters and telling a character-driven narrative that is connected to both stories in ways that don’t really become apparent until the second storyline has been finished.