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What makes her so different that she has to be crazier…I just didn’t see the reason behind her wickedness besides jealousy and greed.
I think the answer is as simple as A&E are trying to outdo their last villain. Every big bad must be badder than the last in their minds. At least that’s what I gather from their approach to Zelena.
[adrotate group="5"]Co-Mayor of Sad Town | Twin of Co-Mayor of Sad Town
What makes her so different that she has to be crazier…I just didn’t see the reason behind her wickedness besides jealousy and greed.
I think the answer is as simple as A&E are trying to outdo their last villain. Every big bad must be badder than the last in their minds. At least that’s what I gather from their approach to Zelena.
You’re not wrong. They need to top Pan, so they pull all the themes and ideas from their three previous villain–Regina, Rumple, and Cora–and mash them together with Oz lore and present Zelena.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"It’s a sad testament to the writing when I think Pan’s quest to be a teenager forever has more internal logic to it that whatever it is Zelena wants.
"Death cannot stop true love...it can only delay it awhile."
You’re not wrong. They need to top Pan, so they pull all the themes and ideas from their three previous villain–Regina, Rumple, and Cora–and mash them together with Oz lore and present Zelena.
What I don’t get is why they feel they need to that. They’re doing it with her past and they’re doing it with her present. Ten times the tragedy equals ten times the villain, seems to be their philosophy. Making a better villain, doesn’t mean more of the same, it means doing something fresh and new and out of the box. Make her come from a totally lovely family for example. Now that would be intriguing and make you go: well I wonder what the heck made her like this then.
Co-Mayor of Sad Town | Twin of Co-Mayor of Sad Town
Hmm perhaps a better word is Identity crisis…I think that’s something unique to Zelena…Let me ponder it some more.
Hmm perhaps a better word is Identity crisis…I think that’s something unique to Zelena…Let me ponder it some more.
Well each of our villains has a bit of “split” in their personality.
Rumple–good god. How many persona’s does he have now?? SUPER Dark One Rumple, In Love Dark One Rumple, Rumple the Spinner
Regina–Stable Princess and the Evil Queen
Hook — Killian Jones the Naval Liuetenant, Killian Jones the Pirate, Revenge Seeking Hook, Semi-Reformed-Moving-Down-Redemption-Road Hook
Zelena– poor peasant girl, The Wicked Witch
I think her identity problem likes in her continual rejection: Cora, Woodcutter, Rumple
She’s trying to please all three of these people but they never give her approval. She wants a second chance to be the daughter for Cora, but still earn her adopted father’s love somehow (she was pretty broken when he yelled at her), and at the same time be Rumple’s daughter/wifely figure who will cast his curse.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"After watching a second time, I wonder if her father really meant it when he said she was wicked. Maybe he wasn’t trying to be cruel. Maybe he was calling a spade a spade. Maybe she was born that way, and her wickedness grew as she grew. She did slit her sister’s throat. Born Wicked, turned green.
What I don’t understand is why Zelena never went to befriend/talk to Regina in the first place. When she first talked to the Wizard she said something along the lines of wanting to find a family and instead of wanting to meet her sister she *immediately* becomes jealous of her because of Rumple teaching her magic. Just strikes me as odd. The whole thing would have made more sense to me if Regina “abandoned” her as well. I don’t know Zelena just seems incredibly unhinged to me and not really justifiably so. Perhaps it is because her backstory if fairly limited compared to the other villains but I find her to be the least redeemable (aside from Pan and maybe Cora).
What I don’t understand is why Zelena never went to befriend/talk to Regina in the first place. When she first talked to the Wizard she said something along the lines of wanting to find a family and instead of wanting to meet her sister she *immediately* becomes jealous of her because of Rumple teaching her magic. Just strikes me as odd. The whole thing would have made more sense to me if Regina “abandoned” her as well. I don’t know Zelena just seems incredibly unhinged to me and not really justifiably so. Perhaps it is because her backstory if fairly limited compared to the other villains but I find her to be the least redeemable (aside from Pan and maybe Cora).
Excellent point.
And I think that’s why a lot of people are (right now) having trouble wanting her redeemed. Until a year ago in the EF, Regina had never met/seen Zelena.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"This is a long post but now you are warned 😉
I wanna chime in on this I think Z is a very interesting villain and character. I agree to the point that it is not so well explained on the show. What is her beef with Regina? Whats her motive for hating so much?
I feel like I understand her well enough, but that is more the motive and explanation I give it in my own mind. I think the show just doesn’t take time to explain some things about their characters because they are so busy trying to make all the plot mechanics come together, as I said on another thread somewhere, they have too many stories that they wanna tell and mashing them up like this, is a great idea, but with all these stories in just the one little pot that Once is, makes a very murky soup which tastes just like sand because of to many ingredients. They don’t know how to kill their darlings.
Back to Z. This is how I explain her to myself. She is jealous. Why? Well first of all she is her bio-mothers daughter. What Cora wanted was fame and fortune, apparently so badly that she gave up her child because she thought that baby would hinder her in that plan. Z desperately wants to be more than the daughter of a drunk peasant. She wants fame and fortune and In her screwed up soul that begins to mean she want what could have been, when she finds out she could have had a different life, she could have had that life that she sees her sister has. In her minds eye it’s the good life- Regina is loved by their mother who abandoned Z- She is a rich Princess- She is loved and wanted by Rumple. So Regina has everything Z feels that she needs.
What I get from Z is that she feels like she was never wanted by anybody, she grew up thinking she was a bio daughter of that Oz couple its apparent that she never got any love or affection from the father figure, we are not told much about the mother, but it seemed to be her that wore the pants in the relationship with her man what ever type of relationship Z had with her we are not told but I think it probably wasn’t a very loving one- Z feels loved by no one.
The scene between Z and her father was rushed it tried to explain everything right then and there of the relationship between Z and her adoptive parents. The show should have taken more time with that if they wanted Z to be explained. But one intriguing thing we see is that Z shaves her father with a knife the way she later does Rumple. This again tells me she is very screwed up in how she has learned to show affection. This could have been a very affectionate act but with her father it becomes abusive, he takes advantage of her, I mean he had arms and hands why didn’t he just shave himself, and he emotionally abuses her in the small way we see by him pointing out her mistake when she cuts him, this little thing could point to an abusive relationship in a much larger scale-
so Z has a deranged understanding of what a loving relationship with family should be like- we understand this when we see her carry out the same act of shaving Rumple when she has him in the cage, this time reversed since he is now her slave. And like RG points out in her first post here-What does Z want with rumple? A father or a man?? She doesn’t know herself probably.
So Z is Jealous of what life she could have had plus she has a screwed up understanding of how to show and receive love and affection, She is alone completely- she is like a catwoman only with monkeys.
She becomes angry- she was never given anything- so she is gonna go out there and take it for herself (That’s understandable and even admirable in some ways) but she has not learned the right way to go about it. Then ofcourse there is the magic. What I think the show tries to establish (but haven’t succeeded with fully) about the magic, is that it is a dangerous thing to play with, like gunpowder it can blow up in your face or in the case of the magic it will blow your soul away. We have heard multiple times that it always comes with a price. People go crazy when they start to use it or when it is thrust upon them full force like it was with Rumple. Rumple became crazy because of it. Regina became crazy because of it and here we see Z being crazy because of it. This was what I didn’t understand in the beginning of the show and why at first I had a problem with the way they explained Regina but with the magic ingredient playing havoc on her mind and with her feelings it makes sense. Think of a person high on drugs-that pretty much explains all the weird crazy things they do. Magic screws with these peoples brains or more accurately their feelings-
Magic is all about the feelings right?… they use their feelings to tap in to the magic, but also the magic feeds on that and enhances the persons feelings by 100% So if Z is jealous and angry and craves the things she haven’t got Love-Fortune. That is gonna get her to where she is now.
Again her motive/reason for being what she is is jealousy-anger-fighting for what she feels she was deprived of. I don’t think she needs a bigger or better reason than that. Cinders puts it well in her post
“Her obsessive self pity, her sense of entitlement, greed, envy, rage. Those are strong emotions”
And all those emotions gets directed at what Z thinks is the course of her trouble- Regina (like Regina wrongfully directed all her anger at Snow). Z thinks she was abandoned because someone better came along, someone who stole the life Z was supposed to have, Regina was first favored by their mother then by Rumple.
As Ive said before on here the soppy back-stories for the villains is just getting old (or maybe I just hated it so much for Rumple that I never want to see it again on this show ) And I think Z’s backstory was just sobby-less enough for it to be okay.
So I liked the explaination for ‘Z’ but I agree they could have taken more time to flesh her out more, like some people say.
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