Previously on Once Upon A Time: David has
some serious daddy issues. He has a coin given to him by the Evil Queen which
was his lucky coin that he gave his father just before he died. Which probably
kinda sucks for David to have that given to him by someone so evil who wants to
make him obsess over this.

And then his dad’s ghost keeps showing up?
Which is never explained. Is he actually there or has David finally just
cracked? It doesn’t make any sense at all that David is seeing his dad with his
hands all covered in blood. But it does drive him to obsession to make him go
hunting for his father’s killer. Honestly I really wish we could have more Snow
at this point. David’s mad kinda angry obsession with just going after things
and hitting them at the moment is happening more and more now that he doesn’t
have Snow around to balance him out. Which was probably part of the Evil
Queen’s plan in cursing them. Divide and conquer as they say. Except she’s
currently a snake so it didn’t work out so well for her.

David is still so mistrustful of Hook as
well. Seriously after however many seasons it’s been that Hook’s been a good
guy, surely David can at least kinda believe that he isn’t just a pirate and be
less mean to him. I don’t remember him acting like this at all previously.
Again, maybe that was Snow’s influence. But he is continually bullying him into
doing things that Killian knows aren’t good. Like actually stealing from Emma
and trying to make Killian keep lookout and distract her. And Killian goes
along with it because he is so desperate for David’s approval of his
relationship with his daughter. Killian wants to propose to Emma but he feels
he needs David’s approval, even though when he talks to Archie about this he’s
told that he should just follow his heart and screw whether David approves or
not (I may be paraphrasing slightly).

They steal the magic from Emma and very very
awkwardly cast a spell to locate David’s father. Turns out he went to Pleasure
Island for some reason and they go to August for help. Somehow magically
knowing that he will have the answers. Clearly August just knows everything. He
tells him that he did indeed see Robert and that it isn’t a part of his own
story that he’s proud of and had removed it from Henry’s book. Which happened
in season one and I had totally forgotten about it. Turns out that it was King
George’s fault that David’s father was killed and David goes on a quest for
revenge. With Hook on his heels trying to tell him what a super bad idea it is.

In the Enchanted Forest of the past, David’s
father is a drunk who regrets allowing Rumple to give James away to King
George. And when he discovers that six year old James has run away he decides
that it’d be a super great idea to go after him. He goes to Rumple to ask for
help, who agrees in exchange for a hair. Seemingly not because he wants the
hair, but because he needs to ask for something in exchange for magic to
help a guy try to get his son back. Robert traces James to Pleasure Island and
locates him with the help of Pinocchio who at the time is still made of wood
and whose nose grows when he’s lying.

He finds James who tells him that he doesn’t
want to be a knight and Robert agrees to take him home with him. Which probably
would have worked for a while if George hadn’t turned up. But Robert refused,
wanting to be able to be a good father to both of his sons rather than taking
George’s offer. For this, George has his guards take Robert away and killed in
a way that looks like an accident.

Upon discovering this, David goes after
George who is locked up in the psychiatric ward of the hospital for reasons
that I cannot remember. It happened a long time ago! (Apparently he killed
someone, tried to blame it on Ruby and then turned up to destroy the Hatter’s
hat, thus stopping anyone travelling to and from the Enchanted Forest.)

David challenges him to a knife fight but
before he can kill him, Hook shows up and stops him, telling him that he should
be a person his father can be proud of like Pinocchio told them his father had
tried to be for him. David eventually agrees, realising just how much Hook
really has changed for the better.

At the docks later, Hook finally asks for
David’s approval to marry Emma. And David is kind of amazed by it. Even he
thinks this is an outdated thing to do but as Hook points out, he is over 200
years old by this point.

As Hook is heading home, August turns up
again. He has found the pages he took from the book and gives them to Hook,
asking him to pass them along to David. Looking at the pictures Hook realises
that he had come across Robert before. And he was the one who actually killed
him while robbing George’s guards, wanting to leave no witnesses behind. This
is clearly something that will cause even more tension later. Because they
really needed to make things even more complicated. JUST LET EMMA AND KILLIAN
BE HAPPY!!

Is it just me or has David been a LOT worse
these last few episodes. It may be the strain of dealing with the threat of
Gideon and not having Snow around to balance him out, but it’s really starting
to grate on me. I’d like some more time where we have Snow running around
solving problems now rather than David shouting at the people who care about
him and then making things worse by not thinking his plans through. He wants
his family to be together and to know what happened to the people he cared
about in the past but by doing so he is totally ignoring the family he has now.
I keep forgetting that he and Snow have another kid because there’s just no
reference to him at all.

Please let us have more awesome Snow soon. Or just less David. That’d be super awesome.