Once Turns 100: Once Upon A Time Season 4 Retrospective

I think Cruella was the highlight of season 4 and would’ve rather had a whole season of her than half a season of Frozen. I can’t pick out individual episodes because I’ve started to reach the point where I’m past caring but 4B was better overall than 4A but that’s not to say that 4B didn’t have its faults aka completely misusing the Will character for cheap drama between RumBelle and in doing so cheapening the Ana/Will relationship that was so wonderfully played in OUATIW. A running theme of the split seasons is to introduce something that is never mentioned again after the arc has finished or to completely ignore it later on aka the sorcerer’s hat and mansion.

My main criticisms of season 4 are Anna and Hook.

Anna- I didn’t like how much of a mary-sue Anna was written to be. She was a pain in the backside and I hated how she was made to be the reason for why Charming and Belle are the people they are. It’s like they took away Charming’s and Belle’s key traits (belief in doing what’s right, facing up to problems, etc) and made it seem that if they’d never met Anna, they wouldn’t be the people we’d spent watching 3 seasons before hand. I also disliked how it was a comment from Anna about Rumple not being a good guy or whatever she said that tipped Emma off that Rumple was up to no good. Anna had not seen Rumple for over 28 YEARS, how the hell could she say that he wasn’t to be trusted. A lot can change in 28 years, Regina went from being the Evil Queen out to kill Snow White to Emma’s best buddy. It was too convenient that because of Anna, Emma was able to stop Rumple.

Hook- I’ve tried so hard to like Hook over the seasons and I just can’t. He tried to blackmail Rumple and it blew up in his face and it served him right. Whilst Rumple may have been in the wrong for what he did, Hook was equally in the wrong for threatening to break Belle’s heart unless he got his own way. It annoys me how Hook is constantly treated as a victim when he brings half his problems on himself. I still maintain and will always maintain that, when Rumple had Hook’s heart, Hook could’ve done a lot more to fight against it. Rumple couldn’t crush Hook’s heart until the time was right and he made it absolutely clear that he would crush it regardless of what Hook did. So why didn’t Hook try and work against Rumple more? Graham had control over his actions even though Regina had his heart. It’s only when the heart is being actively controlled that the person can’t do anything against it, yet when Hook was being actively controlled, he managed to fight it long enough to grab Emma’s hand to let her know something was wrong. Why didn’t Hook fight more when he wasn’t being actively controlled even if it forced Rumple to have to constantly actively control him. At least then Hook couldn’t be blamed for his actions. As it stands, Hook could’ve tried a lot harder than he did.

I have other issues with Hook throughout season 4 but I don’t want to cause RG too much of a headache by listing them all here, I just despise how we see Hook do unsavoury things but nobody calls him out on it and if they do then they are presented as a villain. Needless to say, Hook either needs to buck up or word-that-rhymes-with-buck off.

SEASON 4

4A

Favorite Episode: Shattered Sight

Our characters realizing at the end of the episode how far they’ve come together, and doing nothing but laughing at their own stupidity when they were in the curse was great. Ingrid’s death scene though…I can’t even think about it without crying first.

Favorite Character: Snow Queen Ingrid

It’s Elizabeth Mitchell…what more do I have to say?

Favorite Moment: Long Live The Snow Queen

Definetly Snow Queen sacrificing herself, that and the Titanic Like Music had us bawling….it was an amazing moment.

Regards:

Storybrooke really was frozen over, but in the words of Lana Parrilla, OutlawQueen got hot that night! Lol! On a serious note, I felt the Frozen cast maybe took over a little too much, wasn’t really any room for our Core Cast. But it was good enough, wasn’t the best half of the season, but good enough.

4B

Favorite Episode: Sympathy For The De Vil

Unexpected…we were not expecting this, and we loved it.

Favorite Introduced Character: Cruella De Vil

We had our doubts about Cruella when it was first announced, but boy did Victoria Smurfit prove us wrong about her character. Hands down the best introduced character of the season.

Favorite Moment: As odd as it played out, seeing all four of the Queens of Darkness together was the biggest highlight of the entire season! Seriously though, Maleficent, Regina, Ursula, and Cruella need their own spin off show! A villain like version of the Golden Girls!

Regards:

Though I am disappointed that the Queens of Darkness weren’t really that big of a threat….I mean you had the Mistress of All Evil, The Sea Witch, and the De Vil of London all on the same team with the Evil Queen “pretending” to be a part of it….these four ladies should have done some serious damage to Storybrooke even without the help of Rumpelstilskin. Instead what they gave us was a bland version of Charlie’s Angels……however dull it ended up being, seeing those four ladies together was at least entertaining.

#REGAL-DEVIL-DRAGON-SQUID