Picking up immediately where the last episode left off, everyone’s
goal is to stop Pan from recasting the curse that created Storybrooke. The only way to do so is if Regina destroys
the scroll the curse was written on.
Knowing the scroll is currently in Pan/Fake Henry’s possession, their
only chance of getting it back is to undo the body swap. In order to do so, they need to obtain the
Wand of the Black Fairy, which the Blue Fairy has kept in her possession ever
since the Black Fairy was exiled, supposedly years ago. Makes sense, but it does raise a few
questions. There was a Black Fairy? Who was she?
Is she anyone we know from our world’s bedtime stories? What exactly led to her exile? Are they going to expand on that particular
story? No? Okay.
Anyway, Charming, Hook/Killian, Nealfirebagelperson and Tinkerbell head
off to the Blue Fairy's memorial service to retrieve the Black Fairy’s wand, but get held up when Pan’s shadow
attacks them. They eventually manage to
recapture the shadow when Tink gets her mojo back, who then promptly kills the
shadow by throwing it into a firepit.
When Pan’s shadow is killed, the Blue Fairy comes back to life (cue
collective groans from the viewers). I
guess this means all the shadows it
obtained returned to their owners. Does
this mean that Greg Mendel came back to life, too? Then again, there was what Tinkerbell said in
‘Nasty Habits.’ ‘And
the other guy... well, there wasn't enough left of him to find anything useful.’ I guess we’re supposed to conclude the
Neverland fauna made a meal of his lifeless body, so there’s nothing for his
shadow to return to. What a way to go. Anyway, the resurrected Blue Fairy rewards
Tinkerbell by restoring her wings, stating ‘I
might have been overly strict.’
Yeah, understatement of the stinking millennium.
So, once they obtain the wand, Gold/Rumpelstiltskin is able to return
Henry’s spirit back to his body. To make
sure Pan won’t pull a fast one on them, he slaps Cora’s old wrist cuff onto
Pan’s body before fixing the body swap.
And while that was a clever move, Gold clearly didn’t think it
through. Greg and Tamara may wrist have altered the cuff to nullify magic, but Gold must have forgotten who
they’d been working for in the first place.
Needless to say, the magic nullifier doesn’t work on Pan, and he manages
to escape after forcing the wrist cuff on Gold and reclaims the scroll. Just as he’s about to kill
Nealfirebagelperson out of spite, Gold steps in at the last moment. And this is where things get weird. Gold calls back his shadow from who knows
where, and the moment he gets the Dark One’s Dagger back in his hand, Gold uses
it to kill himself and Pan at the same time.
Again, how exactly did that work?
I’m still at a loss at trying to understand what’s going on. When did they ever establish the only way to
kill Pan was if Gold killed himself as well?
Not only that, how exactly was Gold keeping his grip on Pan long enough
to kill him? Is he really that
physically strong that Pan couldn’t break away?
Pan still has magic, so what was keeping him from telepathically shoving
Gold away or something? While this whole
scene is a really good one, particularly when we see Gold/Rumpelstiltskin
willingly sacrificing himself to save his son and girlfriend, as well as
everyone else to a lesser extent, it still leaves me feeling confused,
wondering exactly what just happened. (That, and why no one is even bothering
to comfort Belle, who is in tears
after seeing her True Love die. No,
seriously. Why is no one comforting
Belle?)
Unfortunately, even though Pan is defeated, he’d already cast the
curse, and it’s quickly approaching the town, as Grumpy/Leroy loudly informs
everyone. (Is Grumpy Storybrooke’s town
crier? Every time something happens,
he’s the one who comes running through the streets shouting about it.) The only way to stop it is if Regina destroys
the scroll. But Regina, upon touching
the scroll, realizes that destroying the scroll will mean that Storybrooke will
be erased from existence, and everyone will instantly be taken back to the
Enchanted Forest, or wherever they originated from. All except for Henry, who was born in the
Land Without Magic. When Storybrooke
vanishes, he will be left on his own.
The only one who could avoid being brought back is Emma, since she gets
the free Savior pass. (Although, couldn’t
Neal and Hook/Killian have also left as well?
You know, seeing as how they were never caught up in Regina’s
curse. Same with Pinocchio, who also escaped the original curse through the Magic Wardrobe. But I guess that doesn’t really
matter.) The catch is, once Emma and
Henry leave the town limits, all memory of their time in Storybrooke will be
erased from their memories. Regina,
showing remarkable growth as a character, expresses her desire for Henry’s
happiness, and as a result, gives Emma and Henry the false memories that lead
them to believe that Emma never gave up Henry and decided to keep him after
giving birth.
The scene at the town line where everyone is saying goodbye to Emma
and Henry is really heartbreaking, especially since reason says that this
goodbye is most likely forever, and that Emma and Henry will forget everyone
the instant they cross the town line. It
really plays out like a movie’s bittersweet ending. However, there were two goodbyes that really
stuck out the most to me. The first was
the one between Henry and Regina. In
this moment, Henry realizes that Regina had always loved him and he fully
accepts her as his mother. Regina, in
turn, acknowledges that she’d been wrong when she cast a curse out of
vengeance, and that her loosing Henry is her punishment for that transgression. The other goodbye is the one between Emma and
Hook/Killian. Notice that this is arguably
the last goodbye that Emma makes. From a
writer’s standpoint, it goes without saying that the most important goodbyes
are saved for last. But what’s
particularly noteworthy is what they say to each other.
Hook/Killian: There's not a day that will go by that I won't think of
you.
Emma: Good
Let’s start with Hook/Killian’s words. Does what he says here remind you of
anything? If you’re drawing a blank, go
back and watch the ‘7:15 AM’
flashback again. In the letter Charming
sends to Snow via the dove, he wrote ‘I
must let you know, not a day goes by that I have not thought of you.’ I tell you, the parallels are just seeping
through the screen. But what is even
more promising is that Emma responds by saying ‘good.’ Emma is not the type
of person who gives people false hope.
With just one word, she is basically giving Hook/Killian her permission
to love her, and he clearly picks up on that, if his sad smile is any
indication. In contrast, Emma doesn’t
give a response to Neal’s statement that he’ll see her again. If you want even more proof that the writers
are making it known where Emma’s heart is leaning to, just pay attention to that
final shot when the purple curse cloud is washing over everyone as Emma and
Henry drive off in the yellow bug. The
last people we see are Snow, Charming, Regina and Hook/Killian. The fact that these are the four people who
stand out at that moment seem to indicate that they’re the four most important
people in Emma and Henry’s life.
AAAANNNDDD that brings us to the episode’s ending scene! Emma and Henry are living the American Dream
in their New York apartment. Right off
the back, there are a few things we notice. First, Emma has clearly set her
alarm for 8:15 AM. Could this be her
subconscious mind trying to remind her about who she really is again? You know, like how her apartment in Boston
had phrases like ‘cast a spell’
written on the door, and how her wrist tattoo seems to resemble the flowers on
the Charming family crest? What’s even
more interesting is that she still has Graham’s bootlace tied around her
wrist. I do have to wonder if Amnesiac
Emma ever stopped to wonder about why she kept a bootlace tied around her
wrist. It could be similar to how cursed
Mary Margret still kept her peridot wedding ring that had originally belonged
to Charming’s mother, but I still am curious about what sort of fake memory
Emma might have had that explained the bootlace. Anyway, those observations aside, we see Emma
and Henry are just sitting down for a Saturday breakfast when Killian (and yes,
I’m going to simply call him Killian from this point on, as his Hook persona
was born out of his desire for revenge against Gold/Rumpelstiltskin, which he
has given up on) suddenly shows up at their door with the news that Emma’s
parents are in trouble. Now, of course
there’s the obvious question of how he managed to make his way back out of the
Enchanted Forest and into the Land Without Magic again. However, that’s not fully explained until the
end of the season, so we can just put that on the backburner for now. The bit that really gets me is how he managed
to track down Emma in New York. Yes, he
managed to track down Rumple and company on his last visit to the Big Apple
back in ‘The Queen is Dead,’ but I
don’t think these two instances can be compared with each other. The last time, there was never any
indication how he tracked down their exact location, but he somehow knew
precisely where they’d be. In the case
of finding Emma and Henry, we don’t know how long Killian had been in New York
before reaching their door, let alone how long he’d been actively searching for
them. I might be just imagining it, but
when Emma first opens the door, Killian almost looks tired, like he’d been up
all night. It just gives me a mental
image of him going around, knocking on every single door in the apartment
complex until he found the right door, much like Prince Edward did in Disney’s Enchanted when he was trying to locate
Giselle. Tell me you couldn’t see him
doing that. And his 'at last' does seem to hint at him doing something along those lines. What makes this even more
amazing is how we see in the next episode that Emma and Henry’s apartment complex
is gated. Meaning Killian had to perform
the modern-world equivalent of crossing the castle moat before making it up to
their door.
Of course that brings me to the big moment- when he tries to restore
Emma’s memories by utilizing True Love’s Kiss.
Even though it didn’t work, it really doesn’t matter for two
reasons. First, it’s a perfect parallel
of a moment in Snow and Charming’s past, when Charming attempted to restore
Snow’s memories with True Love’s Kiss after she’d taken Rumpelstiltskin’s
forgetfulness potion. Just like with
this moment, Charming’s attempt failed, because True Love’s Kiss doesn’t work
when memory loss is involved. This was
also the case with Gold/Rumpelstiltskin, when he failed to restore the amnesiac
Belle’s memories back in ‘In the Name of
the Brother.’ So it only makes sense
that True Love’s Kiss wouldn’t restore Emma’s memories anyway. But there’s something that’s even more
important than the obvious parallels.
Killian actually attempted True Love’s Kiss! It was with this act that he declared once
and for all that he considers Emma his True Love. For him, it’s either Emma or nothing; there
is no going back for him. And this was
after he’d spent a whole year without seeing her face or even hearing her
voice. Let’s put this into perspective-
unless I’m mistaken, in OUAT’s timeline, the amount of time that had passed from
when Emma and Killian first met in the Enchanted Forest to the moment they
parted at the town line was less than a month.
All Killian had was a month of knowing her followed by a whole year when
they were separated, with him having nothing but his memories of their time
together. But that was enough for him to
believe and hope that True Love’s Kiss would help restore Emma’s memories. That is just epic, and nothing will convince
me otherwise.
Unlike the flashbacks in the other episodes, these flashbacks have no
real connection to each other, with the exception of two. In the first of these two, we see Charming
and a very pregnant Snow, discussing their plans of sending Baby Emma through
the magical wardrobe, with Snow voicing her worries of how Emma will know what
to do if they can’t remember who they are, let alone let her know of her
destiny. (Wait, wasn’t the original plan
to have Snow go through the wardrobe while she was still pregnant so she could
make sure Emma grew up knowing what she had to do? They only ended up sending Baby Emma through
alone because Snow went into labor before the wardrobe could be finished and
the original plan had to be scrapped as a result. But oh well.)
Anyway, Blue reassures them that when the time is right, ‘our story will reveal itself to her.’ This leads to the final flashback in the
episode, where we see how Henry’s life was like before he sought out Emma. He’s noticing that there’s something up with
Storybrooke, stating his observation that everything is always the same. When he announces how he feels he doesn’t
belong there, Mary Margret reaches out to him by giving him the storybook that
started it all. As she gives him the
book, she admits she found it while cleaning out her closet and cannot remember
where it came from. This statement
indicates that the book magically appeared to Mary Margret, regardless of how
Henry and Mary Margret are reluctant to even consider that possibility. This glimpse of the past helps us see how
Henry first came to believe in the curse, which is shown when he sees Mary
Margret bears a striking resemblance to the illustration of Snow White in the
book. The rest of the flashbacks, which
include Hook/Killian’s first meeting with Tinkerbell and Dark One
Rumpelstiltskin discussing his lost son with Belle, are quite random and only
serve to accent particular scenes in the episode.
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