(Spoiler alert: Do not read on if you have not yet seen Sunday’s episode of ABC’s “Once Upon a Time” entitled” Sympathy for the De Vil.”)
“101 Dalmations” favorite bad girl Cruella De Vil took center stage in the latest hour of “Once Upon a Time.” Portrayed by Victoria Smurfit, “Sympathy for the De Vil” took viewers into the early years of the notorious dog-napper, showing how the loss of her father and the cruelty of her mother helped shape her into the twisted, classic villain she became.
Or perhaps things aren’t always as they seem at first.
The episode also marked a surprisingly dark turn for another character — one who has come to personify the potential for purity and goodness within all of us, no matter our shortcomings and challenges in life.
As the hour progressed, flashbacks took viewers on a journey with Cruella De Vil and the Author (Patrick Fischler). The story presented was a classic one of an innocent young girl who saw her world turned upside down when her father died. But the story wasn’t so classic after all.
The Author freed the girl, and listened to her story. She told of her mother poisoning all three of her husbands and trapping the girl in that attic to keep her from exposing her secrets. The Author fell for her charms and granted her the ability to control animals.
A late-night rendezvous with the girl’s mother, though, painted a very different picture. Hers was the story of a disturbed young girl she suspected of killing her own father. As the years passed, the daughter killed her next two stepfathers, and her mother was left with no idea what to do with this child. For love, she didn’t turn her in.
For love, the Author granted her tremendous power and she immediately used it to kill her mother. Through a stroke of quick-thinking, he tampered her evil by making it so that she could never take another life.
Unfortunately, Emma didn’t know this information, as apparently everyone on this show is but a pawn of Mr. Gold (Robert Carlyle). In an attempt to save his own blackening heart, he concocted a scheme to blacken the heart of the Savior, otherwise known as Emma.
Thinking Cruella was about to kill Henry (Jared S. Gilmore), Emma lashed out with her own powers and dashed Cruella to the rocks below. Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Prince Charming (Josh Dallas) arrived moments too late to save their daughter from this dark deed.
Watching Savior turn killer left viewers as dumbfounded as Morrison looked in that bizarre closing scene.
