Once Upon a Time "The Queen is Dead", "The Miller's Daughter" and "Welcome to Storybrooke"
Well, I’m going to make this a three-in-one considering I’ve been away for a few weeks and this trio of episodes actually worked very well together as a sort of mini-trilogy set in the middle of the show. They focused on three of our main female characters: Snow White, Cora and Regina and gave us our first look at Snow White’s mother Eva.
First of all, it turns out that watching this show with a newbie is possibly not the best course of action. Some choice quotes from my sister:
Snow White (on watching her mother collapse): What’s wrong with her?
Sis: A case of bad acting.
Snow White (on not wanting to celebrate her birthday with pancakes): I just can’t.
Sis: Does she not like breakfast?
Sis: (on watching Hook jump out of nowhere and knock out David): What the f**K?!
So yeah, watching with a fresh pair of eyes did give me the sense that this show is really quite silly at times.
***
The big moral quandary in these three episodes is what Snow White did and her part to play in Cora’s death. And as I’ve said a number of times, fandoms will tear themselves apart over two things: shipping and morality.
First off, I liked introducing the concept of the candle. It was a nice spooky prop (half white, half black) and what it did was suitably macabre. Rather like on Merlin, it was clear that the saving of a life required the taking of a life, and the show-runners used it neatly in two ways: first that Cora dies by it when she was the one to give it to Snow in the first place, and secondly that it is used in conjunction with the concept of the torn-out hearts, thus requiring Snow to trick Regina into returning Cora’s cursed heart to her chest.
But my head is spinning a bit from all the moral implications and questions that are raised in these three episodes and where the writers expect our sympathies to lie. Perhaps they don’t really care either way and simply want us to make up our own minds.
The ball is set rolling when Regina and Snow meet in Granny’s diner and Regina suggests that she is good and that Snow and her kin are the hypocrites. It’s always interesting when villains open up the question of how evil they truly are, but in this case it falls about as flat as Morgana’s claim to justice. Sorry, but Regina is in no way, shape or form one of the “good guys.” She blames Snow for a secret she spilled as a child which lead to her fiancé’s death at the hands of her own mother who she is now working with in order to exact vengeance on Snow. Sorry, but all morality checks aside, that’s also just plain illogical.
And since little Snow spilled the beans on Regina’s love affair, Regina has retaliated by killing Snow’s father, trapping Snow in a sleeping death, casting a spell that traps her and everyone else in a Groundhog Day-esque situation for twenty-eight years, robbed her of her daughter’s entire childhood, framed her for murder, and then joined up with her mother who has already murdered Snow’s mother and her old nursemaid right in front of her. Just to put a cherry on top of all this, we’re also privy to the first few days of the curse in which Regina is raping a man every night (she’ll eventually murder him, don’t forget) and trying to kidnap a boy because she’s bored, resulting in his permanent separation from his only living parent.
The fact that Regina gets tearful after most of this doesn’t negate the suffering of her victims. The fact that she loves her mother doesn’t negate the fact that said mother was trying to kill Rumplestiltskin and become the next Dark One, having ripped out her own heart in order to do so without any inner turmoil.
Whew, did I leave anything out?
If we look at the motivations of both Regina and Cora we get vengeance and ambition respectively. Each one of them has their sympathetic moments, but the disproportionate retribution that Regina has heaped on the kingdom and the lengths Cora will go to in order to get what she wants puts them firmly in the “must be stopped at all costs” category.
And so watching Snow White raked with guilt over the killing of Cora got on my nerves. Sure, there was a deliciously dark twist that involved Snow tricking Regina into becoming the instrument of her mother’s murder by putting the cursed heart back into Cora’s body (playing on Regina’s longing for genuine love AND using Regina’s own manipulative tactics against her, relying on Regina’s perception on her as eternally pure and sweet), but I don’t really buy what the writers are trying to sell me: that Snow White has compromised herself.
I love moral ambiguity and shades of grey, but there’s still a big difference between what Snow has done compared to what Regina and Cora have been up to, including: a. exhausting all other options, b. knowing full well that incarceration isn’t going to guarantee everyone else’s safety c. remorse for her actions and certainly no pleasure taken in such drastic action, and d. basic self-defence! In all that time Snow was moping around on her bed, I kept waiting for someone to point out to her that if she hadn’t taken Cora’s life then THEY’D ALL BE DEAD.
Sheesh, it’s like the total inversion of Merlin. There I was increasingly frustrated that Merlin could get away with a lot of morally dubious behaviour that was never treated as such by the narrative; yet here I find that Snow White has done something shocking but justifiable that the writers seem to think has defiled her forever. In the Merlin universe Morgana had plenty of justification for her hatred of Uther and Camelot’s laws, yet the writers kept portraying her as irredeemably evil. In the Once Upon a Time universe Snow White is held to a standard of moral purity that’s so high that the only way to maintain it is tantamount to suicide - which she actually tried to do by offering herself up to Regina in anguish.
My mind boggles.
Granted, everyone’s understanding of good and evil, right and wrong will vary. Some people may find Regina and Cora entirely sympathetic while Snow White and her family come across as self-righteous and underhanded. Heck, I was even side-eying Snow a little bit at the end there when it became clear that her guilt was based on how she can’t believe she’s capable of such evil rather than guilt that she manipulated a woman into killing her own mother. I think I would have respected her more if she’d gone to Regina’s door not to beg for death but to calmly and rationally outlined the reasons why she felt letting Cora live was too dangerous, throwing in an apology that she used Regina to get rid of her. Regina would have slammed the door in her face, but it would have been more than Regina deserved at that point and wouldn't have involved Snow getting suicidal over killing a woman who was about to kill her and her family.
But then that’s the beauty of creating morally ambiguous situations: everyone comes out with a different conclusion.
But personally...? Snow White had just learned that Cora murdered her mother and witnessed her murder Johanna without a moment’s hesitation. I think at this point it’s considered acceptable to take Cora’s life before she harms any more innocent lives. And to be honest, I wasn’t even all that convinced by Little Snow’s decision to forsake using the candle to save her mother’s life back in the flashbacks. Sure, it would have been wrong to kill an innocent person in order to save Eva, but weren’t there any murderers lying around in the dungeons? I wouldn’t have judged her for taking a bad person’s life to save her mother’s.
So from a Watsonian point-of-view I can understand why Snow feels terrible, and I can even sympathise with Regina and Cora to different extents. But from a Doylist perspective, I don’t like the way that the writers seem to be suggesting that the good guys have to sit there and be destroyed or else they become evil and that Snow White has somehow corrupted herself by saving her family (as was literally demonstrated by the dark spot growing on her heart). And if our heroes are not allowed to fight back against those mercilessly attacking them, then what exactly are they SUPPOSED to do?
The act of taking someone’s life can’t be judged on its own. Context and motivation is everything. As such, there’s a WORLD of difference between what Snow White has done, and what the likes of Cora, Regina and Rumplestiltskin get up to on a regular basis. Yet somehow Snow's heart now has a dark spot in it? Yeesh, I'd hate to see Regina's.
In other news, I thought the dresses that Little Snow White and Queen Eva wore were absolutely hideous. When Snow White commented that her tiara was heavy, I was thinking that surely her giant balloon dress would be heavier. And whose idea was it to dress one in red while the other was in pink? The pain!
Also, they’re running out of time to use Bailee Madison as young Snow White. This was chronologically the first time we’ve seen her as Snow and she’s already visibly older than in her scenes with Regina and Cora which technically come well after her mother’s death.
Oh, and where on earth was King Leopold during all of his drama with his wife?
It was a nice twist to see Cora masquerading as the Blue Fairy, and I honestly didn’t see it coming until Eva’s funeral - not even when the real Blue Fairy shot Snow that “what are you talking about?” look in Storybrooke. I got a shiver down my spine when she uttered her “how it feels to be the miller’s daughter” line over Eva’s body, knowing full-well what it must mean in regards to her relationship with Rumplestiltskin, and the implications that there is more of Eva and Cora’s relationship to be explored. There was definitely a sense of history there.
A history I might add, that is more than just a young snotty version of Eva tripping up Cora and forcing her to apologise. I loved the entirety of the flashbacks in The Miller’s Daughter. They brought me a brand new perspective on how this Regina/Rumplestiltskin feud began as well as an original take on the Rumplestiltskin fairytale. At first I’ll admit I was a bit baffled at the casting of Rose McGowan as a young Cora, but - wow. She captured ... speech patterns and mannerisms perfectly. Plus she looked great in that red dress.
Lots of nice little details here, such as Cora’s initial dissatisfaction with life and her resentment at her so-called “betters,” her boast that leads to Rumplestiltskin teaching her to spin straw into gold (for a moment there it looked like they were re-enacting the pottery throwing scene from Ghost), seeing Prince Henry as a young man (wow, he was quite the looker) and did my ears deceive me or did Cora accuse Henry’s father of: “whoring out your son?”
But of course, the most important thing to come out of that episode was Cora removing her own heart after she acknowledges that it’s a liability. It was rather Lady Macbeth of her, who prays to the dark powers to remove her compassionate heart so that can better help her husband seize the throne, except in this case she’s self-mutilating herself and her ability to love in order to further her own goals. In that case, they picked the perfect way for her to die: admitting that Regina herself would have been all she needed to be happy. Ouch.
Also nice was the way they brought Cora/Rumplestiltskin full-circle. The first time Cora outwitted Rumple, getting to keep her child and turn her back on him. Now Rumple has successfully turned the tables on her, not only in what he did to Regina, but in convincing Snow to go ahead with her plan to save his life by taking Cora’s. More shivers down my spine when he led Snow to the candle by asking for a blanket and then telling her that he had the candle: “for a rainy day.”
Baelfire is totally Peter Pan, isn’t he. It would explain his immediate recognition of Hook and the odd discrepancy over his age.
Regina is pretty much summed up in the line: “power is how you get things.” Tragically, what she wants is love and acceptance and forgiveness which power can NEVER get you. They are free gifts only. But this mentality was on full-display over the course of Welcome to Storybrooke and in her dealings with Owen and his father. There’s only one way to describe how all that went down. Take it away, Will Ferrell:
I mean sheesh, one day they’re having dinner at her place, the next they’re engaged in a car chase and running out into the woods and dragged off to who-knows-where and searching for years to find the father that was left behind.
Still, it was a lot of fun seeing the first few days of the curse (Graham! Gus!) and Regina’s reaction to it all. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that she got bored very quickly with absolute power and no conflict whatsoever, which naturally paved the way for Henry’s arrival. As Mai would say: “Victory Is Boring.” It also slipped in neatly to the theme of free will and subjugation (what’s the point of controlling everyone if they have no say in the matter?), the cycle of vengeance (it only causes more suffering) and the elusive search for happiness (the old “happily ever after” adage). Hmm, I feel a meta coming on...
I was surprised that we didn’t get to see Henry as an infant being delivered to Regina’s arms as a way to end the flashback sequence, but I suppose they’re saving that for another episode. I’d love to see it.
The whole thing also reminded me of how much I enjoyed the set-up of the first season, with all these fairytale characters under a curse that made them forget who they were. It’s almost a shame that they got rid of that without doing more with it - one of my favourite moments from the first season was Graham remembering who he was before being killed, and I was looking forward to Emma’s influence gradually helping others get their memory back. But I digress.
The reveal of Greg as Owen came as no surprise, and though I’m still not hugely interested in this particular plot, it doesn’t cast a very good light on Regina. Separating a father and son because she’s bored with the scenario that she set up in the first place is pretty appalling, and I’m not sure whether the writers expecting me to feel sorry for her at the end there. Because despite Lana Parilla’s face when she cries - I didn’t. This woman has huge problems, and the fact that she was willing to put Henry under a curse to make him think that he loved her was chilling. And didn’t she just learn from the curse that stripping people of their free will didn’t make her even remotely happy?
And it’s kind of creepy that Henry is having a go at his biological family for becoming like Regina by discussing that they may need to kill her at the same time he’s calmly talking Regina down from brainwashing him against his will. Regina isn’t the only one who needs a reality check.
Also, does anyone else find the sight of Greg running around Storybrooke taping magical occurrences hilarious? What’s he planning to do with it? Show it to the news? They’re just going to think that it’s computer trickery which... is exactly what it is.
But I did love that confrontation between Regina and Snow outside her house and the way both were crying as they spoke. There’s just so much pain and history and tragedy between them at this point - it’s wonderful to see them cross each other.
First of all, it turns out that watching this show with a newbie is possibly not the best course of action. Some choice quotes from my sister:
Snow White (on watching her mother collapse): What’s wrong with her?
Sis: A case of bad acting.
Snow White (on not wanting to celebrate her birthday with pancakes): I just can’t.
Sis: Does she not like breakfast?
Sis: (on watching Hook jump out of nowhere and knock out David): What the f**K?!
So yeah, watching with a fresh pair of eyes did give me the sense that this show is really quite silly at times.
***
The big moral quandary in these three episodes is what Snow White did and her part to play in Cora’s death. And as I’ve said a number of times, fandoms will tear themselves apart over two things: shipping and morality.
First off, I liked introducing the concept of the candle. It was a nice spooky prop (half white, half black) and what it did was suitably macabre. Rather like on Merlin, it was clear that the saving of a life required the taking of a life, and the show-runners used it neatly in two ways: first that Cora dies by it when she was the one to give it to Snow in the first place, and secondly that it is used in conjunction with the concept of the torn-out hearts, thus requiring Snow to trick Regina into returning Cora’s cursed heart to her chest.
But my head is spinning a bit from all the moral implications and questions that are raised in these three episodes and where the writers expect our sympathies to lie. Perhaps they don’t really care either way and simply want us to make up our own minds.
The ball is set rolling when Regina and Snow meet in Granny’s diner and Regina suggests that she is good and that Snow and her kin are the hypocrites. It’s always interesting when villains open up the question of how evil they truly are, but in this case it falls about as flat as Morgana’s claim to justice. Sorry, but Regina is in no way, shape or form one of the “good guys.” She blames Snow for a secret she spilled as a child which lead to her fiancé’s death at the hands of her own mother who she is now working with in order to exact vengeance on Snow. Sorry, but all morality checks aside, that’s also just plain illogical.
And since little Snow spilled the beans on Regina’s love affair, Regina has retaliated by killing Snow’s father, trapping Snow in a sleeping death, casting a spell that traps her and everyone else in a Groundhog Day-esque situation for twenty-eight years, robbed her of her daughter’s entire childhood, framed her for murder, and then joined up with her mother who has already murdered Snow’s mother and her old nursemaid right in front of her. Just to put a cherry on top of all this, we’re also privy to the first few days of the curse in which Regina is raping a man every night (she’ll eventually murder him, don’t forget) and trying to kidnap a boy because she’s bored, resulting in his permanent separation from his only living parent.
The fact that Regina gets tearful after most of this doesn’t negate the suffering of her victims. The fact that she loves her mother doesn’t negate the fact that said mother was trying to kill Rumplestiltskin and become the next Dark One, having ripped out her own heart in order to do so without any inner turmoil.
Whew, did I leave anything out?
If we look at the motivations of both Regina and Cora we get vengeance and ambition respectively. Each one of them has their sympathetic moments, but the disproportionate retribution that Regina has heaped on the kingdom and the lengths Cora will go to in order to get what she wants puts them firmly in the “must be stopped at all costs” category.
And so watching Snow White raked with guilt over the killing of Cora got on my nerves. Sure, there was a deliciously dark twist that involved Snow tricking Regina into becoming the instrument of her mother’s murder by putting the cursed heart back into Cora’s body (playing on Regina’s longing for genuine love AND using Regina’s own manipulative tactics against her, relying on Regina’s perception on her as eternally pure and sweet), but I don’t really buy what the writers are trying to sell me: that Snow White has compromised herself.
I love moral ambiguity and shades of grey, but there’s still a big difference between what Snow has done compared to what Regina and Cora have been up to, including: a. exhausting all other options, b. knowing full well that incarceration isn’t going to guarantee everyone else’s safety c. remorse for her actions and certainly no pleasure taken in such drastic action, and d. basic self-defence! In all that time Snow was moping around on her bed, I kept waiting for someone to point out to her that if she hadn’t taken Cora’s life then THEY’D ALL BE DEAD.
Sheesh, it’s like the total inversion of Merlin. There I was increasingly frustrated that Merlin could get away with a lot of morally dubious behaviour that was never treated as such by the narrative; yet here I find that Snow White has done something shocking but justifiable that the writers seem to think has defiled her forever. In the Merlin universe Morgana had plenty of justification for her hatred of Uther and Camelot’s laws, yet the writers kept portraying her as irredeemably evil. In the Once Upon a Time universe Snow White is held to a standard of moral purity that’s so high that the only way to maintain it is tantamount to suicide - which she actually tried to do by offering herself up to Regina in anguish.
My mind boggles.
Granted, everyone’s understanding of good and evil, right and wrong will vary. Some people may find Regina and Cora entirely sympathetic while Snow White and her family come across as self-righteous and underhanded. Heck, I was even side-eying Snow a little bit at the end there when it became clear that her guilt was based on how she can’t believe she’s capable of such evil rather than guilt that she manipulated a woman into killing her own mother. I think I would have respected her more if she’d gone to Regina’s door not to beg for death but to calmly and rationally outlined the reasons why she felt letting Cora live was too dangerous, throwing in an apology that she used Regina to get rid of her. Regina would have slammed the door in her face, but it would have been more than Regina deserved at that point and wouldn't have involved Snow getting suicidal over killing a woman who was about to kill her and her family.
But then that’s the beauty of creating morally ambiguous situations: everyone comes out with a different conclusion.
But personally...? Snow White had just learned that Cora murdered her mother and witnessed her murder Johanna without a moment’s hesitation. I think at this point it’s considered acceptable to take Cora’s life before she harms any more innocent lives. And to be honest, I wasn’t even all that convinced by Little Snow’s decision to forsake using the candle to save her mother’s life back in the flashbacks. Sure, it would have been wrong to kill an innocent person in order to save Eva, but weren’t there any murderers lying around in the dungeons? I wouldn’t have judged her for taking a bad person’s life to save her mother’s.
So from a Watsonian point-of-view I can understand why Snow feels terrible, and I can even sympathise with Regina and Cora to different extents. But from a Doylist perspective, I don’t like the way that the writers seem to be suggesting that the good guys have to sit there and be destroyed or else they become evil and that Snow White has somehow corrupted herself by saving her family (as was literally demonstrated by the dark spot growing on her heart). And if our heroes are not allowed to fight back against those mercilessly attacking them, then what exactly are they SUPPOSED to do?
The act of taking someone’s life can’t be judged on its own. Context and motivation is everything. As such, there’s a WORLD of difference between what Snow White has done, and what the likes of Cora, Regina and Rumplestiltskin get up to on a regular basis. Yet somehow Snow's heart now has a dark spot in it? Yeesh, I'd hate to see Regina's.
In other news, I thought the dresses that Little Snow White and Queen Eva wore were absolutely hideous. When Snow White commented that her tiara was heavy, I was thinking that surely her giant balloon dress would be heavier. And whose idea was it to dress one in red while the other was in pink? The pain!
Also, they’re running out of time to use Bailee Madison as young Snow White. This was chronologically the first time we’ve seen her as Snow and she’s already visibly older than in her scenes with Regina and Cora which technically come well after her mother’s death.
Oh, and where on earth was King Leopold during all of his drama with his wife?
It was a nice twist to see Cora masquerading as the Blue Fairy, and I honestly didn’t see it coming until Eva’s funeral - not even when the real Blue Fairy shot Snow that “what are you talking about?” look in Storybrooke. I got a shiver down my spine when she uttered her “how it feels to be the miller’s daughter” line over Eva’s body, knowing full-well what it must mean in regards to her relationship with Rumplestiltskin, and the implications that there is more of Eva and Cora’s relationship to be explored. There was definitely a sense of history there.
A history I might add, that is more than just a young snotty version of Eva tripping up Cora and forcing her to apologise. I loved the entirety of the flashbacks in The Miller’s Daughter. They brought me a brand new perspective on how this Regina/Rumplestiltskin feud began as well as an original take on the Rumplestiltskin fairytale. At first I’ll admit I was a bit baffled at the casting of Rose McGowan as a young Cora, but - wow. She captured ... speech patterns and mannerisms perfectly. Plus she looked great in that red dress.
Lots of nice little details here, such as Cora’s initial dissatisfaction with life and her resentment at her so-called “betters,” her boast that leads to Rumplestiltskin teaching her to spin straw into gold (for a moment there it looked like they were re-enacting the pottery throwing scene from Ghost), seeing Prince Henry as a young man (wow, he was quite the looker) and did my ears deceive me or did Cora accuse Henry’s father of: “whoring out your son?”
But of course, the most important thing to come out of that episode was Cora removing her own heart after she acknowledges that it’s a liability. It was rather Lady Macbeth of her, who prays to the dark powers to remove her compassionate heart so that can better help her husband seize the throne, except in this case she’s self-mutilating herself and her ability to love in order to further her own goals. In that case, they picked the perfect way for her to die: admitting that Regina herself would have been all she needed to be happy. Ouch.
Also nice was the way they brought Cora/Rumplestiltskin full-circle. The first time Cora outwitted Rumple, getting to keep her child and turn her back on him. Now Rumple has successfully turned the tables on her, not only in what he did to Regina, but in convincing Snow to go ahead with her plan to save his life by taking Cora’s. More shivers down my spine when he led Snow to the candle by asking for a blanket and then telling her that he had the candle: “for a rainy day.”
Baelfire is totally Peter Pan, isn’t he. It would explain his immediate recognition of Hook and the odd discrepancy over his age.
Regina is pretty much summed up in the line: “power is how you get things.” Tragically, what she wants is love and acceptance and forgiveness which power can NEVER get you. They are free gifts only. But this mentality was on full-display over the course of Welcome to Storybrooke and in her dealings with Owen and his father. There’s only one way to describe how all that went down. Take it away, Will Ferrell:
Click to viewI mean sheesh, one day they’re having dinner at her place, the next they’re engaged in a car chase and running out into the woods and dragged off to who-knows-where and searching for years to find the father that was left behind.
Still, it was a lot of fun seeing the first few days of the curse (Graham! Gus!) and Regina’s reaction to it all. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that she got bored very quickly with absolute power and no conflict whatsoever, which naturally paved the way for Henry’s arrival. As Mai would say: “Victory Is Boring.” It also slipped in neatly to the theme of free will and subjugation (what’s the point of controlling everyone if they have no say in the matter?), the cycle of vengeance (it only causes more suffering) and the elusive search for happiness (the old “happily ever after” adage). Hmm, I feel a meta coming on...
I was surprised that we didn’t get to see Henry as an infant being delivered to Regina’s arms as a way to end the flashback sequence, but I suppose they’re saving that for another episode. I’d love to see it.
The whole thing also reminded me of how much I enjoyed the set-up of the first season, with all these fairytale characters under a curse that made them forget who they were. It’s almost a shame that they got rid of that without doing more with it - one of my favourite moments from the first season was Graham remembering who he was before being killed, and I was looking forward to Emma’s influence gradually helping others get their memory back. But I digress.
The reveal of Greg as Owen came as no surprise, and though I’m still not hugely interested in this particular plot, it doesn’t cast a very good light on Regina. Separating a father and son because she’s bored with the scenario that she set up in the first place is pretty appalling, and I’m not sure whether the writers expecting me to feel sorry for her at the end there. Because despite Lana Parilla’s face when she cries - I didn’t. This woman has huge problems, and the fact that she was willing to put Henry under a curse to make him think that he loved her was chilling. And didn’t she just learn from the curse that stripping people of their free will didn’t make her even remotely happy?
And it’s kind of creepy that Henry is having a go at his biological family for becoming like Regina by discussing that they may need to kill her at the same time he’s calmly talking Regina down from brainwashing him against his will. Regina isn’t the only one who needs a reality check.
Also, does anyone else find the sight of Greg running around Storybrooke taping magical occurrences hilarious? What’s he planning to do with it? Show it to the news? They’re just going to think that it’s computer trickery which... is exactly what it is.
But I did love that confrontation between Regina and Snow outside her house and the way both were crying as they spoke. There’s just so much pain and history and tragedy between them at this point - it’s wonderful to see them cross each other.