Aside from hoping for a visual CS smut-fest of sex on my screen (perhaps tastefully blurred out but with audio all intact because I can totally make do with two blobs doing the do so long as they sound vaguely like our favorite death-defying duo or maybe they can just make out for forty-two minutes that would work just fine as well or maybe I’m rambling and would just be satisfied with them waking up together), I want to see the characters straddling the super blurry line of good and evil make progress toward redemption: Regina in particular.
(Okay, that was your warning that this is a very pro-CS blog writing meta about a past/present/future/it’scomplicated villain whose fandom is usually at odds with that of my fave ship.  That said, my comments are at worst critical and if you’re looking for a hate-fest, look elsewhere!  Alright, more rambling under the cut.)
Given the EQ split (which makes sense, how, writers?) Regina is supposedly no longer both.  However, we’ve seen no changes in those last few minutes of the season finale.  She’s still who she was prior to the serum injection, with no mention about feeling different or having altered memories (because if they were truly two different people they would have two different lifelines, wouldn’t they?).  She has in theory killed (as far as she is aware) a significant portion of herself, a portion that dominated her physical body for somewhere around half her life.  But nothing’s changed.  I’m curious to see what magical physical/emotional/mental manifestations will occur, if any, independent of any realizations she has about herself.
Speaking of reactions though, I’m disappointed we didn’t get to see more of her reaction to Robin’s death.  Taking her anger out on Emma and wanting to take it out on Hook was a talking point for five minutes or so.  She was upset, but fairly collected (though probably quietly furious) at the funeral.  Whether or not that was an effort to hold it together, she wasn’t given screen time to grieve.  In some weird sense, I felt like the writing was suggesting she wasn’t grieving enough because she still had the EQ inside of her?  In some convoluted way, a message I got was that she was so focused on keeping the EQ inside that all her reactions to his death were about her lashing out rather than reflecting and growing.
There’s no doubt she’s come a long way from her S1 self, but I personally need more clarification on what things she can leave in the past.  What does she accept as past occurrences- and forgive herself for?  What can’t she get past and still lingers in her mind?  She’s changed her behavior significantly, with her internal moral compass gaining a needle being the most significant, I think.  She’s acknowledged she knows it’s wrong to kill (and anyone who has been watching for the past 4 seasons should already know that about her, tbh) but her instincts haven’t changed.  And I’m irked by the fact that she recognized her past victims in the UW but didn’t make any effort to set things right.  Granted, it’s already “too late” since they’re dead, but in this case it’s not just the thought that counts.  I get that the writing is showing her acknowledging these things, but then what?
So apologies from her are rare.  Her ego is undoubtedly as large as the pirate’s, so why is that true?  Regina’s walls are born out of a fear of being seen as weak, I think; a remnant of her upbringing at Cora’s hand.  Her snark/sass/quips are of a similar style to Zelena’s, and I think that’s intentional and also a callback to their feelings of being rejected and unloved.  Not only by their own mother, but by everyone else around them.  They’ve done some pretty questionable things and I wonder where they think the blame truly lies.  I think Regina does recognize it’s her fault, she just lashes out at everyone else out of that same fear of weakness.  That said, both her and Zelena’s redemption arcs are ongoing but Zelena’s is going at a much faster rate, thanks in part to Regina.  I do wonder if there will be any jealousy on her part if Zelena is at any point more “accepted” into the hero circle than she is.  That’s a scenario I don’t want to see, really.
But going back to her actions- when you do something bad, you don’t just not do the bad thing anymore.  You also have to make up for it.  If you break an object, you fix it.  If you hurt a person, you undo the hurt as best you can, often having to go above and beyond to do so.  Clearly, the latter case is easier said than done, which is why redemption arcs are so long and beautiful.  If these few episodes were the extent of Zelena’s, for instance, I’ll be annoyed.  But Regina’s has spanned four seasons and counting, and that’s wonderful to me.
But I want her making up with Snow (in ways that aren’t bringing, say, the EQ back).  I want more of her co-parenting Henry with Emma in ways that would be healthy for a growing teenager.  I want (dare I say it) her being the slightest bit regretful for encouraging Killian to kill his own father.  I want a bit more acknowledgement for staging the death of and then the locking up of Belle.  I don’t accept the implication that her true self is evil- evil is created, so is darkness.  But in her case, she chose to create it, and I’d like to see her choose to take several steps in the opposite direction of her own volition.
So what are we expecting for next season?  ABC Upfront’s Twitter thing just posted that it will explore which side Regina has turned to- good or evil.  I think the question being posed is really which one is the real Regina?  There have been so many comments in all five seasons about her “true nature” or “who she really is” and other things about what defines a person.  I think we can all agree that choice is one of the biggest, if not the biggest defining characteristic of a character’s goodness or evilness.  She’s chosen to split herself off from the EQ, but if she was both before, didn’t the EQ also help make that decision?Â
From a Jekyll/Hyde perspective, they both wanted to split and be free of each other.  The EQ sees Regina as weak, and Regina sees the EQ as everything she’s trying to get rid of.  So she did, and as we’ve seen, it’s not that easy.  And I wonder why they’re split.  Sure, the EQ was “created” in a sense from Cora and her twisting of Snow being the primary reason she turned evil, but it wasn’t a clean split and it certainly hasn’t been presented as something magical.  (Relatedly, how does the serum work and what are its side effects??)  I suspect the only reason they are split is because Regina herself treats them as two different people, not simply two sides of one coin.  Perhaps the key to defeating the EQ in S6 will ultimately be Regina’s acceptance of the EQ’s actions as something she has to make up for, not the EQ.
In summary, I think Regina’s path to redemption has been ongoing, and will in all likeliness be more or less concluded by the end of S6.  It’s my opinion that she’s accepted responsibility internally and admits to herself that she has caused a ton of people a ton of pain.  However, she hasn’t externalized that to the extent that I hope she will- in not just thought but action as well.  And I’d personally like to see the whole instinctively-evil thing change.  I want to see her do good for the sake of goodness, because she wants to and not because she feels she’s supposed to.
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I struggled with whether to put this out there, because it is clear many people are having a negative reaction to the sneak peak, and I am not here to tell you that you aren’t entitled to your feelings or wrong. I did, however, want to offer a different perspective. So read on if you want a therapist’s take on the sneak peak with Emma and Regina, and if not, that is totally cool!
A lot of times on this show the lure of darkness, particularly for those influenced by magic, is compared to substance abuse/addiction. I think this is an apt comparison, and as someone who is both qualified to treat addiction and who has done therapeutic work with many addicts, I just wanted to throw in my two cents.
For someone with a SUD, the addiction is often a coping mechanism for stress or trauma. The first initial impulse is always to seek that substance first in difficult times. Just because someone has recovered from addiction doesn’t mean that impulse has dissipated, it means they have learned new coping mechanisms and enough insight to not give in to that impulse. I had a client who was 13 years sober, and every time something hard came up the impulse to drink also reemerged.Â
This doesn’t mean he was weak or he hadn’t learned his lesson, it just means addiction is a lifelong battle. Every day is a decision to make the right decision, and every trauma a battle is waged to continue on the right path. The strength and the growth lies in saying NO, repeatedly.
I am not here to say that the way Regina responded to Emma in that sneak peak is appropriate, fair, or justified, because like I don’t excuse Killian for being short with people in the Underworld or him falling prey to vengeance when he was imbued with darkness or Emma for continuing issues to try and go it alone or closing people off, I don’t excuse lashing out in anger (regardless of how normative it is in the grieving process for many people). I do like to offer an explanation for understanding.
Regina’s addiction is darkness and her response in the past to loss or grief was to give in and act on impulses that were not rational or justified (blame Snow for Daniel’s death and craft a curse that not only ruins her life but many others, attempt to destroy Storybrooke because she feels she lost Henry, attempt to have her story rewritten so Marian doesn’t exist so she can have Robin, etc.).
I don’t see her mentioning her first impulse to dealing with her profound grief was to give into a dark action and make Killian suffer for it as her trying to win points, I see it as her admitting the struggle is always there, to remain rational and to not give into dark impulses as she always has, because she has learned it is wrong. Because it seems from what little we know that the characters are concerned she will use this grief to become the EQ again. I know her version of an impulse seems widely skewed to what real world addictive impulses are, but this is a fairy tale, and in this fairy tale, darkness, dark magic, power, and vengeance are the addictions we deal with.Â
I just want to honor the struggle of those characters who do deal with those impulses by saying no, and realize the struggle is ongoing and lifelong. I see Killian as one of those characters, and I see Regina as one as well.Â
And obviously this is based on a context free sneak peak, so who the hell knows how I will feel after I watch it! I’m tagging @cs-and-er-network because I feel like the content addresses all of them.Â
