Once Upon a Time (Part 2)

Good evening, everyone.  Welcome back.

Once Upon a Time (OUAT) is a show that struggled to maintain meaningful character drama across its first six seasons.  Rumplestiltskin (or, to use his “cursed” name, Mr. Gold) was the most blatant casualty.  What started as a villain who found redemption through love, betrayed that love, and then was given a second chance devolved into a loathsome character who was so predictable in his betrayals and abusive behavior that his redemption became impossible to take seriously.

Mr. Gold’s relationship with Belle made his betrayals all the harder to swallow.  It also presents the best option to redeem him.  Had the creators been able to plan out both his character arc and their romance for the full six seasons in advance, they could have redeemed these elements while also paying Beauty and the Beast the respect that it deserved.

If you haven’t read Part 1, I invite you to double back and get caught up.  Otherwise, let’s dive right into:

THE ENCHANTRESS AND THE BEAST

The name of this concept says it all: Belle, much like Rumplestiltskin, should be a fairy tale character who wears more than one hat.  She shouldn’t just be the Disney Princess who falls in love with the Beast.  She should be the Enchantress who curses the Beast in the first place.

(Yes, the Blue Fairy is technically the Enchantress in the current version of the show, based upon a few small references scattered throughout.  However, I can’t recall this every being explicitly established within the show itself.  OUAT is also no stranger to splitting the identity of one fairy tale character across multiple people within the show.)

Starting Point

In OUAT’s version of Beauty and the Beast, Belle was the princess of a kingdom threatened by ogres.  Rumplestiltskin demanded a lifetime of servitude from her in exchange for saving her people.  Despite the objections of her father and her fiancé, Gaston, Belle agreed to the deal.  She was brought back to Rumplestiltskin’s castle and tasked with serving as the caretaker.  Over time, Belle and Rumplestiltskin fell in love, only for Rumplestiltskin to drive her out when he realized that True Love, as the power that breaks any curse, would rob him of his magic.  Belle was then captured by the Evil Queen to be used as leverage against Rumplestiltskin.  When the curse is cast, Belle was initially confined to the town’s mental asylum.  She is freed and reunited with Mr. Gold at the end of Season 1.

This story is decent when looking at just Season 1.  The follow-up through the end of Season 4 also holds up.  When the writers ran out of content to work with for the original story, they focused on giving Belle adventures in which she gained more confidence.

The problems started when the writers started to repeat themselves.  Belle in OUAT has only two defining traits, both of them from the animated film: she loves the Beast, and she loves books.  Take away the romance, and there’s just the books.  There are only so many iterations one can do on “bookworms have something to contribute” and “bookworm wants to stop reading about adventures and exercise her own agency” angles.  By Season 5, the writers were rehashing stories for Belle that were done in Seasons 2 and 4.  I can’t help but wonder if the writers made Mr. Gold abusive in Season 6 because they wanted to keep Belle around but couldn’t think of anything else to do with her outside of pitting her against him.

Many of the characters in the show at least had their “cursed” identities to lean on for drama, especially in the first season.  Belle doesn’t get one until midway through Season 2, when Regina imprints one upon her as an act of revenge against Mr. Gold.  Belle becomes “Lacey”, a gold-digging, heavy-drinking barfly who pushes Mr. Gold to embrace his worst impulses.  This identity is erased at the end of the season.  It’s more of a speedbump for Mr. Gold’s growth than anything meaningful for Belle.

Without any other ways to coax meaningful growth out of the character, the writers relegated Belle to the mouthpiece of exposition.  She becomes the town librarian midway through Season 2.  Whenever the heroes need some obscure information, Belle researches it and shows up to deliver the exposition.  Occasionally, she does a little magic, again based on her research.  This wasn’t a bad way to keep the character around, yet her use of magic begins to feel very artificial the more times it happens.  It’s not like she grows more proficient with it over time, and the town already has the Blue Fairy and her fairy followers to do magic. Between them and other established characters, there are other routes to provide Belle’s exposition.

A New Tale

Making Belle into the Enchantress starts with the reason why she becomes a prison in Rumplestiltskin’s castle in the first place.  In this version of the story, she was a powerful sorceress in her own right, having studied magic through her books.  Rumplestiltskin wouldn’t have demanded Belle herself as payment for saving her kingdom – he’d have wanted her family’s library, including the magical books in there.  Belle would have come to his castle after the fact to try to get the library back.  This would have then led to her working for him.  She would use her magic to animate objects around the castle to help her with the chores (hence the Enchantress angle).

In the real world, Belle is Lacey from the start of the series.  She works as Mr. Gold’s assistant, helping him to run the shop and manage his books.  While Lacey would be more bookish and serious in this iteration, she still encourages Mr. Gold’s darker impulses until the curse starts to break.  We would then see Belle restored in Season 2, only to revert back to Lacey at the same point, punishing Mr. Gold for the progress he’s made.

One key point in this new version is that Belle would not actually be called “Belle” for the bulk of the series.  I’ll get into my reasons for this a little further down.  Within the fairy tale flashbacks, this would be justified by the fact the Belle knows how Rumplestiltskin can use names to control people, so she used her magic to hide her name from him.  He would call her “the Enchantress” as a somewhat-mocking moniker when she starts to work for him.  In the real world, he calls her Lacey both during and after the curse.  The first time he uses her actual name is the Season 4 mid-season finale, when he’s pleading for her to not exorcise him from Storybrooke.  (This will also be the episode where we see him discover her name in the flashback subplot.)

Making Belle into an established magic user would allow her to have a more active contribution to the story.  This doesn’t address the issue of there being other magic users capable of solving problems and providing exposition, but it does provide more flexibility in how she can be utilized.  The overlap issue could be resolved by leaning into specialization, with fairies providing powerful magic of goodness and light while Bell is more versatile but less overtly powerful.

A NEW RELATIONSHIP

Updating Belle’s character does not, by itself, salvage the romance with Mr. Gold or the character arc for Mr. Gold himself.  It merely provides context.  Their relationship will also need to be reworked.

Slow Burn Romance

OUAT really leaned into the fairy tale romance angle.  Nearly everyone who appears in multiple episodes has a love story at some point.  These love stories are usually a pivotal part of their character arcs.  Even the villains aren’t immune to this.  The show has a romance between the Wicked Witch of the West and the god Hades that is a major component of Season 5 Part 2.

Except for Emma Swan and Captain Hook, most romances are initiate and resolved within one season (if not one episode).  Any drama after this conclusion is usually a contrived effort to stir up conflict rather than a meaningful effort to show a happy and healthy relationship.  This applies to Mr. Gold and Belle as well.  Yes, their relationship does evolve from season to season, but as the mess from Season 5 onward demonstrated, there wasn’t a real plan for this story.  The writers were tacking on new twists season by season.

The new relationship between Lacey and Mr. Gold needs to play the long game, especially if we’re supposed to feel catharsis when they get together at the end of Season 6.  They will be a professional relationship that transitions into a friendship.  There shouldn’t be True Love’s kiss until the end of Season 6, when Mr. Gold finally overcomes his demons.

The slow burn will provide three significant benefits.  The first is that it will provide some variety in a show that is otherwise defined by Love At First Sight and quick confessions.  The second is that it explores an alternative concept of True Love.  Season 1 makes a big deal about how parental love is as powerful as romantic love; Season 3 also established friendship as a type of True Love, albeit for a minor twist in one scene.  Lacey and Mr. Gold would provide a means to dive deeper into this.  The third is that, by leaning into friendship, the impact of Mr. Gold’s villainy will be mitigated.  While the show does explore alternative forms of True Love, romantic love is still established as the go-to.  Mr. Gold betraying a friend’s trust will hurt, but within the framing of the show, this wouldn’t be as reprehensible as him abusing his wife.

Secret Identity

When OUAT shifted to more serialized stories and focused more on the core cast than the wider ensemble, something precious was lost.  No longer was there this sense of wonder and discovery to learning about some random person we’ve seen around town.  Even if we’d already know who a character was for several episodes, it was still exciting when they finally got a episode focused on them and their personal story.  Once this mystery was discarded, the introductions of new characters began to feel like mechanical necessity rather than discovery.  I suspect that the writers of OUAT were aware of this problem, hence the course correction in Season 6 by introducing a wave of new characters and stories.

If we are already pre-planning Mr. Gold and Lacey’s romance, we can buy at least a few more seasons of mystery.  Audience members will likely theorize early on that the Enchantress and Belle are supposed to be the same person, yet the lack of confirmation will provide a source of interest and investment.  Having the reveal occur in the mid-season finale for Season 4 will also heighten the punch of that scene, since only then will it become fully apparent how much Mr. Gold’s villainy has cost him.

STARTING THE STORY

With all of that established, we are ready to begin our dive into the episode-by-episode breakdowns.  I am still working my way through them at the time of this post, so I’m not yet certain how many individual posts this will take.  If it’s going to take two or more, I do intend to at least do the breaks at the ends of seasons, rather than doing a few episodes at a time.  I thank you all for bearing with me.

The journey begins on January 29th.  I hope to see you all there.  Have a great couple of weeks.