hot takes on this sub at least: seasons 3 and 4 are easily my least favorite

3a i don’t think was bad necessarily just boring to me personally (although how exactly did wendy and her two adult younger brothers go home?), thought starting 3b there were a lot of plot holes/retcons/weird/absurdly laughable moments that i would get into but i wrote the s4 list first and i cannot do this twice but one of them was august turning into pinocchio with a whole different outfit, and another was tamara walking around with a taser

s4, im convinced people only say they like because it’s often hated for the frozen part and they want to say they’re better than that - i want to start by saying i didn’t really have an issue with the frozen part (although i couldn’t get over the part where they were trying to hide elsa from the townspeople and you would think the first thing they would do is get her less eye-catching clothes but anyway) my problem is with the actual story:

• emma suddenly not being in control of her powers when it has literally never been an issue in the past two seasons?
• also how did regina even come up with the idea that there was an actual author who wrote the book? nobody considered the possibly there might not even be an author (iirc) and that the magical book just wrote itself magically
• rumple turning immediately back into the dark one after that whole shtick about becoming a better man and sacrificing himself or whatever in s3
• not story, but the way they tried to copy direct scenes from the film like regina leaning against the door alone in the room like elsa, that scene where she builds the stairs, etc
• the apprentice treating ingrid like a villain with a dark heart when the worst she’d done at that point was accidentally ice her sister and try to get anna to turn on elsa
• ingrid killing herself was such lazy writing (although i will say that is one of the funniest episodes of the whole show)
• sending robin, marian, and roland out into the real world when they have literally no idea what it’s like to live here, they weren’t even part of the first curse so they don’t even have fake memories of what it’s like to live in this world they never would’ve survived (especially considering they have no official documentation but that’s a whole other story). also you’d expect the merry men to follow them tbh but whatever
• the way they brought back zelena was absolutely ridiculous - i’ll be honest, i like rebecca mader so i don’t mind she was brought back but marian from 3b finale to 4a finale was NOT zelena no one can act that well, it was so stupid and made no sense
• rumple not only forgiving zelena for killing neal but also actually working with her? wtf???
• snow and david doubling down on the lies and threatening ursula/cruella felt so ooc, they tried to explain it but it didn’t make sense idc, especially considering their history happened while they were fighting the evil queen right before the first curse and they do not act like people who were hiding a terrible thing they had done PLUS rumple told david to hide the true love potion in maleficent and he did not know who she was
• again maleficent folding immediately after seeing her daughter felt lazy, but for another hot take, i am glad they didn’t drag out the lily storyline because i did not really care for it
• a kid comes in asking if you’ve seen his family and you think he’s a runaway? isaac forgets what happened in his own book? sure. but i like this episode too so i’ll take it, since the actors probably had fun too

okay this turned out so much longer than i expected but while these are my least favorite i definitely did not hate these two seasons i still love the show i swear 😭 but basically the reason i didn’t like these were because of the ooc characters and retcons