Once Upon a Time brought two of Disney’s lesser celebrated, but fan-adored characters to the Underworld. Not everyone was pleased.

This story actually begins long before Hercules, back when Once Upon a Time was new and characters were making cameos left and right. The landscape was flooded with appearances from all over the fairytale landscape. Jiminy Cricket to Dr. Frankenstein to the seven dwarves to Pinnochio to Little Red Riding Hood and Maleficent. Some time after the Enchanted Forest vs. Storybrooke worlds ran their course the creators decided to expand the worlds a bit and have fun bouncing into other realms.

The decision to move outside of Storybrooke was exciting and led to something that is now common place on Once Upon a Time— billing characters as the “must-see” promotional pillars of the show. Season 3 is most notably when the promotional material for the series took on a new light. Think procedural but with a fairytale twist! “This week we are meeting Ariel! Now were off to see Peter Pan! Did you see that we can work and entire half-season arc out of Frozen? Camelot looks like a lovely place for a quick stay this fall!” And so on.

For the most part, few complaints arose from the stories they chose to adapt. Neverland provided some excellent background material for Neal, Rumpel, and Hook. Frozen hit the nail on the head in pure visual adaptation and provided a few fun tie ins to David and Belle’s stories in the Enchanted Forest. Arguably, Hercules had that same opportunity but only 43 or so minutes in which to fold into the current story. It was a one off, hero-boost of the week, and Hercules served his purpose valiantly.

Megara was in the Underworld because she was eaten by the beast Cerberus. That’s all we know. While I certainly think some form of torture afflicted Megara both on Earth and in the Underworld, her unfinished business and backstory never took shape. She was not working for Hades, she did not sell her soul to save a loved one who betrayed her. Or did she? Could we infer that she was running from Cerberus to lead Hercules into a trap at Hades’ request? Was she tortured by Hades for that long?

Probably not. What the episode gave us was this— Megara ran from Cerberus and into Hercules who failed to kill the beast therefore Megara was eaten and now resides in the Underworld afraid to face beast again. She went from a strong female lead who was a damsel in distress who could handle it, to a character who needed not one, but two men to rescue her.

Needless to say, fans were expecting at least a taste of the Megara from the Disney animated film.

A few went far enough to add some gifs to remind us what could have been!

What did you think of Megara’s role on Once Upon a Time? Should they have just left well enough alone and went with Hercules flying solo? Le us know!

Tune in to Once Upon a Time season 5, episode 14, “Devil’s Due,” next Sunday, March 20 at 8:00 p.m. ET on ABC.