Last year I wrote an article talking about loose ends and things I wanted to see for Season 4. As we stand in the middle of summer with about 70 days left until the Season 5 premiere, now would be a good time to see what came true. Spoiler Warning if you have not caught up to the end of Season 4!
Here is the article:http://bennyrotondi-smith.blogspot.com/2014/06/questions-on-once-upon-time.html
Note that many of these loose ends involve withheld information that the show may never reveal, which probably the case for 1-6 and several others. For number 7 it is mentioned/implied how Hook and Baelfire left Neverland, but we never actually saw such flashbacks. For this article, I will comment on the questions that did have at least a partial answer.
13. How did Regina’s father, Henry, end up a prisoner in Wonderland? (Is he “The King of Hearts”?)
In episode 4x20 "Mother" many have suspected that the flashback scenes with Cora occur around the same time that Cora took Henry,Sr. to Wonderland although we did not see it onscreen. I also loved hearing a mention to the White Rabbit which confirmed the theory that Cora did indeed know him.
18. What is the full back story to Maleficent and her relationship with Aurora and Phillip?
We did not see the full back story, but we did see a lot of Maleficent. I wrote this question before hearing the news that Maleficent would return for a major story arc. Most of Maleficent's flashbacks focused on her history with Snow White and David as well as Regina and Rumple (and Cruella and Ursula and what Snow and David did to her). It has not been announced if Maleficent will return next year but we may find out more about her next season.
19. How was Ariel’s relationship with her family under the sea?
We did see Ariel one more time in Season 4, but not her family. Instead, we saw Ursula's relationship with her father Poseidon, which had strong parallels to Ariel and King Triton.
20. How will Elsa/ The Snow Queen fit into OUAT?!!!
It's funny that when I wrote this article, I did not know that Elsa and the Snow Queen would be two separate characters, I was just referring to the original fairy tale. We found out a lot during Season 4A, including Emma's involvement in the sister story.
One question that I did not write in this article, but something I and many other Oncers thought was the identity of the author of the storybook, which turned out to be a major issue in Season 4!
I also wrote this article:
http://bennyrotondi-smith.blogspot.com/2014/09/once-upon-time-returns-in-less-than-week.html
I wrote about the characters I wanted to see return. Not only did we see Zelena again, but she returned in a big way. We saw a little bit of Oz again and found out that Will Scarlet once lived in Oz and that's where he met Robin Hood. Zelena will also return in Season 5 as a series regular. Robin Hood will also be an official regular, however Will will no longer be a starring cast member, however I still don't know if he will return as a guest star, considering the big plot holes with his character.
As mentioned before, we did see Maleficent return as I had hoped and a little bit of Aurora, but only a little and no Phillip. We definitely saw some of Emma's foster families and in the comic book Out of the Past, mentioned above, we met Priscilla, Grace's mother. Also in Season 4 we saw Ashley (Cinderella) appear in an episode, as well as Cora. Next Season we will see Lancelot again and Merlin too!
