This spin-off/concurrent story is like a badly written sequel in the hands of a genius' idiot younger sibling. Or at least a masterpiece giving sequel rights from its big name studio and giving it to elementary students to do with it what it pleased without giving them a real viewing of the original, only pieces and telling them they can't use any of it anyway. Let me start by saying that the first season, minus the season finale of the original Once Upon A Time was brilliant and I absolutely hated the second season, so much that I stopped watching it except random fast-forwards to see if it could have possibly have regained its original momentum, it hadn't. I have absolutely no interest in season season 3. Now back to my analogy, the original is like a mature work where there was thought put into it and could have very well been AMAZING and was for all of the first season. Then the writers seemed to go out back and smoked something that fried the braincells that had the outline and they were scrambling to come up with something to give the audience. This spin-off was immature and there were so many plot holes in addition to the crisis the original was facing. Which reminds me of that whack-a-mole game, or the movie Holes. Or... they can go on. Anyway there were vague references to the original but only two characters that were sort of in it. One a lot more, the other only like one episode. Which I get and nods to somethings that happened. Timeline and characters aside though, it really didn't jive with the original in anyway. This isn't a spoiler unless you're blind, but the Red Queen isn't even the same person and if the time-line is to be believed then Regina's mom is the Red Queen long before this and long after this, so the blond woman they have playing her is pointless. Besides, (and this is a spoiler for the other show), they killed her off last season so she's looking for a job. And could reprise her role for this. The rest of it, the acting, the casting, the accents, it's just nails on a chalkboard for me. At the very least they could have had ugly actor/actresses that could really act or really attractive actors/actresses that couldn't act at all. This middle stuff is nauseating. It's dodgy, patchy thrown together quickly material that's riding on the back of the original and since one's failing, the other is too.
Here's the important thing, the only reason why I bothered to watch this was because the original first season was great and they lost their way somewhere. I WAS hoping that it would be a sort of reboot, an apology to the audience for going so far off the deep end and drowning rather than making it from France to England through the English Channel. A way to sort of make a nod towards the original but say clearly that they aren't that and they're not going to interact at all with it either. That this is more Alice in Wonderland weekly than Once Upon a Time. They didn't do that, and in fact they only made it worse. I wanted to see what happened to Wonderland with Alice of course, but mostly how the world falls apart once the Queen is dead or who would come in to try and take over without some of the star characters like the Mad Hatter and the Queen. Instead they replaced the Queen and try to make it a parallel story that goes back and forth between worlds when from the moment the Knave comes to find Alice they're messing with continuity since he wasn't supposed to be able to leave and that the world was never changing but clearly there was a huge storm that they dealt with too. There were so many opportunities they could have seized upon but made some really bad moves. I'm not going to watch this anymore. They had a chance and they blew it.
Here's the important thing, the only reason why I bothered to watch this was because the original first season was great and they lost their way somewhere. I WAS hoping that it would be a sort of reboot, an apology to the audience for going so far off the deep end and drowning rather than making it from France to England through the English Channel. A way to sort of make a nod towards the original but say clearly that they aren't that and they're not going to interact at all with it either. That this is more Alice in Wonderland weekly than Once Upon a Time. They didn't do that, and in fact they only made it worse. I wanted to see what happened to Wonderland with Alice of course, but mostly how the world falls apart once the Queen is dead or who would come in to try and take over without some of the star characters like the Mad Hatter and the Queen. Instead they replaced the Queen and try to make it a parallel story that goes back and forth between worlds when from the moment the Knave comes to find Alice they're messing with continuity since he wasn't supposed to be able to leave and that the world was never changing but clearly there was a huge storm that they dealt with too. There were so many opportunities they could have seized upon but made some really bad moves. I'm not going to watch this anymore. They had a chance and they blew it.