I still can’t believe Disney’s billion dollar villain was wasted

Once upon a time is an audience favorite television show that ran between 2011 and 2018. The premise of the show was that every fairy tale character we know and love was trapped in our world where all their happy endings were stolen by a Dark curse cast by the Evil Queen. The show featured hundreds of characters from fairytales and mythology over its seven-year run, giving characters new backstories and character connections to help expand their stories in the Once upon a time Universe. however, One character that the show really wasted was Maleficent Sleeping beauty.

Maleficent first appeared in the season one episode “The Thing You Love Most”, where it is revealed that the Evil Queen stole the Dark Curse from Maleficent. The character then made two minor appearances until she became a recurring guest character in the fourth season, where she joined the iconic ‘Queens of Darkness’, an evil trio consisting of Ursula, Cruella De Vil and Maleficent with their aim to Do whatever it takes to get their happy endings. This excited audience like This led them to believe that Maleficent’s full story would be told, but that was far from the truth.

At first, not much is known about Maleficent’s past

The show ignores Maleficent’s origin story

Throughout the series, a lot of Maleficent’s backstory was alluded to, but we didn’t get to see much of it on screen. In season one, it was hinted that Maleficent had a history with Korra, as Regina spoke the words: “Love is weakness Maleficent, I thought you knew that.” As Cora’s catchphrase is “love is weakness”, there must have been some kind of interaction between the characters at some point. In season two, when Hook faces off against a zombie version of Maleficent beneath Storybrooke, It’s obvious that he knows her, so there’s obviously a bit of unknown history between the two characters.

In the second season, we discover that Maleficent has put Princess Aurora under a sleeping curse, and turned Prince Phillip into the Yaoguai, keeping the two lovers apart, but we didn’t see any of that on screen. actually, We’ve only seen Maleficent and Princess Aurora on screen during one scene together throughout the entire series. Similar to the character’s origins, we know that she has some kind of history with King Stephen and Briar Rose, but her hatred of the characters and the story of how she became a Villains are never fully explained or portrayed on screen.

Maleficent is reintroduced in season 4 with a family secret

She was introduced in the fourth season as a main villain, but it did not last

When Maleficent’s return was announced for the show’s fourth season, audiences were excited to see her take the spotlight and be a real villain who would be hard for the heroes to defeat. What the audience did not expect was a heartbreaking lost family storylineWhich saw the heroes help Maleficent track down her missing daughter and eventually turn from her villainous ways to being a good mother.

This season had so much potential to show Maleficent as a vengeful, invincible villain, but the opportunity was wasted because the writers opted for another family plot instead. The season arc even gave Maleficent her own backstory episode called “Enter The Dragon,” but that episode didn’t show the audience what they wanted to see. Instead of an interesting episode about how she became a villain, or learned magic, the episode focused on her losing confidence in herselfAnd the evil queen has to be her friend to help her believe in herself, leaving this to be a poor-quality episode.

Maleficent’s story never lived up to its potential in OUAT

There was a possibility of much more history, but it just never happened

Season 4 of the show ended with Emma agreeing to help Lily and Maleficent track down and find the identity of Lily’s father, as she was conceived when Maleficent was in her dragon form, meaning she didn’t know who Lily’s father was. This was the one storyline that the audience impatiently anticipated throughout the rest of the show. However, due to scheduling conflicts with Lily’s actress, Agnes Bruckner, the storyline was not filmed, leaving viewers devastated. However, the identity of Lily’s father is revealed to be Zorro in a throwaway line in the series finale.

The fact that we don’t get to see Maleficent on her journey to help Lily find her father means that We missed out on seeing Maleficent’s strength and resilience in the series. The character has so much potential and seemed like she could have been such an interesting character to explore more in the story of Once upon a time. It’s just a shame that the writers ruined the character the way they did.