The battle for what ultimately amounts to be the ability to free Emma from the darkness will come to a head in Sunday’s special two-hour episode of Once Upon a Time.
“Robin being a bit of a family guy, he’s very concerned about the fact that you’ve got this dreadful, all but evil person who seems to be without redemption,” Maguire says. “It’s going to be a very difficult season for them to figure out what the best solution is. Also, the show’s about hope. We’re trying to believe there can be some redemption for Zelena, but we’ll have to wait and see if there’s anything in there worth saving. The difficulty for Robin is she’s the mother of the child. Under normal circumstances, he’d break his code and kill her, but then you’re killing the mother of your baby and that’s getting a bit biblical.”
But, in this case, Parrilla doesn’t think Zelena will change her ways. “Which makes me sad,” says the actress. “It’s like Cruella [Victoria Smurfit] — she was unredeemable as well, and she ended up dying as a villain. I don’t know what Zelena’s fate is, but I would hope that she could come around and they could be sisters. That’s a happy ending, and I just don’t know if they’re meant to have one.”