Once Upon A Time – Season 7 Finale

All fairy tales start with the words “Once upon a time” and end with “They lived happily ever after”. After seven years, Once Upon A Time came to its series conclusion.

Being associated with Disney has allowed the story to mine the cartoon (and live action) characters that are featured by that studio.

You might say that they gave us fairy tales for adults. The themes and characters were familiar, but the situations were more mature than the ‘normal’ children’s stories. (Although, if viewed through the Disney lens, all their stories had a ‘scary’ element to them, but the originals on which they were based were far more frightening, for sure.)

By series 7, the producers went off at tangents, retelling Cinderella with a Latin flavour, duplicating Captain Hook so he could have a child in the Rapunzel story, and allowing two versions of Henry to exist simultaneously. The ‘curse’ that brought the whole story to Seattle was completely unexpected, but this was a trajectory required to allow the separation from Emma Swann and the ‘saviour’ story line.

It Became a Modern “Lost”

Lost went rogue in its final season, too. It’s what happens when the writers run out of story ideas, having fully explored all aspects of a particular story in six seasons. Even now, people are still discussing the ‘sideways’ leap that the story took during that final season. I doubt if people will be debating Once Upon A Time‘s final season in the same way, ten years from now.

I guess we should be glad they didn’t have a modern chapel setting to end it all. But the castle room does make a certain sense in that this was where it all started, with the Evil Queen cursing Snow White and Prince Charming on their wedding day.

The ending has Regina finding her own Happy Ending, something she thought she’d never get. By the series end, she turned into the Good Queen. But along the way a good many characters were ‘lost’ forever, including Robin Hood (Regina’s love) and Rumplestiltskin (her oldest friend). But she was back on her ‘throne’ this time chosen democratically. And everyone left in the show seemed happy with this outcome.

Conclusion

Maybe there really are happy endings. Robin Hood gave Regina a red feather as a symbol of his continuing love. Rumple got to finally be with his Belle after his demise. These are the hints of life continuing after death.

Death is not the end, it’s only the beginning…

We all get a second chance.