“Breadcrumbs” was all about Henry and the identity of the Candy Killer, Hansel — aka, Nick in the real world. Here, at the urging of Rumple, Henry helps the detectives out in trying to uncover Hansel’s motive while also at the same time weighing the thought of moving to New York City for a job offer and leaving everyone behind in Hyperion Heights. In the fairytale flashbacks, Henry and Hook seek adventure and try to find the perfect wedding ring for Henry to propose to Jacinda with, which leads them to sneak on board the Jolly Roger and eventually run into the new captain, Blackbeard.
Photo Source: ABC
Elsewhere back in the real world: Robin and Zelena butt-heads over Zelena not being honest to Robin and explaining what exactly is going on. Hook finds Alice a job at Tiana’s food truck. And lastly Lucy urges Jacinda to reach out to Henry before it’s too late and he leaves.
Strangely enough while the Candy Killer plot is tied deeply with the Witches Coven plot, Gothel, Regina and even Facilier never make an appearance in Breadcrumbs. Regina is written off screen trying to find the last few ingredients for her and Zelena’s curse breaking potion; and there was not a single mention of Gothel or Facilier though, especially with how tied they were to last week’s events in “Sisterhood”. But ironically less is more and the Candy Killer plot is actually flushed out way more then normal and is finally a Henry centric story with Nick using Henry’s book as his basis for all the killings — due to Ivy killing his sister, Gretel. Cause of this focused plot, this became one of the stronger episodes of the season. You can feel and see the show finally getting it’s grove finally after sixteen episodes in. It’s just a shame that the series will be over in two months — unless they’re planning a spin-off to keep some of this new momentum alive.
Was the episode great with the plot twists, yes and no. The flashback twist on the Jolly Roger was well done and explains the differences between the Hook we have now and the previous Hook from seasons past; and how Henry sees them both. The twist with Henry getting captured by Nick later on in the episode though was seen by a mile away, but you know that this will eventually lead Emma and the rest of the Storybrooke heroes to come running to rescue Henry from Nick. The last twist, that Zelena will be next on Nick’s hit list, was just a matter of time since her and Regina are the final two witches outsides of Gothel still around for Nick to kill.
Yet sadly at the same time, it’s weird having a magical-less villain in Nick/Hansel be the bigger bad outside of Gothel and Facilier for the final season of Once after every other big bad our heroes have faced from Regina, Rumple, Cora, Hades, Dark Swan, Dark Fairy and even Pan. It’s kinda underwhelming… Maybe they can fix this and put the focus back on either Gothel or Facilier in the next few weeks?
