r/OnceUponATime • u/missanonyy • 4d ago
Discussion Ursula
When we first see Ursula she's an allegedly long dead myth.
They have statues of her at Eric's castle (mansion?)
Regina impersonates her to get what she wants out of Ariel.
Ursula makes clear she does NOT approve by coming through Regina's mirror and threatening her. And Regina seems genuinely frightened of her.
This made Ursula seem very powerful, very mystical, very ancient and God like.
But later on when we actually meet Ursula.... she isn't really any of that. She's sort of a run of the mill villain tbh.
She doesn't seem so powerful or otherworldly at all. She certainly doesn't seem like she could stand against Regina very well.
She's just another villain with some cool abilities and a sad backstory.
I mean she was fine as a character. I have my issues with the whole villain gang thing and the author plot is dumb to me so far but Ursula isn't like a bad fit she just isn't what she was originally portrayed to be.
I sort of loved the idea of her being this old powerful being that scared even Regina.
UPDATE: I just found out they are not the same Ursula. Apparently Ursula was named after the sea goddess. My bad!
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u/cheerful_cupcake1991 4d ago
The real villain is whoever decided Ursula needed to be reduced from terrifying sea witch to just another Regina-level obstacle.
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u/Yunie333 Bloody Hell... 4d ago
I don't really think that it was necessarily Regina vs Ursula in S4 at all, as it hasn't been before either... (She really just had a personal gripe with Hook)
And if Regina (and the rest) wouldn't have been terrified of "Rumple and his 3 Dark One's angels" they wouldn't have felt the need to infiltrate them.
Also, since Ursula commands the sea, dry land isn't really her habitat...(Overpowering a one-handed pirate doesn't count here I'd say)
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u/improbsable 3d ago
To be fair, Ursula isn’t really all that powerful in the cartoon. She’s like a used car salesman with transformation powers.
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u/gaypirate3 3d ago
She can shapeshift and steal voices…that can be pretty powerful in the human world if she ever wanted to infiltrate it.
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u/improbsable 3d ago
She seems bound by consent. I don’t think she’s seen transforming anyone who didn’t agree to it.
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u/gaypirate3 3d ago
Bound by contract not consent. She uses Ariel’s voice to enchant Eric. Pretty sure neither of them gave consent.
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u/improbsable 3d ago
Ariel consented to giving up her physical form if she didn’t uphold her end of the bargain. And idk if the hypnotism power is Ursula’s or Ariel’s
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u/gaypirate3 2d ago
Either way the hypnotism was not consensual. So consent was not something Ursula needed.
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u/improbsable 2d ago
I was talking about her transformation powers.
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u/gaypirate3 3d ago
Except Ursula wasn’t even a Regina-level obstacle. Not even a Zelena-level obstacle. Ursula wasn’t even shown to have done anything evil lol.
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u/Effective-Gap-1826 2d ago
That’s because the Ursula from the animated film was always Regina… this one was never the villain
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u/PoeticHedgeHog 4d ago
There were three Ursula’s referenced in the show. This Ursula was named after the Sea Goddess Ursula, but before in the episode where we meet Ariel, Regina impersonates said Goddess and gets visited by her at the end and told to never pretend to be her again.
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u/GoliathLexington 4d ago
I wish the actress showed up in Descendants as Uma’s mom. I bet they would have had a great dynamic
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u/Yunie333 Bloody Hell... 4d ago
Yes!
It could've been great, especially because there was the option to make them one being and it could've made sense, if in S4 that comment about her being named after the old sea goddess would've been scrapped...
Ursula in S3 was established as an old (mythical) sea goddess. The S4 one is the daughter of Poseidon (he calls himself a deity, too, besides sharing the name with the Greek God of the Sea...) And we see his daughter claiming the same power which technically makes her god-like...
Also, at this point we have to bear in mind that it could've been centuries that had passed between Hook stealing her voice and turning herself into an even more powerful deity than her father, and the time where she '"appears" to Regina in S3, which is technically just sometime before the Dark Curse, so maybe about 30 years prior and she was merely a talking fresko there, too (so no clear depiction was established before)
Additionally, if they would've gone for them being the same person, they could've spun the narrative of how she lost her powers despite being a goddess in a certain more believable way, for sure.
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u/No-Meat5261 3d ago
Like basically anyone else already wrote, Ursula said that she was named after Ursula, however the weaker Ursula also stated to have became more powerful than her father, Poseidon. Was that not true? Was Poseidon not so powerful? Am I remembering something wrong?
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u/Late_Two7963 3d ago
The casting in this show. Oy vey. They would repeatedly cast beautiful leading actor types over character actors, in roles that required…character actors
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u/gaypirate3 3d ago
Ursula from season 3 is a goddess who we never see again because Yvette Nicole Brown was taking care of her father.
Ursula from season 4 was born a mermaid and named after the goddess. She then used her dad’s trident to transform herself into a more octopus-like creature.
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u/dishonoredfan69420 3d ago
Just realised that this is the same actress who played Mrs Jeffords from Brooklyn Nine-Nine
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u/AdmirableAd1858 4d ago
I really thought they were supposed to be the same person. Didn’t quit make sense to separate them at this point to me.
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u/Ill-Razzmatazz-7088 4d ago
I think it was more that the show kept evolving. There’s no way they planned for the whole frozen arc. When there were so many better classic villains they could’ve used. Don’t you find it a little bit odd that the snow queen was in Storybrook during both curses, but never reached out to Emma, even after she started to believe.
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u/Keithfrommars 4d ago
I think she didn't reach out to Emma because Elsa hadn't been found yet and she couldn't execute her plan without the two of them being around.
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u/Ill-Razzmatazz-7088 4d ago
I thought she reached out to her when she was in the ice cream shop. Her whole arc seemed a little bit odd. She essentially wanted to find three complete strands and forced them to love her.
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u/Keithfrommars 4d ago
Yes, they talked in the ice cream shop because Emma went in and Ingrid tells her "I've been waiting for you to come to me..." but that didn't work so she quickly erased Emma's memories and waited until the right time to continue with her plan.
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u/improbsable 3d ago
They basically broke Ursula up into chunks because they didn’t plan ahead. Regina is the “real” Ursula from the Little Mermaid, and new Ursula is a version of the Little Mermaid herself. And goddess Ursula is the inspiration for both.
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u/gaypirate3 3d ago
My guess is the writers wanted Yvette Nicole Brown to be Goddess Ursula but because she quit acting for a bit to take care of her father, they couldn’t bring her back. So they wrote a new Ursula and cast Merrin Dungey. Goddess Ursula probably would’ve been a solo big bad like Hades was.
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u/Ill-Razzmatazz-7088 4d ago
I think that more than one ursula just existed. I’m pretty sure the black ursula turns herself into a squid/octopus based on the myth.
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u/Bobert858668 4d ago
Two different Ursula’s. The Ursula we meet is named after the one Regina was impersonating