‘Once Upon a Time’ season 4 spoilers: ‘Alias’ alum Merrin Dungey replaces Yvette Nicole Brown as Ursula

Once -Apparently, the goal for the upcoming fourth season of “Once Upon a Time” is simply rounding up as many cool villains as possible, and then seeing what happens when it comes to the overall story.

You may have already heard that Kristin Bauer van Straten is returning as Maleficent, and that Victoria Smurfit is going to be playing Cruella de Vil. Now, Entertainment Weekly reports that Merrin Dungey is going to be coming on board the series in the role of Ursula, the famed villain from “The Little Mermaid.” She is replacing “Community” star Yvette Nicole Brown, who previously voiced the character in an episode. This is no slight against Brown; she simply has a full-time job already on “The Odd Couple,” and she is trying to reduce her overall hours so that she can care for her father. This is why she chose to leave “Community” after five seasons.

This casting basically means that this show is giving us its own rogues gallery of sorts for the second part of the season, and we’re fine with that. A really great thing about it is that by giving us so many different villains, they are most-likely limiting the possibility that this story will follow the same tired formula.

  1. We meet villain.
  2. Villain does terrible things.
  3. We find out about villain’s past, and how they are really just misunderstood and want to be loved and cared for.
  4. Villain is actually related to other important character.
  5. Villain is defeated, and villain goes away.

What we also hope from this casting specifically is that the appearance of Ursula means that we’ll be seeing more of JoAnna Garcia Swisher as Ariel. We know that she is busy courtesy of “The Astronaut Wives Club,” but even an episode or two to establish the backstory will do.

What’s your take both on the casting, and the character having a larger role? Share with a comment, and head over here to get some further TV updates on all we cover via our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo via ABC.)

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