Once Upon a Time 4x19 Sympathy for the De Vil

If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you might have stumbled upon half-sentences here and there, mentioning my favourite series of them all, Once Upon a Time. Now that I actually get to write a proper review for one of its episodes, I need to mention just two things real quick: 1. I’m super excited about this, and 2. Just because this show means more to me than most other things in my life, it doesn’t mean that I’m not super critical of it and acknowledge when it fucks up. This is important because, unfortunately, OUAT has been doing a lot of fucking up during its current season. The first half wasn’t so bad. I thoroughly enjoyed all the Frozen characters and their corresponding story, the Snow Queen was as cool a villain as any – no pun intended – and if you don’t count the fact that it contained what’s probably my all time least favourite episode (4x05 Breaking Glass, also known as The One Where Regina Verbally Abuses Emma For 40 Minutes and Emma Never Gets to Fight Back), most episodes were actually pretty solid. Then season 4B happened, and... holy shit, where do I even start

There’s this whole mess with the Author who supposedly controls everything in the story, which is in direct contradiction with previously established canon but hey, it’s okay, the writers had a last-minute explanation for that so we’re all supposed to be cool with it now! In connection with it there’s all of our main characters tripping over themselves to help Regina get her happy ending, conveniently forgetting that she’s the reason for pretty much all the terrible things that have happened in their lives, and also that happy endings are not supposed to work that way (see previous sentence). Then there’s the fact that there’s little to zero focus on Emma, the main character of the show, and her basically non-existent relationship with her parents, if you don’t count the fact that the writers have managed to come up with a truly terrible way to make her angry at them, which also involves fundamentally changing some of the characters’ pasts, which we’re also supposed to be okay with because it apparently proves that not everyone is truly good or bad... which is something we’ve all been aware of for the past four seasons but whatever, let’s just make the heroes of the story into secretly horrible people to make the villains look that much better. And finally, speaking of villains, Emma and Regina are apparently best friends now, which we’re supposed to not question even a little bit, because a lot could have happened in that six weeks we’ve conveniently skipped, right? Well yeah, but this is kind of a huge deal because it wasn’t that long ago when Regina only reluctantly admitted that she doesn’t want to kill Emma, shortly followed by the revelation that what she actually feels for her is nothing less than the polar opposite of True Love, aka probably the most passionate hatred you can ever feel for a person... but it’s all cool, they’re friends now. So that’s about all my problems with season 4B that I could come up with on a whim, but I’m sure I could think of more if I actually took the time to do so.

Now, remember that I’m being 100% subjective here. This is my opinion, you don’t have to agree with any of it, but I’m pretty active in this fandom to know that at least I’m definitely not alone in thinking that this whole „let’s help the villains get their happy endings even though they did squat to deserve it”plot is the dumbest thing to ever happen on this show. Hell, you only have to look at the ratings to see that the numbers are steadily declining as more and more people lose faith that things will ever get back to how they used to be. As for me, I still watch every episode, but I no longer stay up until 3am just so I can see them live – what used to be the highlight of my week slowly turned into „I’m just gonna watch it when I get back from school on Monday”.

Taking all this into account, it’s probably not that surprising that I wasn’t all that excited for this week’s episode either. True, Cruella’s origin story was definitely more promising than most things that we’ve had to look forward to this season. Cruella herself has been my favourite of the three Queens of Darkness basically since the moment we first saw them all together, and the last one to get her own flashback episode. I had all the reasons to be hopeful about this one because while Maleficent’s backstory was pretty much a disappointment in that it gave us nothing of her actual origin as an evil sorceress, the episode which featured Ursula’s past is easily my favourite episode of the season. Yes, I am a little bit tired of almost all the villains having sad pasts that are supposed to explain their actions, but at least Ursula’s was truly touching and emotional, plus, if we’re being really honest, she wasn’t even that much of a villain to begin with: all we ever saw her do was choke people lightly with her tentacles. Not that the other two Queens were any more frightening, mind you. Maleficent’s dragon powers were severely underused, and Cruella’s only magical talent seemed to be... controlling dogs? Yes, sadly the much-anticipated, all-powerful Queens of Darkness turned out to be surprisingly mild as far as villains go, and looking at the big picture of the season, things wouldn’t really be any different if they weren’t there at all. Ursula was needed so she could help out the heroes a little bit, and then, having served her purpose, was quickly whisked out of the picture. Maleficent was needed to give Snow and Charming that completely unnecessary „terrible secret” storyline which would distance them from Emma, as well as to somehow connect Lily to the main cast, and Cruella was needed... well, that’s not entirely clear to me, not even after having watched her centric episode. But at least her backstory was super entertaining, probably one of the best I’ve ever seen on this show, so let’s get right into it, shall we?

Cruella’s story seemingly started out the way I really wished it wouldn’t: with a sad, miserable childhood. Apart from that I really loved this opening scene, even though it was also confusing to me on many levels, because, firstly, based on previous flashbacks I always thought Cruella was originally from the Enchanted Forest, but here was her mother driving a car... and secondly, I guess I just never thought about the fact that if she’s called Cruella, then that means that at some point somebody thought it was a good idea to give that name to their baby daughter. Then again, this is the same universe where a man simply called ’Malcolm’ decided to name his son Rumplestiltskin because why the hell not, so it’s probably best not to read too much into things like this when it comes to OUAT. Still, it would have been a nice touch if it was revealed that she chose this name herself, and she was originally called something else, something also with a Disney tie... Anita perhaps? Now wouldn’t that be cool.

Anyway, Little Cruella got chased down by her Evil Mother and two vicious-looking dalmatians, then got locked into an attic where she was to spend the rest of her life. Cut to about 30 years later and she’s still living there, deprived of every and all forms of entertainment, including music. See what I meant about the miserable childhood? This is one of the worst we’ve seen on the show so far, so does that mean that we should start pitying her now? Well, someone definitely thought that he should: the Author himself... sorry, I mean Isaac. Hello Isaac, nice to know you, and then meet you. You have about thirty minutes to make me like or care about you, I hope you’re ready.

Isaac quickly helped Cruella escape from her tower in exchange for a juicy story about her mother. Now, it’s a little bit confusing to me why exactly it is that Isaac was so interested in collecting remarkable stories, and I’m afraid it’s gonna become even more confusing by the end of the episode... but basically, if my guess is correct, he’s already the Author here, the one tasked with writing down the stories of... not only the Enchanted Forest, apparently, but all the different realms out there. And guess what, Cruella is not actually from our world aka The Land Without Magic. She’s from, well, a world stuck in the 20s for eternity, I would guess? "We're not in a time, we're in a realm of story", according to Isaac, whatever the hell that means. We’ve already seen a world like this before, Alice’s Victorian England world from the spinoff, but for some reason I never thought that there is more than one world like that... does that mean that there’s a different world „dedicated” enirely to a single decade (or year) of OUR world, and if yes, then what’s the connection between them and us, and how come time progresses normally here but not there? These are all rhetorical questions of course. It would be cool to have the answers, but I’m not holding my breath.

ANYWAY, things went downhill quickly for poor Isaac after he revealed his true identity to Cruella and the magical abilities that come with it. Cruella, using her brand new animal controlling powers gifted to her by Isaac, took the first chance she got to murder her mother and make a shiny new coat out of her dalmatians. Oh yeah, I left out this one important bit: there was a twist. A FANTASTIC twist. Sad childhood my ass, instead it turned out that Cruella has been a psychopathic serial murderer ever since her childhood (well, to be fair, her parents did name her Cruella, I mean what did they even expect), and her mother was only trying to protect herself and the rest of the world by locking her up. As a kind of last minute measure, Isaac quickly scibbled a line with his magical quill, that we only found out about at the end of the episode and this way it was yet another great twist concerning the character and her ultimate role in this season’s arc: „Cruella De Vil can no longer take away the life of another.” DUN DUN DUUUNNN.

And that brings us to the events happening in present day Storybrooke. It all started with Maleficent confronting Cruella, which gave us this interesting piece of dialogue:

"My daughter, Lily. You told me she didn't survive the trip to this world. You lied."

"Perhaps I did. But there's an explanation of course, you see, um... I'm a really terrible person, and I left her in the woods to die."

Now, this was back when I didn’t know anything about Cruella’s past, and I didn’t really know what to make of this line either. Is she being serious, or is she’s attempting to joke about it in order to cover up what really happened to Lily? Now that I know what kind of person she really is, I’m leaning towards the latter, and Maleficent didn’t take it as a joke either: in her rage she turned into a dragon, and... got her mind taken over by Cruella’s animal powers. Now, this would have been an incredible opportunity, to see Cruella use Maleficent in dragon form to break havoc over the town. Sadly, that never happened, this storyline didn’t really lead anywhere, and going by the events of the rest of the episode, it never will. What a shame.

Elsewhere, Regina shared her big news about Marian having been Zelena all along (the world is a happier place now that I’ll never get around to writing a review about THAT episode... I’m still fuming just by thinking about it), and that she decided to go to New York to find Robin and bring him back. Now, this brings us to a pretty interesting point. Remember how the last episode ended with Regina declaring „You may have darkened my heart but I’ll never let you do the same to Emma!” to Rumple, which prompted him to ask, „So you’re choosing the Saviour over Robin Hood?”, or something like that, the implication being that if Regina really chose Emma, Zelena was just a phone call away and Robin would be dead in a heartbeat. That obviously didn’t happen so can we just assume that Regina actually chose Robin, thus basically offering Emma up to Rumple, or at least promising that she won’t get in his way when he tries to take her? Either that, or this conversation will never be mentioned ever again, forcing us to think that it was only a rhetorical question on Rumple’s part... which is bullshit because the way that scene was shot it was very clear that Regina was just about to answer right when the screen cut to black. So it kinda makes me think that we’re in that situation now where everyone trusts Regina to fight on the good side when it comes to the big showdown at the end of the season, only for her to slowly back away to Rumple’s side, because she’s already made that choice earlier off-screen. Now THAT would be really cool.

Strengthening my theory is the next bit of the episode, where Regina pays a visit to Rumple... no, sorry, that’s not quite true... I meant the part where Regina rips out Belle’s heart, uses her to get to Rumple, makes them kiss, then commands Belle to forget all about it after she got what she wanted. This part was just... despicable? Disgusting? So fucked up I can’t even put it into words? I mean, we’re supposed to believe that Belle agreed to do this, because we’d seen Regina ask her for a favour earlier, but still. Ripping out hearts and controlling people through them is a recurring plot device on this show, and in every single instance so far it was shown as something absolutely horrible, a literal violation of someone’s personal will and freedom. Somehow I fail to see how this is any different, especially because the sole reason Regina did it was to tell Rumple that she’s heading out to New York, and that he’d better not alert Zelena or Belle will suffer for it. I’m not quite sure any of this was necessary. Couldn’t she just go to New York without talking to Rumple at all? I’m sure he has better things to do than to keep track of Regina’s whereabouts at all times. Anyway, as horrible as this scene was, we did get a couple nice things out of it: Emilie de Ravin acting evil is always a joy to see, and she absolutely nailed it this time too, not to mention her delivering the ultimate insult: "You know what the problem is though? Will is just such a better kisser than you are." Rumple’s face when he heard this was priceless. Oh, and his heart? It’s almost completely black as a result of centuries of murder, manipulation, and general horribleness, and that last remaining tiny patch of light will soon disappear too if he doesn’t get help asap. It turns out that he does have a semi-legitimate reason to want the author’s help after all, instead of a simple „I fucked up and now my wife hates me, but it wasn’t really my fault, so you should probably change it”, as I previously thought, and that’s really nice to know.

In the end Regina didn’t get to make her trip to New York because Cruella rudely interrupted by kidnapping Henry, so instead of finding Robin she got to search the forest with Emma and Killian. Not Snow and Charming though, because as Emma promptly told them, "With Henry's life on the line I need to be around people I trust, and right now, that's not you." At first this sounded plain wrong to me and my initial reaction was to think, „Oh, but Regina is?” But then I realized that this is not about the actual bad deed her parents committed, but about them keeping a pretty huge secret from her, which is a big no-no with Emma. So I understand where she’s coming from here, even if, and believe me I don’t say this very often, I also secretly agreed with Regina when she said "Your parents did a bad thing, they apologized, now get over it.", simply because I want this storyline to be over as soon as possible, so we can finally get some actual positive Charming family development in season 5. In any case, Snow and Charming got left out of Operation Cobra Rescue 2.0, and instead went to find the author so he could help them stop Cruella. Unfortunatley, he could do nothing of the sort; what he did do was reveal Cruella’s inability to kill, and from there Snow and Charming quickly put together the pieces to get the big picture, which if I have to be honest, I don’t completely understand. Basically, Cruella kidnapped Henry and threatened to kill him if the heroes don’t kill the Author instead. Now we know this was an obvious bluff on her part because she simply didn’t have the means to harm Henry in any way. But surely she would’ve guessed that the heroes would try to find another way instead of simply killing the Author? They’re the freaking heroes, for God’s sake. So ultimately, Cruella had to know that eventually she WOULD come face to face with the Saviour and/or the Evil Queen, who are both famous for being capable of doing just about anything to protect Henry, and she would be completely defenseless against them. I’m sorry, but the Cruella I got to know earlier is not this dumb. Add to this the fact that all this somehow fits perfectly into Rumple’s great masterplan of turning Emma dark (which, according to the Author, is „how the story ends”) by letting her kill Cruella, despite the fact that he didn’t even know about Cruella’s „disability” until AFTER she already kidnapped Henry, completely independent from Rumple? So yeah, this whole thing was a big mess, and the more I think about it the less sense it makes, so let’s just cut to the only thing that seems certain enough: Emma killed Cruella, and now it’s up to her loved ones to help her defeat the darkness that is about to take her over. My guess is that they will succeed, but what do I know? This show does have a tendency to surprise me at the most unexpected times, so I’m not about to bet on anything just yet.

Only one thing is for sure: This episode was great, and even more importantly it was great enough to make me excited for the next one, and oh how much I missed that excitement! The next episode will see Emma meet Lily again, who is now, according to the promo voice-over, her mortal enemy, and out to harm her family. Should be intense!

Episode MVP: Victoria Smurfit as Cruella De Vil

Quote(s) of the episode:

Cruella had like a dozen of them, and I couldn’t possibly narrow it down to just one, so here are some of my favourites:

"Blasted birds, I'll show you what angry looks like."

"Well thanks to you, she's dead, darling. You should have seen the look on her face when her beloved dogs turned on her. It's a memory I'll truly cherish."

"Some people struggle not to be drawn into the darkness. But ever since I was a little girl, I’ve said: Why not splash in, and have fun?"

(My daughter, Lily. You told me she didn't survive the trip to this world. You lied.)

"Perhaps I did. But there's an explanation of course, you see, um... I'm a really terrible person, and I left her in the woods to die."

And another one, from Rumple (sorry, it’s just too great not to include):

"A person obsessed with vengeance is easy to manipulate."

Random Tidbits:

 - I know I’ve already awarded her the MVP award but can we just give another extra round of applause to Victoria Smurfit for the best Cruella we could’ve ever hoped for? Because she’s truly wonderful. Those Crazy Eyes? Holy fuck. I think I’m in love.

 - I know I already mentioned it more than once but I really hate this whole Snow and Charming „dark secret” storyline, and the fact that apparently Emma is a good person only because of what they did to her before she was even born... Currently my only hope is for this to be revealed as only a sham on the Author’s part. You know how the Apprentice only sent thorugh Lily the portal because the Author commanded him to? Well, maybe he made up the whole thing and there was no spell at all, and he only wanted to see Snow and Charming suffer because it would make for better drama. That would mean that Emma is good simply because that’s who she is, and not because of any magic.

 - I’m really weirded out by the fact that Regina keeps calling Robin ’Robin Hood’, even though everyone is perfectly aware of who he is.

 - Similarly, Emma still calls Killian ’Hook’ sometimes, although I would guess that’s more like a force of habit and it will wear off eventually.

 - Speaking of Emma, the make-up department is doing a marvellous job with her lately. I mean she has always looked beautiful, but that’s just it, in the last couple of episode you could really see how worn out and stressed she is right now, due to her parents’ lying to her and probably not getting any sleep at all ever since Rumple came back to town.

 - Probably the only Cruella-related thing that I initially didn’t like in this episode was the line "Then you'll pay for what you did when you made me what I am.", because when she said it, I didn’t yet know the full story, so I was just assuming that she’s yet another villain blaming someone else for her being evil... until it turned out that she’s actually blaming him for her being unable to be fully evil. Oh Cruella, I’m gonna miss you dearly.

 - I actually really liked that "Your parents did a bad thing, they apologized, now get over it." line from Regina, not only because, as I mentioned earlier, it aligns a little bit with my way of thinking, but also because it throws a huge light on Regina’s outlook on life, and her entire character. It’s pretty clear that whatever terrible things she has committed, she thinks a simple apology should be enough for anyone to forgive her. Seeing as, unfortunately, at this point it’s pretty much futile waiting for her to apologize, and we should all just quietly accept that it has probably happened off-screen a long time ago and that is why everyone is so chill around her nowadays, I think it’s safe to assume that THIS is the reason she still gets angry whenever anyone doubts her or brings up her past. Not saying that I’m happy about this (because I’m not, at all), but at least it’s something.

 - I actually let out a gasp when Belle said she threw out the chipped teacup, then I started to wonder whether it was just a metaphor for her relationship with Rumple, and eventually I realized it was just Regina screwing around. Thank God. No one harms the chipped cup on my watch!

 - There was one very brief shot of Cruella's mom where she looked a lot like Carol from The Walking Dead, and after Isaac started to compare Cruella’s life to a "classic Cinderella story", I suddenly started to see her as resembling Lady Tremaine, from the animated version of Cinderella. Whether that was intentional or not, it was yet another great casting for OUAT, even though it was never explained how she didn’t age a single day while her daughter aged about 30 years, and whether it really was just hard work and training that made her being able to communicate with her dogs so well.

 - We might not have gotten a proper origin story for Maleficent, but at least we got to see the beginning of the love story between Cruella and gin, and let’s be honest, that’s way more important.

 - Henry at that cliffside kinda gave me Neverland flashbacks. If only he had some pixie dust left, Cruella might still be alive :’(