Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20180428005811/@comment-25375217-20180428013127

I can't believe it took them seven years to create a backstory for the Land Without Magic, lol.

In and of itself, this episode was fantastic. I loved Gothel's backstory. It was the perfect blend of dark and sympathetic. I don't want her to be redeemed, but I can understand where she's coming from. The idea of her trying to "save" witches is fantastic, too, but it conflicts with her treatment of Drizella, Gretel, Robin, etc...

The Coven was a disappointment. They didn't even mention the fact that two members are dead and one ran away. And we literally went from "Let's wake up my sisters!" to, one scene later, "Okay, they're awake. Hi girls!" But at least we did unmask one more, so that's nice. I wasn't super excited for the Coven arc anyway, so I'll just pretend it never happened and focus on how great Gothel alone was.

The Tree Nymphs were very pretty. They did the teal skin quite well, I think. And I loved the design of the dead home! It was very ominous, very terrifying.

I'm curious what exactly Gothel's spell did. It seems like it should wipe out humanity, but it would be hard for the next episode to pick up where this one left off if that's the case. Did I just miss when they explained this? I was talking an awful lot, lol.

Henry, Rogers, and Tilly were a fun team. I liked the conspiracy theory thing they had set up. I'm kind of upset Tilly never said "we're all mad here", lol, but y'know. I also liked Jacinda and Lucy finding the slipper, I thought that was played well and it was a cool cameo from Granny's.

I totally expect Alice to break the curse, but I'm not sure if it'll be True Love's Kiss with Margot or Rogers. Rogers would be more thematically appropriate considering the first curse was broken by Emma and Henry. It kind of sucks that the supposed guest star is more involved in the plot than our male and female leads, but if someone had to do it, I prefer Alice to most other options.

I was really afraid Gothel was going to pull a Fiona and say "I know I've been torturing you all this time, but it was because I wanted to be reunited with you!" Thankfully, that doesn't seem to be the case. I suspect she's manipulating Alice for her Guardian power, but even if she isn't, she at least admitted that she did a heel-face turn. It was still a crappy one, but they didn't try to sell it as what was going on the whole time.

Speaking of the Guardian power... I thought Gothel wanted the dagger? I guess we'll see that next week? (Please?)

Oh yeah, and Facilier and Lucy made a surprisingly adorable team. Facilier continues to be weird and not do much of anything, but hey, he cured Henry, so he gets hero points.

Like I said, in and of itself, this episode was fantastic. It's a little inconsistent with other things we've seen this season, but it was better than most of those episodes, so I'm going to consider all of them inconsistent and this one was the real story. Easily an 8/10.