Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26184894-20150614234938/@comment-24674051-20150616210343

Ok, In the writer's defense on the Emma v. Zelena setup. That was actually setup (From a story Perspective)  in "A Curious Thing", Episode 19 of Season 3. Yes, they had been training Emma in Magic in general from earlier, but that was always meant to be (imo) Emma & Regina v. Zelena (& Rumple). And they were not training Emma in light magic, although that is what naturally occurs in her. In "A Curious Thing", we find out, when David and Snow meet Glinda, that ONLY strong light magic would defeat Zelena. It was established that Emma would be the strongest, since she was the product of true love, which is what led them to cast the curse to get back. The only other real fact that was established is that Glinda felt that her magic was not sufficient. They never said Regina couldn't do it, although none of them thought she could, since she was not a practitioner of light magic at the time.

In "Kansas", which is episode 20, (and early on, I might add), Emma loses her powers. From a story standpoint, it is that "darkest before the dawn" moment, when all seems lost. But this is where we finally find out that Regina is capable of using light magic. And as has been shown since that time, we see that Regina feels more deeply than most (even without her heart, go figure). Which, given that Magic (even light magic) is driven off emotions, means that Regina, if she can tap into that love, is going to be strong. Not as strong as Emma, but strong enough to stand against her Sister.

So the actual setup that ONLY Emma could defeat Zelena was really only the last half of episode 19 and the first part of episode 20. Not really very long. Some see it as a writing failure, but it is, in actuality (at least imo), a good bit of writing.

Also, as we have seen, Zelena was not totally defeated. I think Regina caught Zelena off guard (heck, she caught everyone off guard), and got a blow in that allowed Regina and Company to control Zelena. There may YET be a faceoff coming between Zelena and Emma, who knows?