Blog: Deconstructing "Once Upon a Time"

Subtitle: The Hunt for Sympathetic Villains

This post was originally published as an article in Tied-In, the official newsletter of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers on January 2012.

NOTE: Spoiler Alert! This article discusses episode plots up through January 15, 2012. If you have not seen these episodes and do not wish to know what is going on, you are advised to stop reading.

In the days of Homer’s Illiad and Oddessy, story construction seemed easy. You write about a hero overcoming impossible odds thrown into his path by an unrepentant, and obviously nasty, villain. Heroes were the good guys and villains deserved what they got (except when they were gods, but that’s another discussion). As fiction evolved, especially in the last century, character roles have also changed in response to the ever-broadening zeitgeist that allows women to take on the strong protagonist position, and men to be heroes with a bad streak. Enter the anti-hero, a bad person turned good (most of the time) who struggles against his own worst instincts as well as the villain. From that moment it became inevitable that villains would soon supplant the heroes, becoming protagonists in their own rights while the heroes turned into the antagonists. A recent plethora of fractured fairytales and rewritten classics (Wicked, The Other Stepsister, etc.) has only reinforced this trend.

Audiences love a “good villain.” It used to be that a good villain was strong, evil, and made the hero jump through hoops. But now this phrase is being taken more literally. Aware of their own moral dilemmas and fallacies, readers often identify more with the bad guy than they do with the good guy. And writers are responding to this trend more this decade than they ever have before.

Let’s take ABC’s “Once Upon A Time” for an example. This fairytale re-write for a modern audience is a collection of every popular folk tale you could ever think of, framed around the story Snow White. Living under a curse, the residents of “fairyland” lead a timeless and unhappy existence in Storybrooke, Maine. They cannot leave and they cannot change and they cannot have the Happily Ever After (H.E.A.) they were originally destined for. Only one person can save them: protagonist Emma Swan, Snow White’s daughter. Emma must break the curse and bring back everyone’s H.E.A. The show contains a lot of bad guys—witches, kings, and nasty soldiers, but the only two villains of consequence is Snow White’s evil queen (called Regina Mills) and Rumplestiltskin (called Mr. Gold).

Regina (played by Lana Parrilla) is the primary antagonist. Snow has a prince and is living her own H.E.A. while Regina is defeated, alone, and distinctly not happy. So Regina casts a curse on the H.E.A.’s that pulls them into reality (our world) and ensures that Snow and her prince will never meet.

Gold (played by Robert Carlyle) is arguably the more dangerous of the pair despite his secondary villain status. Gold is an imp who will do business with anyone, assuming they can meet his price. And no one gets out of a contract with Gold. The curse Regina uses originally belonged to Gold, and only he knows the methods for a proper casting.

Rather than leave Regina and Gold as two-dimensional Bad Guys that everyone hates, the writers have chosen to add a few twists to these characters that make our antagonists much more interesting then Emma and her hordes of hopeful sidekicks.

Regina’s adopted son Henry is also Emma’s biological son, put up for adoption ten years ago. Henry is the catalyst that gets Emma to come, and stay, in Storybrooke. We barely get past the pilot when the first hint of the queen’s problems are revealed. Episode two, The Thing You Love Most, tells the tale of the curse and reveals that Regina had to sacrifice the thing she loved the most in order to activate the spell. She thought it was her favorite horse, so the spell fails. But Rumplestiltskin explains that it will take a lot more a horse’s heart, causing Regina to take the heart of her father. The end of the episode shows a tombstone with the name of Henry on it.

In other episodes, we learn more about Regina’s personal problems. The queen’s heart-stealing habit reflects her ham-handed quest for love. She keeps a hunter on a leash (the man sent to kill Snow White), using him for her own sexual gratification until he runs to Emma for help. In the Hansel and Gretel story True North, she invites the children to live at the palace as a family. When they refuse, she furiously teleports them to a place far away. Earlier in the season, we learned that Snow White betrayed Regina by sharing one of Regina’s precious secrets. Snow’s actions shattered Regina’s trust and destroyed her life.

With this knowledge, we now have a very evil antagonist who is also a sympathetic villain. Regina is the part of us that feels unloved, betrayed, friendless, and abandoned. Regina is a successful career woman (queen in one world, mayor in another) that has lost everything in her quest for personal success. Every time she confronts Emma over Henry, she shows the cracks in her armor. Desperation becomes anger becomes cruelty, and Regina strikes back in a way every one of us wishes we could. Her controlling nature is antithetical to her need for familial love. Every step she takes to force someone to love her only chases people away.

Again, though, Regina pales in comparison with Gold.

Up until January 8th, Gold was the perfect antagonist: unflappable, mysterious, and always managing to stay ahead of the curve. Every episode saw him making deals with people desperate for information or their greatest dreams. Snow gave him Emma’s name in exchange for information on Regina’s promised curse. Regina gave Gold a comfortable life in reality (he owns most of the town and the local pawn shop) and the promise she would do as he asked when he uses the word “please” if he would tell her how to activate the curse. Cinderella promised Gold her first born in exchange for going to the ball, etc.

This dude is bad mojo. No matter what the heroes do, they can’t seem to win. Even Emma was forced to promise an unspecified favor in exchange for Gold relinquishing his claim on Cinderella’s child. When Emma runs for sheriff and Gold decides to help her out, Henry plays Greek Chorus for those of us wanting to jump through the t.v. and warns Emma to avoid any deals with the devil.

January 8th changed all that. In story that could only be titled Desperate Souls, a very human Rumplestiltskin wants to save his only son from a horrible war. An old beggar convinces him that his only salvation lies in killing the Dark One and stealing his magic powers. But magic has a price, and this power forever tarnishes Rumplestiltskin, making him the evil villain we know from other episodes. In the final minutes, the beggar is revealed as the Dark One himself and we are left with the thought that the Dark One engineered his own murder to be free of a curse worse than reality.

This brings us back to the most recent episode, True North. As Emma tries to track down Hansel’s and Gretel’s father through a compass Gold sold, she is forced into another bargain with Gold. The exchange goes something like this:

Emma: Okay, what’s your price.
Gold: Forgiveness.
Emma: (snorting in disgust) How about tolerance?
Gold: That’s a start.

With those words, Gold transforms from the nasty guy we hate to a sad old man seeking a redemption he may never find. His deal-making ways show us his desperate desire to be needed and acknowledged, an Everyman reflection of our own desires. Now we can relate to his clumsy attempts to protect his child, his foolhardy decision to strike a bargain without full understanding of the consequences, and his horrendous rationalization of sins committed in the name of love. One of Gold’s key phrases is “I know a desperate soul when I see him” and now we know why. Our deal-brokering villain is the most desperate soul of all.

“Once Upon A Time” was never meant to be your typical fairytale. Now, though, we have a story where it is entirely possible that Emma isn’t meant to save the good guys. She’s meant to save the bad guys. The most likely scenario is that Emma is Gold’s sole recourse to being freed from his own personal curse, the Dark One’s power. If she can find it in her heart to forgive him, it may be that all the other characters will also find some sort of sympathy with him. In the end, the favor Emma owes Gold might be repaid not with some nefarious illegal activity on Gold’s behalf but her wielding his magic dagger to end his life. After that, Emma may just break the evil queen’s curse if she convinces Regina that the way to love lies in giving it freely without expectations and not forcing anyone (including Henry) to return it.

If you’re looking for sympathetic villain ideas, this show is one to watch. Not only is the writing consistent and clever, but the actors make these characters leap off the screens. Parrilla is stupendous playing the role of queen bitch with a hidden fragility that no one has yet seen. Carlyle juggles the on-and-off complexities of Gold without reprising his deliberately unpleasant Stargate: Universe character. I am blown away by their ability to make Regina and Gold tangible, believable characters that make me want to shout and cry with every triumph and setback. Who needs heroes when you have villains like these?

Addendum to original article: I have seen nothing on this series that has caused me to change my mind. In fact, Skin Deep (the Beauty & the Beast episode aired on February 12th, 2012) has only reinforced my convictions of what is happening with Gold and Regina.

“Once Upon A Time” airs Sunday nights on ABC. Check your local channel listing for times.