Once Upon a Time Is Finally Ending
And nothing of value was lost. Except for Lana Parrilla.
Sorry, that was mean. Now, I feel I have the right to be resentful of Once Upon a Time. I wasted six good years of my life watching the show on and off, mostly because of my burning love for Lana Parrilla’s Regina, and for a while because of the hope that something good would happen to Mulan. However, one of the creators of the series took to Twitter to announce that the show’s most current chapter will be its last.
Thank you all for seven amazing years of #OnceUponATime ! pic.twitter.com/TF5HE11f3M
— Adam Horowitz (@AdamHorowitzLA) February 6, 2018
Once Upon a Time started off with a lot of promise, despite being full of plot holes, overwhelmingly boring male characters, and a lot of magical rape/manipulation. Yet time and time again it always chose the most traditional avenue to tell its stories. A villain could become a hero at the drop of a hat; it sported the emotionally manipulative “RumpBelle” as a true love paring that was at worst unhealthy and at best repetitive and boring.
Same for most of its heterosexual parings: Snowing=zz, Captain Swan=zzz, Outlaw Queen=zzzzzzzz. I may not have been a SwanQueen shipper, but it doesn’t take a gay agenda to see that Emma and Regina had more chemistry together than the dullards we were supposed to see as their true loves.
Rumple was probably one of the show’s best villains, but he kept leveling up in awful with almost no consequences or creativity, to the point where literally no one was surprised that the ultimate big bad of the Storybrook world was his mother.
My beloved Regina went through an excellent redemption arc throughout the show, but it was weakened because they always found ways to ignore just how bad of a person Regina had been in the earlier parts of the series. Just because I don’t care that she slaughtered villagers doesn’t mean that the writers shouldn’t!
The show jerked us around for seasons promising that the delay for a same-sex couple was because when we got it, it would be just as powerful as all the straight couples we’d had on the show. Which is why we ended up with two minor characters female characters getting together who met, fell in love and shared true love’s kiss all in one episode.
I gladly gave up after the previous season’s finale and the culling of the cast. They almost got me back with Adelaide Kane joining the show, but fool me once … I remember what happened when you brought Jamie Chung and Sarah Bolger on the show!
Still, if there is one thing I’m gonna miss on the show it is Lana Parrilla as Regina. Yes, she is problematic as hell as a character, but dammit, look at her face. Parrilla brought a lot of fun and humanity to the character. Without her, I have no doubt Regina would never have worked. Also, Parrilla has been very open about how hard it has been for her to get cast in things because she is either seen as “too white” or “not latinx enough.” If there was any reason I was content to watch this show have 11 seasons, it was her. Now that it’s heading towards completion, I’m hoping she can catch her broom onto One Day at a Time, Jane the Virgin, or maybe play Veronica’s cool aunt on Riverdale (omg make that happen tv gods).
So goodbye Regina, I’m sorry the show didn’t let you be as gay as you could have been.
(via i09, image: ABC)
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