After
watching this episode, you might be tempted to make an ‘it’s a small world’
joke, but I urge you to refrain. Turns
out, Rumpelstiltskin’s son, Baelfire, is Neal, Emma’s baby daddy. And Emma is reasonably ticked off when she sees him again.
And even more so when he explains his reasons for betraying her- it was
all because August/Pinocchio got him to realize who Emma was and he knew
staying with her could end up with him meeting Rumpelstiltskin again. We’re also finally shown what August showed
him to make him hear him out. But… how
did August KNOW Neal was Baelfire? If
they ever actually explain that later on, I can’t really remember at the moment. I also wonder what prompted Neal/Baelfire to
try and run when Emma rang his doorbell.
I mean, I suppose he might be suspicious of a package being delivered if
he wasn’t expecting one. Was he still
involved in shady business practices?
Unless he recognized Emma’s voice?
That seems a bit of a stretch to me.
How long does vocal recognition memory last? Does anyone know?
At first,
Emma does agree to pretend she never saw Neal because she didn’t want to deal
with him again, but that plan crashed and burned when Neal comes back to make
sure his father doesn’t hurt Emma for not keeping their deal. What follows is a whole family drama scene of
Neal/Baelfire making sure Gold/Rumpelstiltskin know he doesn’t want anything to
do with him and Henry getting upset at Emma for not being honest about who his
real father was.
When it
comes to Neal’s reasons for not wanting his father back in his life, I was
right on board with him. He made an
excellent point about how Gold still was trying to cling to his magic when it
was that love of magic that led to their separation in the first place. While Gold was claiming he’d changed, his
actions were clearly saying the exact opposite.
But before you ask, I’m not going to discuss the issue of what Neal did
to Emma right now. Trust me, I’m holding
off on that issue until a later episode analysis.
As for
Henry, I was a bit bugged by his response to learning that Neal was his
biological father. Particularly the bit
when he accuses Emma of being no better than Regina. Yes, they both lied to him about
something. I won’t deny that. But when Regina lied to Henry, it was either
because she wanted to make sure her curse wouldn’t be broken or (in the case of
when she tried to close the wishing well portal instead of helping Emma and
Mary Margret/Snow get home) because she knew she was going back on her promise
to redeem herself and she was trying to cover up her betrayal of Henry’s trust. Either way, both times, she was lying to make
sure she got her own way, and to cover up her own misdeeds. Emma, on the
other hand, lied about the identity of Henry’s birth father because she was a)
trying to protect him and b) still hurt by what Neal did to her and didn’t want
to relive it. After all, Neal’s betrayal
was what ultimately led Emma to give up Henry in the first place, and it’s why
she has such a hard time letting people in.
For her, the truth was still a sensitive, painful topic. Who’d want to relive something like
that? At the same time, I know deep down
that I have to cut the kid a bit of slack.
After all, while Henry is a sharp, clever boy, he’s still only 11 years
old. You can’t expect a kid that age to
see things from an adult perspective.
And then
there’s Regina, who you just want to Gibbs-Slap. She is practically seeing the proof that Cora
is really just interested in helping herself, and is only out to obtain the
Dark One’s dagger. She has no true intention
of helping her daughter out. But of
course, Regina’s got her blinders on and falls for Cora’s flowery speech. I get it.
Cora is her mother, and like most people, Regina has unconditional love
for her parents. But even so, this is
the woman who cast the curse and kept it going for 28 years. This is the woman
who nearly got away with framing Mary Margret/Snow for murder. Regina, aren’t you supposed to be smarter
than this?
Oh, there’s
also the Enchanted Forest subplot, which is quite groan-inducing in its own
right. Rumple, haven’t you ever read
Oedipus? Granted that play probably
didn’t exist in the Enchanted Forest, but again, this is the Enchanted Forest. The place where fairy tale characters and old
legendary figures are real people. It’s
perfectly reasonable to conclude that Oedipus might have been an actual person
in this world at some point. While some
might regard the story of Oedipus as a whole subconscious desire to sleep with
your mother thing, there was also the less-spoken-of message. In an effort to prevent a prophesy from being
fulfilled, King Laius had his infant son tossed out into the woods to die. But in doing that, the king triggered a
series of events that just ensured
that the prophesy would play out after all.
In a nutshell, if you try and cheat fate, you’ll only end up making sure
it happens. And that’s a lesson that
Rumple should have learned the hard way in this episode. By purposely injuring himself during the Ogre
Wars so he wouldn’t die in battle and leave his unborn son without a father, he
only triggered the series of events that ultimately led to his separation from
Baelfire. And the reason why I said
‘should have learned’ is because he clearly doesn’t learn his lesson. After becoming the Dark One and losing
Baelfire, Rumpelstiltskin crosses paths with the seer again. When the seer tells him of another prophesy
that involves a young boy being his undoing, Dark One Rumpelstiltskin immediately
vows to kill the boy. Seriously,
guy! Have you learned NOTHING about
tampering with prophesies?
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