Doctor Faciller was the biggest wasted villain in OUAT
Once Upon a Time has a history of taking Disney villains, improving their storylines through the show adaptation and making those characters their own and giving tragic backstories or motivations that makes us fans fall in love with the characters.
We seen this with iconic villains like Evil Queen, Queen of Hearts, Peter Pan, Ingrid, Maleificent, Cruela de Vil, Lady Tramaine, and Mother Gothel, who are the best adapted Disney villains from this show.
But with an iconic Disney villain like Doctor Faciler, who is played by the talented Daniel Francis, he was wasted and wasn’t given much to do in season 7, along with the other adapted Princess and the Frog characters.
He wasn’t given what I like to call “The OUAT treatment”. He didn’t get no interesting backstories or twist that made this version of the character stand from his animated counterpart like Lady Tramaine or Mother Gothel was given, nor did he felt like a serious threat.
Even when Faciler threaten Princess Tiana and her rule as the future queen I felt nothing.
His small side storyline with Rumplestiltskin when he met with the Guardian, Alice, so he can be freed from the darkness, which is something Doctor Faciler wanted, didn’t feel as interesting as it should’ve been and it serve him much as a character.
On paper, Doctor Faciler could’ve been the next Rumplestiltskin like-character for the series. They both have similar qualities and personalities, and it a shame that the show never done anything interesting with him. We never seen how far he was willing to go to get Rumple power as he was often treated like side character. And the show never done anything interesting with conning people as we know he likes to play with people lives like Rumple.
Just imagine a rewrite where Doctor Faciler does succeed in obtaining Rumplestiltskin darkness, via a flashback, and become the next dark one as Rumple has to learn how to live without the darkness. And then, we start to see him ruin Princess Tiana plan with becoming Queen as maybe we learn as their story progresses that Faciler has a bigger story with Tiana, her family and Prince Naveen than what we were told. And before Regina cast the dark curse, we see Doctor Faciler lose that power and it reverts back to Rumple since the show wanted to keep him as the Dark One for some reason and he spends the present day taunting Rumple and trying to get back the Dark One dagger.
Also, speaking of Regina, the show never explored his past relationship with Regina and it’s one of season 7 missed opportunity as I think that a romance between Regina and Sammy could’ve been an interesting dynamic to explore.
Here my link where I talk about why Drizella is one of my favorite villains from OUAT: https://www.reddit.com/r/OnceUponATime/comments/1hluc9k/drizella_was_truly_one_of_the_best_characters_in/