Very glad it got renewed! Curious as to where they'll take the show next season, but I'm sure we'll get a glimpse in the finale.
My problem, to further explain it, is that if the show featured Regina's magical trinket throughout the season, it would have had more impact when she decided to use it. It represented both her love and last bit magic, so sacrificing it could have been a bigger deal to viewers had we actually seen that side of her. But no, its just randomly there.
I somewhat agree, but I can't think of a point earlier where it would have made sense to show it purposely. I mean if you're thinking about it that way, then they could have introduced Mr. Gold burying the knife earlier to make digging it up have more impact - but they didn't.
I'm against lying to the audience with the August and Rump episode as well as the Mad Hatter. Unless there are clues that we can later think back on that ties it all together. But the Aug/Rump was a straight up lie. I get it, pinocchio etc. But you lie to the character, never the audience in those situations. I want to say "oh shit!" not "fuck this shit!".
I disagree here. They used misdirection in the narrative to make you think he was Baelfire, but in that episode they dropped a bunch of subtle hints—the donkey paperweight, the blue fairy's story of being separated from his father, that we hadn't yet seen Pinocchio in Storybrooke but had seen him during several FTL scenes, before they go into the shop August and Henry are shown next to stacks of wood, etc. To me it was an "oh shit!" moment that I hadn't thought of but that did make sense.
They also treated hatter as if there was no mystery that they needed to explain. He came and did his thing without the suspense of "what/how/when the fuck?!". It was bad confusion, not the good kind that keeps you itching for more.
I'm not sure what explaining the mystery of this gets you. You can believe he went into the hat but it didn't have enough magic to send him anywhere (a concept they introduced in the last episode, hence Jefferson's skepticism that any hat was going to work) or he didn't go through the hat and instead survived the fall and ran off. IMO, they don't need to explain this point. It isn't the kind of detail that would keep me itching for more. *shrug* Did you watch LOST, btw? Because if these details are going to hang you up you may have problems later if this goes in a similar direction.
Something that started bothering me recently about the show is why Regina cares about what happens to Henry so much. She's not his real mother. He doesn't seem to like her at all. But she clearly cares about him in some way - after the nightmare she had she went to check on him. She sacrificed the magic ring she had for him (partly). She hasn't done anything directly to interfere with him and his operation Cobra stuff. Is it just to use him as a pawn similar to why she might be keeping Belle in the hospital basement or is it real? If Henry is Emma and
son, then it would give her some kind of chip to use against Rumple/Gold perhaps, but... otherwise it doesn't really make a ton of sense to me. Am I forgetting a detail where they explained this?