Crimes against Emma Swan (Once Upon a Time)

Here’s a new periodic feature on the blog.  “Crimes Against…” looks at a story or a particular aspect of it, specifically examining how the writing has let it down.  Now, I’m not sure the second half of Once Upon a Time’s fourth season is definitely its weakest so far, or if it just feels that way because I watches seasons 1-3 on Netflix and clipped along at a good pace with them.  However, I have a few major gripes with season 4B, the first of which is the focus of today’s post (Emma-related spoilers for season 4B.)

Quick background:  in this half-season arc, we learn that, prior to Emma’s birth, Snow and Charming discovered there would be a chance their child would be born with “great darkness” inside her.  Desperate to keep their unborn child from coming in the world a villain, they strike an extremely sketchy deal with a shadowy figure and essentially transfer Emma’s “darkness” into another unborn child – a girl/dragon baby, care of Maleficent.  In general, this thread is part of the convoluted “write me a happy ending” plot, and it also serves the show’s larger tendency to woobify their villains and tells us how much the heroes suck.  (Sigh… remember when the heroes were flawed but admirable people struggling to do the right thing in an uncertain world?)

I have dubious enough feelings about the above aims, but I’m entirely against the implications this plot has for Emma.  Under this retcon, Emma was basically reprogrammed to be a hero, to be a noble person who leans into the wind and maintains an inner lightness no matter how difficult things gets.  In a way, it means that Emma’s heroic qualities aren’t really hers, weren’t forged within her, but bestowed upon her.  In a show that places a premium on the discussion of good and evil, Emma was born with a winning ticket in the lottery of souls.

And I hate that, because it takes so much of what’s so awesome about Emma and puts it in the hands of some sorcerer’s apprentice.  This is a series that enjoys explaining villainy with sob stories, showing us how the baddies’ parents didn’t care about them, their chance for love was torn from them, and, of course, the heroes were super mean to them.  To me, Emma is the answer to all of that.  She came into our world virtually alone.  She was bounced from foster home to foster home.  Any time she thought she might have found somewhere that could become home, everything fell apart.  There wasn’t a single trace that her parents ever existed, her friends lied to her, and those she loved betrayed her.  She was a runaway, a convict, and a pregnant teenager, and she’s wonderful.

Emma doesn’t take all those terrible things that happened to her and become scornful or destructive.  She’s damaged by her experiences, certainly – she’s incredibly slow to trust, and it takes her a long time to even consider the idea that someone could love her – but she doesn’t let them poison her, doesn’t vent her frustrations outward.  The young woman who did jail time becomes an instrument of justice, tracking down bail-jumpers with investigative skills honed by a lifelong search for absent parents.  She protects the downtrodden and encourages the weak to find strength inside themselves.  In season 1, she stays in Storybrooke despite not believing Henry’s story about fairytale characters come to life; she realizes that he needs her, and she carries out the mission in small, unconscious ways, bettering the circumstances of those around her.  All that bleakness and misery is turned into something good, and I can’t stand the idea of anyone taking that away from her through some prenatal cosmic interference, not my Emma.