We learned that the only way to kill a doppleganger is to kill the original. What do you think of this revelation? And what does this mean for Regina? Is she now destined to die as well?
When I watched the episode, it didn’t strike me as counter-intuitive, but now that I’ve read your argument, I agree with you. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that they don’t share bodies anymore, like they did with in the Jekyll/Hyde flashbacks? So essentially, we’ve got these personalities inhabiting bodies that materialised out of nothing. If you really wanted to, you could try to make some pseudo-scientific argument about the new body drawing its life force from the original, or perhaps being a sort of reflection of the original. But if this was the case, you’d expect the doppelganger’s body to disappear after he/she dies. So no, I can’t make sense of it.
It strikes me as completely bizarre that not one of these characters has thought of the idea of reintegrating Regina’s dark side. They need to head over to Storybrooke library and check out some books on psychology. But seriously, Snow’s always going on about “being who you really are” and we went through a whole arc where Emma learned to accept the magical part of herself. You’d think they’d be able to extrapolate these lessons to Regina’s dark side.
But there’s no way they’re killing off Regina. No, not even at the end of the series. Look at what happened with Robin. Just three episodes later, they were backtracking about what really happened to him (obliterated, but apparently not) and now they’re bringing him back in some capacity, probably to placate the fans. Regina is about a million times more popular than Robin. They wouldn’t dare.