Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-9526698-20140422054237

Okay, I'm going to just come right out and state my theory here:

The Wicked Witch of the West's two fathers Jonathan (the biological) and the Woodsman (the adopted) are the Scarecrow and the Tin Man respectively.

Hear me out, please. I have the following points to support my theory:

Jonathan/Scarecrow:

1. Jonathan is a gardener by profession, which is not too removed from the Scarecrow's profession of guarding a cornfield.

2. The clothes that Jonathan is wearing as a gardener are very similar to the Scarecrow's usual outfit.

3. He makes a reference to straw while wooing Cora.

4. Cora later accuses him of having a very small brain.

Woodsman/Tin Man:

1. He is a native of Oz.

2. He is a woodsman by profession, just as the Tin Man is.

3. He is very "heartless" in his treatment of Zelena, who for much of her life sees him as her father.

4. The original book gives the Tin Man a backstory describing how a Wicked Witch (in this case of the East) turned him from a flesh and blood human into a metal man.

Anyway, so my hypothesis is this:

Zelena initially attempted to carry out her scheme to go back in time and change history in Oz, rather than going to all that fuss and traveling to the Enchanted Forest to do it. As part of that scheme, she tracked down and "visited" each of her two fathers and took their brain and heart respectively (partly as revenge for how they treated her and partly as part of her plan), turning them into a Scarecrow and Tin Man in the process (presumably as ironic punishments for their behavior). She also at some point met the Cowardly Lion and took his courage (and it makes me wonder what he did to her to make her single him out too). Finally, when Dorothy landed in Oz, she attempted to use the Kansas girl as the final ingredient of her time travel spell. When Dorothy and her three new friends went to the Emerald City to ask the Wizard for help, Zelena simply turned Walsh from a flying monkey back into a human and had him tell Dorothy to go after the Wicked Witch in order to lure the girl into Zelena's clutches and obtain the piece of the spell. However, due to events we don't know about yet, Dorothy somehow accidentally and unknowingly thrwarted the Witch's scheme, leading to a chain of events in which Zelena was thought to be dead, the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion regained what she had took from them, Walsh was publicly outed as a fraud and lost his position as head of the Emerald City (making him much less useful to Zelena), and Dorothy got her hands on the silver slippers and took them to Kansas and out of Zelena's (and Rumplestiltskin's) clutches. This forced Zelena (who somehow survived her apparent "melting") to attempt the spell again elsewhere and go to the Enchanted Forest to find new people to steal ingredients from.

That's my theory, folks, and only the airing of the rest of the episodes for this season will show whether or not it's correct. In the meantime you're all free to discuss and debate it to your heart's content.

Enjoy! 