Board Thread:Show-Related Questions and Answers/@comment-24304025-20141219181020/@comment-24957312-20141219215933

The fact is that the writer screwed up. This whole storyline is filled with plotholes and retcons and nonsense such as: 1. Why didn't the Dark Curse take full effect? 2. Why did Cora try to make her daughter to marry the man she was supposed to marry? Why didn't he recognize her? 3. What's with the splitting heart? 4. Why couldn't Zelena kill Emma? 5. Why Emma never thought about Zelena's curse when she wanted to remove her powers? 6. Why was Zelena glad that David died when she hadn't collected his courage yet? 7. What did Zelena plan to do if Snow White had never gotten pregnent?

And they could have used that whole missing year for interesting plots, but it seems that the only reason for doing it was because of Ginnifer's prenancy and Jared growing up and changing his voice. All it did was backing the writers into a corner, they didn't know how to get out so they made bad storytelling until it was over with anticlimax. Even the main heroine, Emma, was only a plot device. They would have succeeded in defeating Zelena even if they had't returned to Storybrooke.