Source: Ew.com
Once Upon A Time is back! Finally! Last time we saw our intrepid heroes, Emma and Regina had become trapped in the Wish Realm after Robin turns up trying to rob them and meanwhile in Storybrooke, Belle and Rumple’s son has arrived as an adult with a plan. To kill Emma.
This episode brings back a couple of familiar faces, one of whom has been sorely missed for a while. Pinocchio is back! Did anyone else just totally blank on the fact Gold turned him back from a kid into a man at some point? Because I absolutely forgot that was a thing that happened and got super confused at the end of this episode. It’s fine. The internet fixed it!
So I have a couple of things to say. Firstly, David’s whole “I’m not going to wake Snow up until I’ve fixed this” thing is super annoying. Because yes he’s caused the problem but he’s obviously not thinking clearly and she’d probably be way better at clearing up his messes than he is. Yes he wished for the Evil Queen to get what she deserves but that is A. exactly what Snow would have done and B. Gideon didn’t show up because of that. He was going to anyway. Stop being such a drama queen. Prince. King. Sheriff. Whatever.
So that whole thing in Storybrooke really didn’t feel all that important. It didn’t do anything for the plot as a whole, just a bit of filler and something for David and Hook to not do.
Secondly, the whole Belle, Rumple, Gideon thing. So Rum goes to talk to Gideon to… try to help him kill Emma? To convince him that he shouldn’t? I really don’t know what his motivations are for this. But he also tells Belle that he hasn’t turned evil because he remembers her. And I don’t understand. He was like, literally newborn. He was maybe half an hour old when Blue took him away. HOW CAN HE REMEMBER ANYTHING OF HIS MOTHER???
Also please, please tell me that the scene at the end by the wishing well isn’t going to start a redemption arc for Rumbelle. He has screwed her over enough times. He does not deserve her love or forgiveness for the things he’s done to her. Please don’t do it, Once. I beg of you!
Emma and Regina meanwhile have been searching for Pinocchio so that they can get help going home. But in doing so Regina starts to think more about Robin and if he actually would have been better off if they had never been together. So she goes after him. Maybe not her best move but it does lead to an encounter with the Sheriff of Nottingham which can only be described as “Nice and gay” after Nottingham tells Robin that he finally has him. That world’s version of Rumple intervenes and this leads to a real conversation between Regina and Robin. And he isn’t happy. He isn’t better off without her. They tell each other the truth about who they are and what’s happened to them. And Robin breaks them out of the cell Rumple is holding them in. But this conversation between the two of them is so sweet and heartfelt about whether the ‘real’ Robin had a better life than this Robin. I really hope things can work out between these two. It’s one of the few pairings I really do adore. And Robin is brilliantly sassy. We likes.
Gideon does actually attempt to kill Emma. In a scene very similar to her vision once she has managed to escape the Wish Realm using a magical wardrobe much like the one that brought her to our world in the first place. But during the fight she decides that she is going to take control of her destiny and not give in to it just because she’s seen the visions. She manages to use magic to knock him back and destroy the sword that she’s seen kill her in her vision. Gideon escapes to try again however, but that won’t stop our heroes.
However by far my favourite part of this episode? Alternate realm Hook. Having become even more fond of the rum than he is already, time has not been kind to him. He tries to rescue Princess Emma from where she is perfectly safe and happy with Pinocchio and obviously his plan goes very wrong. But not before he manages to break Pinocchio’s very important chisel. It’s not a big scene with Hook. The only important thing is the destruction of the one thing Pinocchio thinks will cut through the enchanted tree (he’s wrong. He just needed to trust and believe in himself to be able to use any tool.) but it’s a bit lighter and kind of silly in an episode that’s a lot about fate and being able to make your own destiny. It’s nice to see that Emma has had such an effect on Hook and how he deals with his life and emotions. And then he’s knocked out and sent back to the Jolly Roger. But hey, it was fun while it lasted!
Overall a very good episode. Even though it did raise a lot of questions for me. Mostly “how does this even make sense?”
