Trigger Warning: Mentions of sexual harassment and assault.
Whenever I tell someone that Once Upon A Time (OUAT) is my favorite TV show, they usually respond with, “Oh, yeah, I loved that show when I was younger!” This always disappoints me. Because Once Upon A Time is not just a TV show; Once Upon A Time is a way of life. It is pure chaos. It is heartbreaking. It is hilarious. It is corny as hell. It is ridiculously bad but also a masterpiece. In short, it’s pretty much fairytale Riverdale. And I’m obsessed with it.
For the uncultured who have not heard of the best TV show ever, OUAT is a fantasy soap opera that aired on ABC on October 23rd, 2011 to 12.93 million viewers. It ran for seven seasons, eventually airing its final episode May 18th, 2018.
OUAT has lived rent free in my mind since I was 10 years old. I rewatch it constantly, and every time I discover a detail or plot hole I hadn’t noticed before. Obviously you should watch it before reading this article, because there will be spoilers, but if you haven’t already, then hopefully the insanity I’m about to describe will convince you.
- Season One
-
The show starts simple enough: To get revenge on Snow White, the Evil Queen casts a curse that transports all of your favorite fairytale characters to Storybrooke, Maine, where they lose all of their memories and exist as normal people. One day, Emma Swan is brought to Storybrooke by her son, Henry, who she gave up for adoption as a baby. Henry is convinced that Emma is the Savior who is destined to break the curse. Emma then has to deal with the drama of the small town, navigating sudden parenthood, and her heated rivalry with Henry’s adopted mother, Regina (aka the Evil Queen).
Season One is just a classic. The vibes are perfectly balanced between the grounded-ness of Storybrooke and flashbacks to the Enchanted Forest (the fairytale realm). The characters are all really solid and since this is the first season, having a lot of flashbacks makes sense. However, after this season, the format of having one storyline in the present and one in the past doesn’t work quite as well.
My favorite out-of-pocket moment this season: Grumpy the dwarf being born by punching himself out of a giant egg while grinning like a maniac.
- Season Three
-
This is when the writers decide that instead of one overarching story for the whole season, they will split it into two completely different storylines that will be loosely tied together by like one random detail. I’m personally not a fan of this format, but the writers liked it so much that they decided to use it for the next three seasons!
Season 3a takes place in Neverland because Henry has been kidnapped by evil Peter Pan. Henry is the “truest believer” and Pan needs his heart (magically ripping out hearts is a thing in this show) otherwise Pan will die. Anyway, the heroes plus Regina and Captain Hook team up to save Henry and they are actually pretty bad at it because it takes them a long ass time. Rumpelstiltskin is also here but he knows that the others are dumbasses, so he’s doing his own thing.
The first half of Season Three rivals Season One for my favorite season of the show. There are plot holes galore, but this is the first time that all of our main characters team up together. It’s like the Avengers assembling. After two seasons of everyone being separated, I cannot tell you how fun it is to have the gang all together. And they’re all camping on an island which is such a vibe. You truly cannot beat this band of idiots traipsing around a tropical jungle, all the while butting heads and getting absolutely nowhere. I love it so much.
The second half of Season Three follows the aftermath of Peter Pan casting the same curse that the Evil Queen did. Only this time, everyone is returned to the Enchanted Forest minus Emma and Henry who had their memories wiped and now live in New York. And then, while in the Enchanted Forest, another curse is enacted that brings everyone back to Storybrooke with no memories of the year since they left. Hook retrieves Emma and Henry and returns Emma’s memories because they need her to fight The Wicked Witch of the West. Her name is Zelena and she wants revenge on Regina for having the life she wished she had. Because, gasp, Zelena is Regina’s half sister that their mother gave up as an infant. Her plan is to go back in time to make sure that their mother kept Zelena and stop from being Regina born.
Season 3b is alright but it introduces Zelena, who I hate, and there’s no more fun stranded-on-an-island vibe which is a bummer. And it kills off one of my favorite characters, Neal Cassidy, who is a very divisive character among fans. I personally love him, but a lot of other people don’t. Anyway, RIP Neal. And there’s a really weird part where Zelena keeps Rumpelstiltskin in a cage and lowkey sexually harasses him? And on top of that, 3b has one of my least favorite episodes where Emma and Hook go back in time and f*ck up the timeline and I hate it so much. But 3b also starts the romance between Regina and Robin Hood and I like seeing Regina happy (even if it’s not with Emma) so there’s at least one good thing.
My favorite out-of-pocket moment this season: Ariel from The Little Mermaid brings Belle a magic sand dollar that projects a hologram of Rumpelstiltskin, who is also the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, that gives her a riddle which helps Belle figure out that she needs to use Chip the teacup (who was never sentient in this show) to find Pandora’s Box which will be used to stop Peter Pan.
- Season Two
-
Season Two has Emma and Snow White stranded in the Enchanted Forest where they have to compete with Regina’s mother, Cora, aka the Queen of Hearts, to find a way back to Storybrooke. It took Rumpelstiltskin, the most powerful dark magician alive, centuries to figure out how to hop dimensions but it somehow took Emma and Snow like two weeks. Anyway, back in Storybrooke, Prince Charming, whose name is actually David, is looking for a way to get Snow and Emma back while also trying to run the town who is very pissed about having just been cursed for 30 years. Eventually Snow and Emma make it back but, uh oh, so does Cora, and the rest of the season is spent fighting her. While all of this is going on, Rumpelstiltskin sets out to reunite with his long lost son and Neal is introduced! Yay Neal! Neal brings his fiancée, Tamara, to Storybrooke and Emma is convinced that she is actually evil and everyone thinks she’s jealous, because misogyny, but she was right. Then, everyone has to stop Tamara and this guy Greg from blowing up Storybrooke.
Another classic season. It’s not as fun as the first season, but it’s still pretty solid. Out of all the seasons, this one is probably the most unremarkable, despite the fact that, as you can tell from the blurb, a lot of sh*t happens. But at least it’s not split in two. We also get some fun new characters this season like Mulan and Aurora, who broke the hearts of every sapphic in 2012. I love Mulan and wish the writers did more with her besides have her randomly show up sometimes to train the white female characters.
My favorite out-of-pocket moment this season: Emma brings a Glock to the fairytale dimension and frantically shoots at a giant ogre.
- Season Five
-
The first half of Season Five is all about Emma being the Dark One. The Dark One is a powerful dark wizard whose power can be passed on if someone kills them with a special squiggly knife called the Dark One Dagger. Emma becomes the Dark One when the heroes try to suck all of the darkness out of Rumpelstiltskin, the previous Dark One, with Mickey’s wizard hat from Fantasia, but instead the darkness tries to go into Regina. Emma then absorbs the darkness to save her because their relationship is totally super platonic. Also, we go to Camelot for a bit but that doesn’t really matter. Pretty sure the writers just did it for vibes.
This is a very hot take…but I actually really like Season 5a. At least, I like the end of it. The finale of this story arc is actually really emotional and well-done. However, Emma is the most boring Dark One ever. And her Dark One character design sucks so bad. Season Four had her lose a bit of her spark, but in this season she speaks completely in a monotonous tone and it’s just so boring. After this she’s pretty dull and lifeless for the rest of the show. This sucks because I love Seasons One through Three Emma. She’s a very likeable protagonist, and a big part of that is her spunk. However, she becomes a shadow of her former self as the series goes on. RIP Emma Swan. I hate seeing your zombie on my screen.
The second half of this season takes place in the Underworld so that Emma can bring Hook back after he sacrificed himself to destroy the darkness… only for Rumpelstiltskin to f*ck it all up so he can be the Dark One again. Anyway, the whole gang goes to fetch Hook, even 14-year-old Henry. Why did they bring this child to the Underworld? I don’t know, and I don’t think the writers know either. Anyway, Hades is torturing Hook for some reason and really doesn’t want them to save him because Hades is cartoonishly evil, but not in the fun way like Peter Pan was. And his hair randomly changes into awful-looking CGI blue flames.
Another hot take: I really don’t like this part of the season. Nothing really happens until they save Hook. Hades, this season’s big bad, is somehow less likeable than Zelena, and Zelena sucks ass. And they kill off Robin Hood with Zeus’s lightning bolt, which for some reason they call the “Olympian Crystal,” which literally obliterates his soul from existence. Because God forbid Regina gets to be happy. Plus, this season starts the Zelena redemption arc, which I hate because I hate Zelena, and now I have to see more of her.
My favorite out-of-pocket moment this season: Red Riding Hood wakes Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz up from a sleeping curse with true love’s kiss after being mentored in lesbian yearning by Mulan.
- Season Four
-
Sigh. Here we are, the season a lot of people stopped watching: The Frozen season. That’s right, Frozen is in this show. Elsa was brought to Storybrooke when Emma and Hook time traveled (remember that?) We spend the season looking for Anna and fighting Elsa and Anna’s evil aunt, Ingrid the Snow Queen, who has a really weird parasocial relationship with Emma and Elsa.
Season 4a: I hate it. Every other fairytale/Disney movie story included in this show was re-done to feel more grounded. It felt like the show was doing its own thing. With the Frozen arc, however, this was not the case. Excluding the addition of the Snow Queen, it really just feels like the characters were copy and pasted from the Frozen movie. I can suspend my disbelief a lot with this show, but the Frozen arc is just so in your face about it being Frozen that it takes you out of it.
The second half of this season follows the search for the author of Henry’s magic storybook so that they can force him to write Regina a happy ending. Belle kicks Rumpelstiltskin out of Storybrooke and he comes back with Maleficent, Ursula, and Cruella de Vil who has the worst eye makeup I have ever seen. The season is then spent fighting and rehabilitating the three women while the author does absolutely nothing of importance.
Season 4b is better, but pretty forgettable. I like Ursula and Maleficent, and I think I wouldn’t mind Cruella if her makeup wasn’t so distracting. What bothers me the most is how butchered Rumpelstiltskin’s character is by this point because of how many times he’s been rehabilitated only to decide to be a bad guy again. He’s like Damon Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries in that way. And Belle always goes back to him because he promises to be a better man, only for him to treat her like shit, but then he promises to be better and the cycle repeats itself. He used to be so cool, but he becomes unlikeable by being so wishy-washy and stomping all over his wife. Also, in this half of the season, Zelena disguises herself as Robin Hood’s dead wife to trick him into impregnating her and it works. And the show never addresses how non-consensual this is. I hate Zelena.
My favorite out-of-pocket moment this season: Snow White and Prince Charming condemn Maleficent’s unborn child (which is in a dragon egg but hatches as a human) to a life that is magically destined to be sh*t and send it through a portal to ensure that their daughter, Emma (did I mention Emma’s their daughter?), doesn’t have a chance to be evil, AKA taking away her free will, just because some random old guy told them it would work.
- Season Six
-
The first half of this season has Regina take a potion created by Dr. Jekyll that separates her good half from her bad half. So we have two big bads this time: The Evil Queen and Mr. Hyde. There’s also more lore added onto the role of the Savior. Apparently, the Savior is also a title that gets passed around? Like the Dark One, sort of? I don’t know, it’s really dumb. Also, Aladdin and Jasmine are here because Aladdin used to be the Savior but they don’t really do much.
Season 6a is pretty bad. I’m pretty sure that the writers only pulled this Jekyll and Hyde thing because they wanted the Evil Queen back but didn’t want to undo Regina’s redemption. This storyline is whatever. What really annoys me is the Savior stuff because it was so unnecessary and makes Emma seem less special. When the show started, she was the one and only Savior because she was destined to break The Evil Queen’s curse. But now she’s just another person under the Savior title.
The second half follows the heroes battling the Black Fairy with whom Emma is supposed to fight the “Final Battle” of Good vs Evil. Also, Rumplestilskin and Belle’s son, Gideon, is trying to kill Emma because he wants to be the Savior. And that’s pretty much all the important stuff that happens.
The only thing I care about from Season Six is the musical episode, “The Song in Your Heart.” This is probably my favorite episode of the entire series. My theater kid ass ate this sh*t up. I love it so much. It’s just so fun. The rest of 6b is whatever, I guess. It’s not super notable besides the fact that the Black Fairy is very hot and she’s also Rumpelstiltskin’s mom. I would just like to highlight that Rumpelstiltskin’s parents are Peter Pan and the evil version of the Fairy Godmother. I love this show.
My favorite out-of-pocket moment this season: Belle realizes that her husband sucks so she sends her baby to another dimension via Blue Fairy just to keep the baby away from him.
- Season Seven
-
Unlike the rest of this show, I have only ever seen Season Seven once. And that was years ago. Still, I thought it would be fun to try and tell you what it’s about from memory.
From what I can recall, Season Seven is not split in two. It follows adult Henry Mills in Seattle where there’s been another curse and no one remembers that they’re fairytale characters (sound familiar?) Henry has a daughter named Lucy who figures out what happened and is trying to convince everyone that she’s not crazy. Her mom is Cinderella, but not the one from Season One. That is a different Cinderella. There are two Cinderellas and two Rapunzels in this show, keep up. I’m pretty sure that this season is an AU (alternate universe)? But don’t quote me on that. Snow, Charming, and Emma are not here because their actors decided not to come back after their contracts were up.
I haven’t watched this season for a long time so maybe if I watched it now I’d feel different, but I remember absolutely hating it. Looking back, it seems like they were trying to reheat Season One’s nachos, but they failed to recapture the magic. I do appreciate that Season Seven has a much more diverse cast than prior seasons, even featuring a lesbian relationship between Alice from Alice in Wonderland and Robin (Robin Hood’s daughter).
My favorite out-of-pocket moment this season: Captain Hook gets trapped in a snow globe by a Rumpelstiltskin variant with Cinderella and Lucy and bashes his way out with Maui’s fishhook from Moana, and this is the only mention of anything related to Moana in the entire series.
Final Thoughts
Is this show really, really bad at times? Yes. Is it still worth the watch? Oh, absolutely. It has its good moments, I swear. And while you’re waiting for those good moments, you can laugh at how batsh*t crazy the thing you’re watching is. So, please watch it. I need other people to yap about this show with.