There is a reason that Ursula and Cruella were brought on and it's genius if you just ignore the fact that they advertised them as big bads. If you focus on what they were, not what they could be, it's an excellent plot.

Rumple brought the Queens of Darkness together because it could turn Emma dark. Not because he needed a trio of evil to do what he could easily do himself (besides getting into Storybrooke). He needed Maleficent to get Emma to turn against Snow and Charming, because she would be unable to forgive them and start getting angry, which, as we know from Star Wars, leads to the dark side. He needed Ursula to exact her revenge on Hook, because he's Emma's true love and losing him would make her hate Ursula, and hatred too is the way to the dark side (unfortunately for Rumple, Ursula didn't kill Hook. Thanks Ariel.) He needed Cruella because he knew she was an awful person who would do anything to kill the author, but she was defenseless and if Emma killed her, it would turn her heart dark just like it did with Snow White when she banished Lily.

The characters were brought in for excellent and creative reasons. It all ties into the same plot, too. It's all turning Emma dark. We know the savior can somehow write happy endings in the LWM (likely to be explained in the finale). He needed to turn her dark so that she would write evil happy endings. Queens of Darkness? Manipulation on Emma (as I explained above). The Author? Manipulates Cruella into doing her awful stuff which leads Emma to kill her (so he's just the Queens of Darkness). The only exception is Zelena. She's basically completely disconnected from the plot. This leads me to believe she will cause something that effects Storybrooke in Season 5.

I think that this is one of the best played arcs yet. They really aren't trying to focus on multiple characters (which is somewhat of a problem, because that means no Ruby-type characters, but also means we won't have small disconnected backstories like we did in 4a), it's all development on our mains (Ursula brought in some Hook, Zelena and Marian gave Robin his first real backstory episode, Maleficent brought in Regina and Snowing stuff (and I believe the Snowing stuff is a great sign of the gray line and is played excellently), Cruella brought character development in to Emma by seeing how she fights with the growing darkness, as did Lily, etc.) I love this arc, and I hope Season 5 is played just as well.

I think there could be quite a few things we could see with them, we still haven't seen bad things Ursula did for 300 years, but she must have done some things as everyone considered her a villain in the EF, and we still haven't even seen how Cruella got from 1920's England world to EF, so there's a story there as well. I'm not sure how you and Farerb think all the minor characters are forgotten, we've seen more characters I (and I'm sure others) thought we're one offs (Midas, Zoso, etc.) make reappearances, than any other show I watch.

It's a generalization. Not for all, but for the most part. I compare Once to itself and not to others. Better than =/= Good or something phenomenal.

Back on track, I can see minor characters being seen or mentioned, like Abigail, Midas, Red, etc. But not Cruella or Ursula being brought back after this arc. It's like Malcolm. Tell me how often he's seen...mentioned once, okay. That's what I expect of them in oncoming seasons.Not a bad thing at all, but not like they are going to have an epsidoe where they are seen. Zoso and Zelena are quite lucky and both start with the letter Z.

I agree we will probably never see Malcolm again, but I think we will see Pan again, which is technically Malcolm so yeah. XD

Ursula didn't even seem like a villain. We never got to see what bad things she did under the sea. The writers made her appear as a child who was grounded, threw a temper tantrum and only stopped once she got what she wanted. 

I was really disappointed with Maleficent's story. As soon as I heard Maleficent was coming back I was so excited because I wanted to see her story and what made her evil but, we only got one backstory epsiode of her and it seemed more of Regina's episode more than Maleficent's. They didn't even show us one scene with her and Aurora in Storybrooke. 

Season 4 Ursula was just named after the real Ursula (The sea goddess). I'm hoping we eventually see that Ursula in action.

I hope so too. Maybe if they do a god arc. But I doubt it......the general audience (aka the facebook and other page) doesn't seem to keep up with everything as the more hardcore fans are. They were confused as to how thetre was another Ursula and thought Ursula was Regina. Maybe just keeping her as a voice/ CGI deity would be totally fine to me.

I think Ursula and Cruella were just filler, just to add a variety of villains and their happy endings, and to get more iconic characters on board, they shouldn't have been advertised so much.

Psst, read this. http://storybrookemirror.tumblr.com/post/117292301036/this-is-the-story-of-the-saviors-struggle-with

Um, okay. It's nice and all, but Rumple could have killed them all in one fell swoop ir ressurected Mal and told her to kill them.

Rumple didn't need them to specifically kill someone. He didn't know that Ursual would try to kill Hook. And he definitely did not predict Cruella kidnapping Henry.

Now if you (not specifally you) said, Ursula represented the bitterness and anger, Mal being the pain and the feeling of being wronged, and Cruella standing in a one that splashes into Darkness and have some fun, I could agree. That's how I see it for the most part.

Thanks for sharing that, but I politely disagree with it. Besides that stretch of the imagination, there was no clear representation of it. The promo chronicled the way into Darkness (cool idea), but the execution was poor and Rumple's plan and all that he said was some random failure after failure. It's hard to believe that he is the smartest on the show if he is this bad!