Once Upon a Time: Season Four, Episode Nineteen – “Sympathy for the De Vil”

First Aired April 19th, 2015.

Cruella (played by Victoria Smurfit) is the central figure in this episode as OUAT delves into her past. It turns out Cruella has a deeper connection with the Author (played by Patrick Fischler), aka Isaac than anyone realized.

Cruella spent most of her life locked in the attic by her mother, Madeline (played by Anne Galvin), who’s well-trained Dalmatians kept Cruella in line. One night, Isaac comes to the house under the guise of being a newspaper reporter doing stories on locals. Madeline sends him away but Cruella begs him for help escaping in exchange for giving him an amazing story. Isaac takes her to a lounge where Cruella tells him that her mother kept her prisoner because she knew her mother poisoned her husbands. Isaac becomes smitten with Cruella and proposes they run away together before giving her jewelry using his magical quill. He also gives her the power to control animals to protect her from her mother’s vicious dogs. Madeline confronts Isaac and reveals that she kept Cruella locked away because she had poisoned her husbands but he refuses to believe it. Later that night Cruella uses her new powers to make the Dalmatians kill her mother before turning them into her trademark fur coat.

I can see why Cruella always wanted that Dalmatian coat, it looked great on her. I’m glad that Cruella’s backstory didn’t revolve around a tragic past like most of the other villains. There can only be so many villains who became evil because they had bad parents or some other traumatic event from their past. Cruella began killing people as a child and did it for no other reason than she enjoyed the thrill of doing bad things. That’s not much of a surprise given her name and in a sense it makes her a true villain.

Apparently, the Author goes to different realms to talk to people and get new story ideas (using a poorly constructed lie to boot). I wonder how many of the fairy tale characters that Issac has been writing about are based on people he met in the real world. I would have thought he needed to come up with ideas on his own but maybe he was suffering from writer’s block.

In Storybrooke, Maleficent (played by Kristin Bauer), furious that Cruella abandoned her baby, attacks her in dragon form but Cruella uses her powers to subdue her. Cruella later confronts Isaac but is unable to kill him so she comes up with a plan. She kidnaps Henry (played by Jared Gilmore) and holds him for ransom. Cruella tells Emma (played by Jennifer Morrison) and the Evil Queen/Regina (played by Lana Parrilla) to kill Isaac in exchange for Henry’s safe return. Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold (played by Robert Carlyle) plans to use the situation to his advantage and separates Emma from the others so that she confronts Cruella alone. Emma’s parents find Isaac and discover that once he learned how evil Cruella was he confronted her. Although most of the magical ink spilled onto Cruella (which created her signature hair style), he used his quill to take away her ability to kill anyone. They realize that Gold intends for Emma to kill the essentially harmless Cruella to push her one step closer to turning evil.

Isaac may have tamed Cruella’s murderous habits but as a tradeoff he gave her a better hair style. Cruella’s “happy ending” is being able to kill again, which is understandable because otherwise it’s no fun to be a villain. She was referred to as being “harmless” in this episode but that’s not true. She was barred from killing but not things like torturing and maiming people. Her plan to use Emma and Regina to kill Isaac wasn’t a very good one though because heroes always look to solve a crisis without committing murder. That said, Regina is no stranger to killing people and she would kill anybody she had to in order to protect her son.

Gold’s plan of making Emma kill Cruella to turn her evil doesn’t make much sense on paper since she’s only trying to save her son. But there is a method to his madness and I’m sure he’s already thinking two steps ahead of everyone, so I’m waiting to see how this all plays out.

Emma confronts Cruella who is holding Henry near a cliff at gunpoint. She taunts Emma, saying that heroes don’t kill and Emma responds by using her powers to throw Cruella off the cliff. Her parents arrive too late to stop her and look on as Emma blankly stares over the edge at Cruella’s body.

Emma killed a violent sociopath who was threatening her son, that doesn’t qualify as an act of darkness. I guess it’s the act of taking a life in general and the fact that Cruella was technically harmless but Emma didn’t know that. But unless Emma develops a lust for killing people, villains or otherwise I think she did the world (and dogs especially) a favor.

Quotes & Thoughts

“Some people struggle not to be drawn into the darkness. But ever since I was a little girl, I’ve said why not splash in and have fun.”

Essentially, Isaac neutered Cruella by taking away her ability to kill, which is poetic justice for all the dogs she skinned in the name of fashion.

“You’re acting like a petulant child. Your parents did a bad thing. They apologized, now get over it.” “Forgive me if I don’t take advice from the woman who held a grudge for half of her life because a 10-year-old spilled a secret.”

Emma’s parents sacrificed an innocent baby, that’s not something you can get just get over. She can and should be angry about that.

If you enjoyed Manny’s return to Storybrooke, you can find the rest of his work right HERE on Sci-Fi Bloggers. You can also follow him on Twitter @KN_Manny.

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