- Title: Once Upon a Time – Sympathy for the De Vil
- wiki: link
The last of the three new mid-season villains gets her own episode as “Sympathy for the De Vil” explores the past of Cruella De Vil (Victoria Smurfit) and her past with the Author (Patrick Fischler) which helps Rumpelstiltskin (Robert Carlyle) move one step closer to seeing his plan come to fruition. By the end of the episode one character will be saved, one will be dead, and Emma (Jennifer Morrison, who from the looks of things spent her time between takes sniffing large amounts of glue) will have taken a large step on a dark path the season has been teasing us about for several episodes.
Although a pit Harry Potter-ish early on, the episode includes a couple of nice twists about the true nature of Cruella and how the Author learned one of the hardest lessons of his life. How the sequence unfolds involving Emma’s rash action works (at least until he figure that Emma only had a one-in-three chance to catch up to Cruella first), but given Henry’s (Jared Gilmore) life appeared to be very much in danger at the time it’s hard to see this as the only step necessary to send the Savior spiraling down the dark path (although next week’s return of may quicken the pace). I’m also a bit sad to see Cruella depart in the first episode where the show really sold me on the character, but at least we won’t have to keep seeing that misspelled license plate (“Dev Il” instead of “De Vil”) in every episode that was driving me crazy.
