Favorite Moment: The look on Regina’s face when she had to let Daniel die. I thought Lana Parilla gave a great performance. It was also good seeing more of the flashbacks about how she became the Evil Queen. Blaming Snow in The Stable Boy was perhaps an understandable reaction to the shock of seeing what Cora did to Daniel but it was not enough alone to explain how she became so evil. We needed to see this part of her backstory.
I don’t think the writers are going to try to redeem her by blaming all her deeds on manipulation by other people. I think they just feel that she was shown to be *so* evil that some mitigating factors have to be introduced to make her character sympathetic enough for redemption. I agree we will have to eventually see her accept responsibility for her actions and I suspect we will eventually see that, but it may take a long time. That may be part of the reason we didn’t see a scene like the one Golden Key suggested in which Henry would forgive Regina.
Personally, I would like to see a moment where he offers her a little sympathy for the pain she suffered from the loss of Daniel and the pain she had when Henry lied about meeting her for lunch, even though he can’t (and probably shouldn’t) yet forgive her completely and trust her. It could be very dramatic for her to realize Henry is offering support to her in her grief over Daniel even while he is grieving over the possible loss of Emma and MM which Regina caused. Her redemption should be a long and difficult process and right now she has no one but Archie to offer her any support. An occasional nod of support from Henry when she makes a difficult good choice (like not using magic against Charming when he didn’t want to let talk to Daniel) along with admonitions from him when she backslides (which I think will happen) could make her redemption arc more believable and more dramatic.