Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-28869007-20160629032536/@comment-25375217-20160706194648

Are we supposed to pick for each season? I think so so I'm going to do that

SEASON 1

Best Hero: Henry. Every other hero in Season 1 is kind of undermined by their post-curse actions. Mary Margaret and David's affair is certainly a less heroic time in the lives of Snow White and Prince Charming, but it's because it's not part of their lives because they didn't know who they were :P Emma was certainly not a hero in Season 1, August was only trying to become a hero and really kind of failing. But the entire time, Henry is working hard and doing everything he can to break the curse, even when it results in him losing his favorite playground and being put under a sleeping curse.

Best Villain: Rumplestiltskin. Regina's great and all, but in the flashbacks of her being the Evil Queen she's driven mostly by entitlement and grudges, which makes her seem more whiny than evil (we see more of what drove her to be evil later, but early on it felt like this to me). And in the present she's never really directly evil, except for when she crushes Graham's heart, which is out of jealousy and heartbrokenness over someone she never loved anyway. Rumple, on the other hand, is so mysterious and manipulative. He doesn't really directly do a lot of terrible acts, but he causes terrible acts to happen. In the EF he's funny and creepy, and in Storybrooke he's mysterious and snarky. He's pretty great in Season 1.

 SEASON 2 

Best Hero: Mary Margaret. From seeing her immediately picking archery back up to save her daughter ("I guess it's like riding a bike."), to being so caring to poor Aurora who just woke up from a sleeping curse, to her drive to kill Cora and save everyone (even if she did it in a terrible way), to her deep regret for making Regina miserable... It's the story of a real hero, a hero who does great things and cares about others, but also makes mistakes and regrets them.

Best Villain: Tamara YES I KNOW I'M A WEIRDO. But she was so much more interesting than Cora or Hook or Greg. Cora was evil for the sake of evil - her backstory wasn't anything special, it's just your typical "yeah I don't like humans imma kill 'em". And she does horrible things but not for particularly interesting reasons. Hook is kind of the same - he's not the first villain to be driven by revenge and he certainly won't be the last, plus he's always some other villain's puppy dog in Season 2. And Greg annoyed me. But Tamara - she was so terribly manipulative and such an amazing evil actress. Plus, even though we never saw it, it's obvious that her backstory was interesting. And she so deeply believes that magic is bad - she calls it "unholy" and their cause "sacred". What did magic do to her? I think she was supposed to stick around past the Neverland arc and we would have learned a lot about her, but her actress was cast on The Walking Dead and it never happened. Shame.

 SEASON 3 

I missed a lot of Season 3, I'm working on the rewatch now but I still don't really know a lot about the Neverland arc, and I missed some character bits in the Oz arc. But here goes.

Best Hero: Emma. She finally really becomes a hero this season. It happens early on when she makes the Nevengers (that's what they're called, right?) finally band together but there's still a lot of development later on too and you watch all this internal power that Emma's always had be shifted from protecting herself from love and heartbreak to protecting those she loves. It's kind of great.

Best Villain: Felix. Yeah he's a sidekick I know. But he is just so intimidating and creepy. I haven't seen a lot of Pan, but I'm sure that most of Felix's scariness comes from his relationship with Pan. Still, though, he's really scary. I wonder what his backstory is, how he ended up as Pan's most loyal lost boy.

 SEASON 4 

Best Hero: Tough choice. I dunno, maybe... Emma again I guess? Season 4 didn't have a lot of major hero development.

Best Villain: Cruella. She's evil for the sake of being evil but in the most evil way possible. It's not interesting, but oh my gosh it's terrifying.

 SEASON 5 

Best Hero: Again, there weren't a lot of good hero stories in Season 5. Snow is a pretty okay choice because of her arc of turning back into Snow, but Ginny's pregnancy stopped that a little earlier than I would have liked. Emma isn't a great choice because the season is mostly about how she makes bad mistakes that put her family in danger. Hook goes way too evil too quickly when he becomes the Dark One to be a hero, and Rumple undermines all his heroicness by ruining Hook's heroic death. Henry's plot is either A) impress the girl or B) complain that he's not allowed to be a hero. Belle sleeps too much. Zelena starts out evil. Robin Hood doesn't exist. So yeah. No good choice.

Best Villain: Arthur was pretty neat because of his thing with not knowing he was evil, but... that's about it. All the other villains weren't around enough, or were inconsistent.