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I’m not sure I buy it’s MRJ, but the “no small feat” could refer to things beyond plot — namely, that, indeed, they’ve written him off the show and then emphasized over and over that dead is dead and that Neal’s not coming back.
But I’ll believe it when I see it — right now my money’s on someone other than Neal.
[adrotate group="5"]Gaston’s narcissism seems like the kind of thing that would draw ironic punishment (or cure, depending on how you look at it) from the gods. Maybe he didn’t come back quite right from his time as a flower.
Gaston and Merlin could form Photosynthesizers Anonymous.
This would, of course, be a lovely opportunity for the show to reflect on the “handsome hero” trope in the first place.
How about Quasimodo? He’s probably from Belle’s realm.
Ha, why not? I’m assuming you’re thinking of the Disneyfeyed version — I can’t imagine Monsieur Hugo’s original sensibilities would fly here, unless OUAT suddenly morphed into an HBO show. Anyway, in the spirit of OUAT’s conflation of characters, who is going to be Quasimodo, Rumple or Gaston?
^^ Sympathy for the De Vil was actually quite good – and probably one of the strongest episodes of the season. I admit, I’m a bit biased against Smash the Mirror, though the episode itself wasn’t terrible. I just didn’t care for the entire Frozen arc in the first place.
But then, there’s Birth. I think some people were fans — I thought it was a sloppy mess with strange pacing that generated more plot holes than answers, and jettisoned the entire Dark One mythos for, in my opinion, very very little pay off.
On the other hand, if the Gaston subplot is just a self-contained one-off, like Cruella’s story, and doesn’t try to radically influence the overarching plot, then it might be just fine.
Uhhh that would be awful. What I’m hoping is that her handsome hero is referring to Rumple, and she sort of is making fun of Gaston. Like, she doesn’t need him, her handsome hero is right here, and his name is Rumple.
I think generally speaking, when OUAT plays with inversions, it’s predominantly one-directional. I.e. known fairytale baddies tend to be bad on OUAT (though sometimes they have a redemptive arc), while some famous good guys (Pan, Arthur) turn out to be bad as well. I can’t think of an example of a notorious villain being recast as straight-forwardly good.
This would, of course, be a lovely opportunity for the show to reflect on the “handsome hero” trope in the first place. At this point, OUAT’s heroes are already so problematic that I can’t imagine the title would be straight forward.
On the other hand, I’ve no doubt that they can botch it spectacularly. The fact that it’s written by Jerome Schwartz is making me nervous. He also gave us “Enter the Dragon” (if I recall, this is the one where being evil = taking shots and trashing cars) and “Broken Kingdom” (wasn’t that the magic roofie episode?) Point is, I don’t love the gender politics in this fellow’s writing. I think he’s trying to tackle “difficult themes” but he isn’t always, shall we say, successful.
Based on Hades shocked expression with the flower…I would guess that something is going wrong in Hell. Life is all of a sudden springing forth in the one place it never should…nine times out of ten due to the Savior Emma being in it’s domain. Emma’s ultimate light magic is bringing life to a place full of death. Hades being Hades, will not like someone bringing something tragically beautiful into his beautifully tragic domain.
Ooh, I like that — it makes sense. I don’t know if someone already mentioned this, but another (or simultaneous) explanation might be that the Underworld has a frozen time problem — like Season 1 Storybrooke. After all, growth/change/blooming flowers require time to pass. I wonder if the Underworld has this feature, whether on accident or on purpose — if so, then Emma’s track record as Savior would echo very well with Season 1.
Food for thought: can you die in the Underworld? Gaston seems to think he can at least hurt Rumple/Belle with that arrow.
a&E said yeah.
So they’re going by way of Beetlejuice?
Also, this answer upsets me, once again they make it look like Neal only connection in the show is about one ship and all about Emma, when he is related by blood with Henry and Rumple.
God you are so right. I mean, I was no Swanfire shipper, but it’s super annoying that the writers just ignore the fact that Neal was a major player in more than just Emma’s life.
I actually dread the possibility of a Neal cameo. I strongly doubt that the writers would ever off-center CS, but that’s not really the problem — Emma and Neal don’t have to be together. The problem is that the writers refuse to move beyond the whole Emma= Strong and Attractive But Secretly Brittle Female in Need of “Battering Ram” to “Break her Walls” ™ characterization. A Neal cameo would have to somehow further support this configuration, which… well, *bleah.* That’s distasteful on so many levels.
Also, I can only imagine what sort of havoc a Neal contorted to accommodate our latest I’mChoosingLove!Emma will wreak on Rumple and Henry’s characters. Now that Rumple’s headed back to Rent’a’Villain land, and Henry’s writing is an inconsistent and bland mess, the last thing the show needs is more “reversible” (ex) main characters that can be changed at the stroke of a pen to accommodate OUAT’s latest ship/plot (“shlop”?). So here’s to hoping that MRJ steers clear of this hot mess.
Though I think Kistowitz wouldn’t play it so close to the chest if Neal were coming back. There’s no way they’d pass up the buzz — looks like there’s plenty of it already. I can’t imagine that they’d resist the temptation to feed the fire if they had something up their sleeve.
Unless this is meant to refer to the nature of the show (I don’t expect Kistowitz to suddenly develop such a subtle form of self-reflexivity, so no), I’m reminded of a quote by writer Brian Aldiss.
When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of Hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay.”
I actually don’t know the original source, but have seen it quoted by others, and attributed to Aldiss. Anyway, seemed a propos.
I don’t think they meant any harm by it and I don’t think they believe their fans are idiots.
Hmmm. I think that maybe @Bar Farer is on to something, though. It could, of course, just be the product of the editing of the interview — but there is something slightly, well, not derisive, exactly, but a bit dubious about their apparent “surprise” at the fan reactions. I don’t think they’re maliciously lying to fans, necessarily. But based on their reactions to criticisms, those two don’t seem to always hold the highest opinion of the OUAT fandom. Again, this could be just coming out as the result of the editing, but some of Kistowitz’s Twitter comments/interviews over the years had all the social grace of a cement mixer.
Maybe the fact they’re being a bit defensive is understandable, though. I mean OUAT is, by its very nature, a fanfic. It’s derivative by definition, and because all these characters are part of a kind of “cultural commons” I think many fans feel that they should have a say in what happens to them and how their stories are told. Shipping is just an extreme manifestation of this. And A&E can’t do anything about this. So when they’re saying “we just want to tell stories about these characters” — sure. Fine. But I think what they don’t seem to acknowledge is that these characters aren’t theirs, or Disney’s, or ABC’s — some are hundreds and thousands of years old, and will likely outlive all of these structures. So the very nature of the project produces the sort of fandom they now have. Feigning surprise — oh golly, we had no idea! ships? what ships? — is either disingenuous, or staggeringly un-self-reflexive.
I also suspect that some works/writers lend themselves to “shipping” more than others — try shipping anyone from GRR Martin. If you know what’s good for you, you just won’t. And no amount of whining on social media by the fans will change the fact that he will eventually get around to killing them all [characters, not fans]
Your other point, about having run out of stories to tell, is dead on.
