Once Upon A Time: The Complete Third Season

I love Once Upon a Time because I love fairytales and happily ever Afters. Except in once upon a time they have to fight for there happy endings. And not all the fairytale characters are as good as they seem in the books, they got a bit of an evil side to them!! 😂

The “twist” of Peter Pan as a villain is one that didn’t really surprise me as I’ve always considered him one (if you had your hand cut off by some smug teenager who then fed it to a crocodile, you’d try to kill him too). He just never came off as a threat to me though I will say Robbie Kay did a fantastic job playing him. All Pan did was poorly manipulate everybody (if Henry didn’t believe him about his parents abandoning him then why did he all of a sudden believe him about magic dying in Neverland?) and jump cutting his way around the island. Why was he considered so dangerous? This has been the most boring story the show has done: the endless cutting/walking around through jungle, the snail pace progression of the story until Pan gets what he wants is unbearable. Every time I re-watch the show, I binge these first eleven episodes as quickly as possible. That’s not to say there aren’t good things in this first half. I liked the episodes featuring Tinker Bell, Ariel, Rumples’ flashback to his childhood are really interesting. My favorite scene in this first half is when Regina reluctantly gives up Henry so she can break Pan’s curse (also could’ve been a way to end the series) which always manages to make me tear up. However the episode that shows Rumple not trusting his son in the flashback from “Nasty Habits” has a been there, done that mentality since we’ve seen the wedge in their relationship after he became the Dark One. While it is great to see Hook’s past in “Good Form” to right before he became a pirate is OK but at the same time, it doesn’t do anything for me.The flashback in “Lost Girl” with Snow gaining confidence to fight Regina also doesn’t do anything for me but I like since not only do we get another reference to Camelot but probably the most subtle reference to a Disney movie (which also happens to be my favorite movie of all time) this series has ever done; in the commentary, the writer states they referred to “Excalibur” as Dumbo’s feather.

Now the Wicked arc on the other hand is my favorite of the season. I know there are those who didn’t like it and found Zelena annoying and petty, but i thought she was a huge step up from the blandness of Pan. She was an active threat and routinely made sure her plan was succeeding. Is it cliche that she’s “green with envy”? Yes but I find it more believable than “my mother had sex with a guy after drinking a green elixir” and she’s actually, oh what’s the word, oh yes WICKED!!! I’ve seen the musical (loved it) and I’m in the process of reading the book, but Elphaba is sympathetic from the start (which I get) but never during the entire show did I feel she became this iconic character that many associate with the Wicked Witch. Zelena however, while receiving a sympathetic backstory showing how her mother abandoned her and her father never loving her, gives in to darkness and seeks vengeance. Neal unfortunately is wasted this entire season. While now a main character, he’s separated from the others for six episodes (a reunion with his father does occur in the fourth episode but it’s short-lived) then separated from Emma again after wanting another shot at a relationship only to get (SPOILERS) killed off so the creators could push Emma and Hook together. The only real boring episode for me in the second half is the one with Rapunzel, which is unfortunate because if they hadn’t have made just a one off character whose only purpose was a plot device for David, it would’ve been cool to see her return in the future. The finale was a lot of fun but despite that, something more evil than any villain reared its head in Storybrooke: Marketing.

Once Upon a Time seasons 1 and 2 were shown on UK TV, but there are no plans to show season 3. Being in the UK, I’m not able to use the episode download options that you have in the US, otherwise I would have been watching this as it was shown in the US. Instead, I’ve had to wait **a year** since the end of season 2 to find out what happened next.

I love Once Upon A Time, they way the characters back stories are revealed showing that the good people aren’t necessarily always good, and that the bad people are usually bad for a reason. I also like the twists in the stories. It’s really well acted, the characters are very believable ( in the context of watching a fantasy series, where the viewer puts to one side the fact that they are fairy tale characters and suspends knowledge that it is all just a fiction). I think Rumpel and Regina are superb, and I like the way I’ve switched from seeing them as baddies to seeing them as flawed goodies. I love the way it’s all stitched together, and it was particularly good seeing the old Regina again, reminding us what she had been like originally.

At the end of Season 2, I was desperate to see what happened next. Normally waiting for the next season of something doesn’t bother me overmuch, but I really, *really* wanted to see what happened next. When the DVD of season 3 was launched in the US, with the UK launch scheduled for later in the year, I just couldn’t wait and ordered nthe set fro the US with a horrendous shipping charge. It arrived speedily. When it arrived, I had to ration my viewing for two reasons: (a) I have an life to live as well (hard to believe, I know, especially as I’ve been enthusing about a set of fairy tales) and (b) I knew that once I had watched it, I’d have another year to wait to get my hands on season 4 and I wanted to savour it.

Season 3 is another great pair of story arcs, and I only managed to string it out over 4 days.

I can’t wait for season 4 to be released.

Great