Let Me Take a Moment to Geek Out about Emma Swan

So I love Emma, no secret.  She’s my most consistently-favorite thing about Once Upon a Time, and she’s just such a BAMF, such a hero, and such a compelling character.  When I’ve had issues with the show over her, it’s been with the show itself, which has mucked around with her story in ways unbefitting her awesomeness.  (Spoilers for the end of season 4 through season 5, particularly the most recent episode, “Nimue.”)

At the end of last season, when Emma became the Dark One to save someone else from it (seriously, how amazing is she?), I was cautiously excited.  Excited because the show hadn’t had a really great Emma-centered storyline in a while, the plot brimmed with possibilities, and I knew Jennifer Morrison could act the crap out of it.  Cautious because, while potentially incredible, it also seemed wildly complex, and I wasn’t sure the writers would do it justice.  My reactions so far this season have been mixed.  Morrison is predictably excellent, and certain elements are very well done – the fraught dynamic between Emma and Hook is especially great.  However, Dark One!Emma’s evil Storybrooke plan feels vague and drawn-out, and I think the story is poorly-served by yet another memory-loss spell – the device feels like a contrived way to keep the Camelot stuff in flashback instead of playing out linearly.  Also, why is it Hook the only one with any sense of urgency over Emma’s situation?  I mean, sure, the others are concerned, but most of their plans are pretty weak, and they get distracted at the drop of a hat.  Emma’s parents haven’t had any significant scenes with her this season; there’s no excuse for that.

…But I digress.  Easily, my favorite parts of the season to date have been the scenes in Camelot when Emma is still wrestling with the darkness.  While the writing is a little fumbling, it’s so interesting to watch her slowly succumb, fighting to get her head above water and then getting pulled back under, seduced inch by inch.  The arc isn’t over yet, so we’ll see if it ultimately shakes out in a satisfying way, but this week’s episode had a scene that makes the whole story worth it, no question.  In order to help Merlin get what he needs to pull the darkness out of her, Emma has to confront the spirit of the first Dark One.  The darkness whispers in her ear, filling her with its poison and using her body to wield its magic against Merlin.  Emma is so tired, fighting but fading.  She’s terrified of what’s inside her and what she’s capable of.  The darkness wants her to kill Merlin and accuses him of trying to make her ordinary, unextraordinary, to keep all of Emma’s magic for himself (it’s no coincidence that this scene is happening near the last spark of the fire Prometheus brought down from Mt. Olympus,) to let her be nothing.  Emma is trembling with exertion as she draws herself up, leans into the storm, and shouts, “I am not nothing!  I was never nothing!  The power you have I don’t need!”

Basically – holy crap.  What a beautiful, fierce culmination of Emma’s journey as a character, the lost girl without a family who never felt like she belonged, the woman who tried to resist the mantle of a hero, the woman with innate magic who feared her own power.  For the Dark One plot to come to a head with Emma confronting the darkness within her and battling it with self-love is so astoundingly uplifting.  Stunning.  I had to watch it three times before I could continue with the episode, and when it was over, I still had chills.  This is Buffy (“No weapons… no friends… no hope.  Take all that away, and what’s left?”) pressing the sword blade between her bare hands and answering, “Me.”  There are so many reasons that Emma is a hero of mine, but this is the only one I need.

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.

Relationship Spotlight: Emma Swan & Prince Charming (Once Upon a Time)

 

(Be advised, I can’t talk about this without spoiling a major plot development from season 1.) 

 

This isn’t one of the most prominent relationships on Once Upon a Time, but I adore it.  Since the initial premise of the show placed most of the characters under a curse that, among other things, made time stand still, Emma grew up while her parents stayed the same age in Storybrooke.  So, when the curse breaks and the Enchanted Forest folk regain their true memories, the mother and father Emma has looked for her entire life stand in front of her, and they’re her age.  Thus begins two of the most unconventional parent-child relationships on TV.

 

Emma’s relationship with Snow is interesting, too, but today’s post is about Emma and her dad.  Magic weirdness aside, it’s a tough situation – Charming and Emma have spent 28 years apart.  He hasn’t felt those years, being frozen in time (and in a coma) for most of it, and he doesn’t know who either of them are when they meet.  Emma, on the other hand, has been wondering about the unknown parents who seemingly dropped her into the world and then erased every hint of their existence as she was shunted around the foster system, made some bad choices, and put her life back together.  She doesn’t know that his sword protected her the moment she was born, that he fought tooth and nail and nearly died getting her out of the curse’s reach.

 

So when Charming gets his memory back, he’s every inch the proud papa who knew his little girl could save the day, and Emma is very not ready to deal with him or Snow.  The father who, in her mind, abandoned her, is both Prince friggin’ Charming and a 20-something (in fact, Josh Dallas is a couple years younger than Jennifer Morrison.)  She doesn’t know how to wrap her head around a relationship like that, and an awkward stretch of episodes is spent with him wanting to make up for lost time and her wanting to avoid the issue.  She’s had a difficult life, and she can’t simply forgive and forget because her dad was a fairytale character under a curse, and her cold shoulder serves to remind him of all the years he couldn’t be there for her.

 

As time goes on and Emma starts to open up, though, she and Charming develop a really great dynamic.  He works alongside her at the sheriff’s department where they make a good team.  Both are trackers who are handy in a fight, and she gradually gets used to him having her back.  While he’s protective, he still lets her stand on her own, and when it comes to sharing, Charming is good about waiting for Emma to come to him.  He always lets her know he’s there for whatever she needs, to help or to listen, but he doesn’t push.  As a result, he’s been a sounding board when she’s confused, a comfort when she’s upset, and a support when she’s overwhelmed.

 

I really have to hand it to Jennifer Morrison and Josh Dallas.  Any time you have two good-looking actors of the same age portraying a familial relationship, you can run the risk of inappropriate chemistry; too many onscreen siblings have trouble giving off consistent “sibling” vibes, and it gets weird.  These two have an even harder task, making the audience buy him as her dad, but they’re more than up to the challenge.  In all their interactions, you never lose sight of the fact that she’s his daughter.  There’s even a scene where he’s teaching her to dance, a dream sequence in which he’s regretting all the years he missed with her.  Both are dressed to the nines and dancing to lovely music, and it’s father-daughter all the way.  He’s warm and paternal, and she’s slowly, beautifully becoming an incurable daddy’s girl.  I love it.

Favorite Characters: Emma Swan (Once Upon a Time)

 

Since the new season of Once Upon a Time starts this weekend, I thought I’d spend the next few posts on a few of my favorite characters from the show.  I get that the show isn’t perfect, a fact often made stunningly clear by improbable twists, fumbled redemption arcs for the baddies, and a preference for Big!  Shocking!  Moments! over thoughtful storytelling.  Still, I appreciate its creative ambition, and when it’s on, it’s really on.  The series is home to some wonderfully interesting characters who keep me coming back when the writing is questionable.

 

Although today’s character is technically from the Enchanted Forest, she’s not a beloved fairytale figure with built-in story beats.  Rather, she’s our rather splendid, cynical eyes into the show’s world of stories and magic.  Utterly badass bail bondsperson Emma Swan has spent 28 years relying only on herself, jumping between group homes before going off the grid, getting in trouble, and then pulling herself up.  She comes honestly by her job, finding people, because she’s been searching for her parents since she was young.  Unfortunately, when your parents are Snow White and Prince Charming, and they sent you to this world as a baby through a magic wardrobe (to protect you from an evil curse, duh,) there’s not so much of a paper trail.

 

So there’s Emma when we meet her.  Awesome, hardened, clever, BAMF, lonely and pretending not to be, and then, all of the sudden, she’s accosted by an adorable moppet from a magically-guarded small town, claiming she’s the only one who can save these trapped fairytale characters from the curse her loving parents helped her escape.  She doesn’t believe him; how could she?  But she’s softer-hearted than she lets on, and she can’t really let a kid ride the bus from Boston to Maine by himself, so she drives him back to his impossible village of Storybrooke.  And once she has her foot in the door, her spidey senses tingle enough to make her stick around.

 

I know I’ve only been talking about the pilot so far, but it really gives you ample reason to love Emma.  From her savvy, cool-as-a-cucumber collection of a bail jumper to the compassion and concern for young Henry that keeps her in Storybrooke, she’s every inch the amazing but flawed hero.  She’s tough and gutsy, she’s perceptive, and almost immediately, in her own guarded way, she starts to care deeply about Henry and his welfare.  Plus, she’s stubborn, jaded, and sometimes foolhardy in her boldness, and she has trouble believing that anyone would believe in her.  Her emotional damage resonates from her childhood to her present, and it’s both stymied her and made her stronger.  Is it any wonder I was a goner?

 

Because I can’t write up a TV protagonist based entirely on one episode and should touch on the rest of the series, the show benefits greatly from having her as a viewpoint character.  The tug and pull of her “real world” pragmatism against her fantastical destiny makes for great drama (and boy, does Jennifer Morrison bring it – I’ve always been lukewarm on her, but she’s nothing but stellar here,) and you can always count on her for incredulous commentary to let the air of the tires when the fairytale stuff gets too sparkly for its own good.  As the show goes on, I love watching her find her footing in this incredible new world, bring her practical skills and insights to magical crises, and slowly begin to let her walls down with the family she’s never had.  Apart from just being fantastic, I think Emma is instrumental to grounding the show and keeping it from being mere fairytale fanfic.  Despite all the swords and dragons and poisoned apples, it’s really her story.  And it’s a fine one.