Many of us who grew up with the classic Disney characters and fairy tale heroes fell in love with Once Upon a Time. We got to see those characters come to life and picture them as if they were living among us in the real world. All of their stories were interconnected in some way, and the costumes were elaborate and magical. The story of Emma Swan coming to save these characters, who were trapped inside a boring, sleepy town was captivating.
Unfortunately, Once Upon a Time left some pretty big plot holes behind. In fact, the show has been pretty notorious among fans who have been left with more questions than answers. Granted, it can be pretty hard to keep track of all of those details when you have so many different characters to worry about, but there are just so many things that don’t make sense. Here are the top 10 plotholes we just can’t stop thinking about.
HOW DOES STORYBROOKE FUNCTION AS A TOWN?
The whole idea of a small, invisible town that no one else knows about doesn’t really seem practical. How do people have jobs and make money? More importantly, how do things get there, like cell phones, clothes, and computers? It’s kind of hard to deliver a package to a town that isn’t on a map. That whole invisibility thing also makes it really hard for outside companies to ship in goods and products. In theory, the town should be self-contained, because no one else knows about it, but you never see farms with cattle or factories where raw goods are made. So where does Granny’s diner get all of its raw ingredients? There is no explanation for this.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE ENCHANTED FOREST AFTER EVERYONE HAS THEIR HAPPY ENDING?
Does no one return to the Enchanted Forest? At all? You’d think that these characters that grew up in a magical land wouldn’t want to stay in a small rainy town with mundane, routine lives. Take Snow White, for example. She and Prince Charming were living in a massive castle, surrounded by their loving people.
But in Storybrooke, they’re Mary Margaret and David living in a tiny apartment with a newborn baby. It just doesn’t really sound as appealing.
HOW OLD IS EVERYONE?
We know that the first curse basically threw everyone into modern life in Storybrooke, but everyone seems to have just stopped aging altogether. They never really explain how this whole thing works, and why everyone in the Enchanted Forest scenes all remain the same ages. Here’s another thing. Before Henry gets the book and starts to realize the truth about each character, he’s the only one who is really aging since he’s the only one from outside the town. Now, Henry seems like a pretty smart kid. You’d think he would have noticed something like that.
WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THE FROZEN STORYLINE?
During season four, we meet Elsa, Anna, and some of their snowy counterparts. Of course, the real point of the Frozen storyline was because Disney was still capitalizing on the massive success of the movie in the previous year. The producers insisted it wasn’t, but it’s just too coincidental to not be true. However, all of this doesn’t really seem to have any relevance to the actual story of this season.
In fact, a lot of critics accused the show of “taking things too far.” They could have at least included Olaf. We all know he’s the real star of the movie.
WHERE DID THE BOOK COME FROM?
The storybook is central to the entire show’s main plotline. But we have questions about how it ended up in Henry’s hands. We know that Mary Margaret gives it to him, but how exactly does she get it? She tells Henry that it randomly appeared in her closet and she didn’t know where it came from, but this seems unlikely. In the world of fairy tales and magic, these types of coincidences don’t just happen. Both Regina and Mr. Gold would have known the significance of this book and would have done something to destroy it. Especially when Henry had it right in Regina’s house, under her nose.
HOW DID ROBIN NOT REALIZE SOMETHING WAS UP WITH MARIAN?
Normally, if you spend your entire life with someone and live with them daily, you can tell when something’s off. Especially when Zelena wouldn’t have known everything about Marian. Chances are something would have slipped up at some point. Zelena couldn’t possibly have known every detail of Marian’s life and personality enough to pull that off as long as she does in the show.
This just didn’t make any sense and was never really explained.
WHERE DID RUBY GO?
Just when we began to really love Ruby and start rooting for her, she just disappears from the show. Once she finds Dorothy and saves her with true love’s kiss, we never see her again. Ruby had become a really central part in the town of Storybrooke and was a good friend to a lot of the main characters, especially Snow White. It would have been nice to see where she and Dorothy end up and how their relationship plays out toward a happy ending. Since Ruby was in at least a few episodes of each season, it feels unfair that we don’t see a conclusion of her story.
WHY DID ONLY SOME CHARACTERS MAKE IT TO STORYBROOKE, WHILE OTHERS WERE LEFT BEHIND IN THE ENCHANTED FOREST?
As we know, there are plenty of other characters who exist only in the Enchanted Forest and not in Storybrooke. The main characters tend to run into all of these characters when they teleport there from time to time. How did these people manage to avoid the curse that supposedly swept through the entire forest? Did they just not fit in the small town, or did Regina just think there was no use for them? If those characters were able to evade the curse and stay in the Enchanted Forest, that means there would have been a way to avoid the curse in the first place.
WHAT HAPPENED TO MULAN?
When we first meet Mulan, she’s helping out Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) and Prince Phillip, and the two girls develop a close friendship. We know that Mulan started to have feelings for Aurora, but the princess was busy being in love with Phillip. She comes back briefly to help Ruby connect with Dorothy in season five. But then Mulan drops off the radar and we never hear about her again. Most of the minor characters that are only introduced for an episode or two generally have a decent send-off. We end up knowing where they go or how they find their happy ending. But for Mulan, the last we see of her is her helping someone else find their own happy ending.
BASICALLY ALL OF SEASON SEVEN
Many fans were torn when the producers announced that the final season of the show would revolve around a grown-up Henry and a new version of Cinderella (which also doesn’t make any sense). The entire wish realm thing is more confusing than anything. Are the characters directly connected to their wish realm characters? Some characters in that realm are still alive, while their real-world counterparts are dead, like Cruella and Peter Pan. So how does this make sense? And if Henry wasn’t selected to be the author in this realm, he really shouldn’t have been able to use the pen. And since no one really knows how old the characters are supposed to be, it’s really hard to figure out the overall timeline.
