Board Thread:Spoilers!/@comment-27060727-20171018191424/@comment-31564770-20180120010140

I feel like the winter finale left us with more new questions than answers, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. They have, essentially, thrown us an 8-year flashback zone for 7B. There are a few things that intrigue me:

1) Gothel’s evil. No way around it. Furthermore, everyone, including Rumple, is legitimately scared and/or intimidated by her. Everyone. People keep talking about how “Gothel’s out” and “You have no idea what you’ve just let crawl out into this world.” Yet all we’ve seen of her is a spooky coven, some magic plants, and a prison tower. Evil certainly, but in the grand scheme I would say an Evil Queen systematically razing entire villages and killing everyone in them outranks magic plants black cloaks and a tower on the evil scoreboard. What did Gothel do? This is almost certainly a thing that happens in the new 8-yearish flashback zone, and given the “Garden” part of the title I expect we’ll find out pretty soon.

2) What does Gothel want with the Guardian? The Guardian is meant to be the most innocent of innocents who would never hurt anyone. They’re supposed to be incorruptible, yet Gothel wants them. Perhaps to twist them to evil to destroy the light, but that isn’t the impression I got. We know Gothel has “a very specific grudge” and if Once sticks to anything like its standard pattern that grudge will be what sends Gothel over the edge to evil. But Gothel seems to want the Guardian to dispel evil for the coven (“Who do these cloaks belong to?” “Right now they belong to the darkness...”), so I don’t quite know what’s happening here. An ex-villain seems to make the most sense as the target of Gothel’s grudge, but that may just be me. Still though, Once villains tend to never realize that darkness != happiness so I’m intrigued to see where Gothel’s going with this.

3) On a somewhat less Gothel-related note, there is a line from the winter finale that I can’t get out of my head. It might be nothing. It might not be. When Drizella came to the rebel camp, she announced her arrival by answering Henry’s question of where Regina was: “Don’t worry, Regina’s just a little detained at the moment.” That word detained implies Regina was captured by Drizella, and by extension, Gothel. Since Drizella was petrified in that scene and recognized Gothel when Gothel came to rescue her, this means she and Gothel were already buddies at that point. Gothel has been using Drizella pretty much this entire time and I get the feeling she wasn’t just after Regina’s blood for the curse- if she’d captured Regina she would’ve just sliced open her hand and been done with it, no need to go through the trouble to poison Henry. So what does she want with Regina?

4) Time is still screwy. 7x10 gave us like half an answer. When Regina showed up at Zelena’s farm and said “I’m not here to discuss timelines” I thought to myself “but I sure as heck am, this is what I’ve been here for all along.” For example, by my math if Regina had stayed in the same realm as Henry the whole 8 years she would be in her late fifties at least. People don’t age nearly a decade and not look any different at all. Yes, I do know this is the television industry and no, I’m not really complaining since Lana’s awesome, but they could’ve done like *a lock* of grey hair and it would’ve been fine, no change feels like pushing it. So imo Regina went to another realm for a good while somewhere in there. While she was captured by Gothel, assuming my earlier theory pans out?

These are all things I hope to be answered, and things I don’t really know what to make of. Or, well, they’re some of the things I hope to be answered and don’t know what to make of, but these are the things I think we could probably learn more about in this episode. Tl;dr in a perfect world we’d find out what Gothel wants and who she hates this episode as well as (if that line even means anything significant) what’s up with Regina being “detained.” Also, could we please have an explanation to what even is time anymore? Please?