Board Thread:Rant and Rave/@comment-25926288-20170724184844/@comment-24593235-20170812032731

I find it hard to pick which of these three is the worst, in all honesty, and it's rather disappointing that all three are pretty bad considering these are the three big, original mythologies written for the show. The Author, the Dark One, and the Savior are all more or less Once Upon a Time exclusives, and all three were just so poorly done despite having a lot of potential (except the Savior mythology, which I'll get to).

I was rather intrigued when Season 4 hyped up the Author storyline. It seemed to hold a lot of potential, with who actually wrote the storybook and how it works within the show, but it really didn't amount to too much. Isaac was an awful addition, and I'm still not really sure what the limitations to his power are. Or why Merlin even made the Author a job to begin with. There's also the additional storybooks that exist which, while opening the door to more stories, only seem to create more questions that go unanswered - especially since they just dropped the Land of Untold Stories plotline. They say Henry wrote the first book, but was that not Isaac? Or didn't he at least write a good part of it? And what's with that weird possessing stuff from 6x16 with Henry? And the foreign language? The show sets up all this different stuff but never comes back to it. The Author could've been a good addition to the show, but with how it was handled, I wish the book remained a byproduct of the curse.

As for the Dark One, which originally seemed to just be a set of powers, the full mythology being explored throughout 5a was intriguing but also another disappointment. Mainly because what we saw 5x07 never really adds up with what past episodes like 3x15 and 4x22 tell us. There's also a lot of information missing regarding Merlin, such as the hat, his mansion in Storybrooke, how he contacted Emma 5x01, whatever it was he was talking to the Apprentice through in 4x19, and so on. We don't even know how Nimue died, just that she did, and I'm still not entirely sure how the visions work. Also, why did Dark Hook see Rumplevision? He had Merlin's power, not Nimue's. I will say though that the Dark One mythology is probably the cleanest out of all of their three original mythologies, but it could still be better.

And that brings us to the Savior mythology of Season 6 which I thought was an absolute mess. I was never a fan of there being more than one savior because to me that just made Emma seem less special. I thought she was the savior because she was born out of Snow and Charming's truest of true love, but since there was also Aladdin and Rumple... I don't know. I'll admit that I liked the twist with Rumple having been destined to be the savior, but I don't like how there's not much explanation to it. And can there be more than one savior at a time? Was the there a savior between Rumple and Aladdin? And Aladdin and Emma? And what about other realms? What's Alice in Wonderland or Dorothy in Oz? Also, why the hell does Emma not believing destroy all the realms? They did fine before she was the savior. And light snuffing out light? Yes, it's Gideon killing Emma, but Gideon was being controlled by Fiona so therefore is it not darkness killing Emma? And then Fiona suddenly getting a bunch of powers that defy the laws of magic when Emma's dead. What? Why? How? Maybe I'm being nitpicky, but I really think they just threw too much at us, trying to take something that was perfectly fine already and expand it.

So yeah, I'd go with the Savior mythology being the worst and the Dark One mythology being the least awful. I'd choose for the Dark One and Author mythology (they kinda tie in together, really) to get more expert-level development, and I'd have just excluded the Savior mythology all together. To me, Emma should be the Savior because she's the product of true love and built into the Dark Curse as such. That is all.