Okay, at this point, I’m in a state of mental chaos. In the sense that I’m trying to be
optimistic, but I have absolutely no idea where they’re going with this story
arc. It’s made even worse that this is
the first time I have to really wait to find out what happens next, as I wasn’t
introduced to the show until season 4 was still airing, so the first episode I
had to actually wait to watch was ‘Mother’
.
In Camelot, Regina, during a brainstorming session, decides
to use some magical toadstool that,according to one of Merlin's spellbooks, was supposed to help reach across magical
boundaries to possibly communicate with Tree Merlin, in the hopes that he could
offer some insights on how to free him. (And again, why are they automatically
concluding Emma can’t use Light Magic anymore?
On what basis are they making this conclusion? It’s really bothering me.) To obtain the toadstool, Charming decides to
set off on a personal quest, with King Arthur volunteering to come along. During their expedition, they bond over their
similarities (such as peasant beginnings and similar tastes in wives). They eventually find the toadstool in the
middle of a swamp, but when Charming goes to retrieve it, he discovers that the
toadstool is guarded by cursed suits of armor, which I guess belonged to the
poor souls who failed to get the toadstool.
Charming gives his best effort to fight them off, but ultimately has to
be saved by Arthur when the cursed armor drags him underwater to drown him. Unfortunately, Charming ends up losing the
toadstool. But they still are able to
return with heads held high, because… something to do with true courage coming
out when you refuse to give up in the face of failure. Anyway, Charming is honored for his efforts
by becoming a Knight of the Round Table, and is given Lancelot’s old seat,
which is supposed to be the most honored place around the Round Table. But when Snow steps out of the room to calm
Baby Neal, who got upset with all the applause (because babies and loud noises
don’t mix too well), she discovers Lancelot is alive after all (So Cora WAS
lying about killing him? SHOCKER! Though it does beg the question of where he’s
been hiding all this time.) Lancelot
warns Snow that the real villain in Camelot is not the Dark One, but is
actually King Arthur.
Oh, I’m sorry. Was I
supposed to be shocked by that reveal?
Cause I really wasn’t. I knew he
seemed a bit shady. It certainly did
strike me as a bit fishy how he just let Charming go for the toadstool in the
swamp while he sat back and did pretty much nothing. And hey, if Pan can be a bad guy despite
being traditionally viewed as the hero in our world, why not King Arthur? It’s not as if anything was sacred in this
show, anyway. If anything, I feel bad
for Charming, in the sense that he’ll eventually discover his new BFF was just using
him all along. To drive the fact that
Arthur is the original Shady McShady home, we then see that Charming DID get
the toadstool after all, but Arthur squirreled it away from him in secret with
the intent of using it for himself in some way.
Whatever he needed the toadstool for, however, he apparently wasn’t able
to go through with it, because by the episode’s end, Charming and company find
the toadstool again in Storybrooke. But
because of their lost memories, their only hint about why they needed the
toadstool comes from the fact that Regina had marked the page that discussed
the toadstool in Merlin’s spellbook back in Camelot.
In the Storybrooke plotline, Arthur once again approaches
Charming to inform him that some of the Camelot treasures, which were brought
over in the new curse, have been stolen.
One of the stolen items was apparently a magic bean, which Arthur had
planned to use to return to Camelot.
Charming, not bothering to question how Arthur managed to obtain something
that rare, devises a plot to weed out the thief, which ends up going quite
well, and they manage to apprehend the culprit, who is Sir Griff, who claimed
to have stolen the treasures because he felt wronged by King Arthur
somehow. But as we learned in the
Camelot Flashback, King Arthur is all kinds of shady, and its revealed that,
not only was there never a magic bean to begin with, this whole thing of Sir
Griff stealing the royal treasures was all just a ruse devised between Griff
and Arthur to ensure Arthur could gain Charming’s trust. Because Arthur wants to overthrow Storybrooke
and make it into a new Camelot. (And I’m
once again getting Pan vibes from him.
After all, that little devil child also wanted to turn Storybrooke into
a New Neverland.) Arthur even gets Griff
to poison himself so the evil scheme won’t be found out. So, does this mean Arthur is officially the
new Pan? Although, I have to point out a
major flaw in Arthur’s poisoning plan.
The poisoning thing occurred in the Sheriff Station. You know, the place where there are security
cameras, as we saw in the season 3 finale?
And unlike Dark One Rumple, Arthur cannot magically alter the security
footage to remove the evidence that he was there. So, if Charming has the foresight to check
the footage when he discovers Griff is missing from his cell, Arthur’s cover is
pretty much blown. Unless the show
writers conveniently forget about those security cameras this time around,
which would pretty much indicate they dropped the ball on this one.
Meanwhile Dark One Emma is trying to get Excalibur out of
the stone, but to no avail. Not even the
dwarf pickaxe she stole from Happy helps.
The Dark One Rumple Hallucination just sorta laughs at her attempts, telling her she knows
what she has to do to get the sword- find a hero that can be worthy enough to
pull it out. With those words still
ringing in her ears, she seeks out Killian aboard the Jolly Roger, where she
goes about recreating their first date back in ‘The Apprentice.’ However,
while it’s clear that Killian is feeling tormented by the reminders of happier
times, he’s placing his full effort into keeping his head in the game and
refuses to let Dark One Emma get under his skin. He repeatedly asks that Dark One Emma be
upfront and honest with him and asks her about the Mystery Door. When she continues to deflect Killian’s
requests, and instead brings up precious memories he undoubtedly cherishes,
Killian loses his temper and straight up demands Dark One Emma level with him
about what she’s after. Dark One Emma
again chooses to be all cryptic, stating she just wants his trust. She then asks him if he loves her, stating
she’ll let him go if he says he doesn’t.
In response to that question, Killian simply states ‘I loved you.’ Of course, this isn’t them saying Killian has
stopped loving Emma. It’s just his way
of saying he loves the real Emma, and isn’t going to pander this version of her
by being her enabler. That was Belle’s
fatal mistake. She allowed herself to
constantly turn a blind eye to Dark One Rumple’s misdeeds and just ended up
getting burned. Of course, Belle was
already approaching the task of being the current Dark One’s True Love at a
disadvantage, since she never got the chance to know Rumpelstiltskin before he
absorbed the Dark One’s essence. Dark
One Rumpelstiltskin was the only Rumpelstiltskin she knew, so she had no
standard to compare him to. Killian,
however, is the exact opposite. What’s
more, he has already set himself at odds with the very identity of the Dark
One. It was that entity that murdered
his first love and left him permanently maimed.
So he’s not about to let the Dark One walk all over him now, even if
it’s currently using the face of the woman he loves. Instead, he’s going to continue fighting for
the real Emma, by encouraging her to fight against the Darkness that’s
currently possessing her by utilizing some much-needed tough love. Of course, taking this particular stance is
never easy. And you can see how the
method Killian utilized has left them both feeling hurt. So much so that Killian cannot meet her eyes
anymore, and a small bit of the real Emma breaks through momentarily. But Dark One Emma teleports away before she
can break too much, and when she reappears on screen again, she’s once again
put on her full-on Dark One mask.
(Although, she clearly doesn’t appreciate the Evil Jiminy Cricket's reminder of
how her most recent actions have hurt Killian.)
Oh, and it gets even better.
It turns out that Dark One Emma swiped Killian’s cutlass when she left
the Jolly Roger and uses that to pull Rumple out of his coma. Because this was the same cutlass he was
wielding during their confrontation aboard the Jolly Roger way back when, so it
was a vital ingredient in the spell designed to wake him up. I'm kinda sad that Killian has once again lost that cutlass, which he'd apparently gotten back from the Dark One Rumple's forbidden vault off-camera. Except, since it's now been crushed to dust, he's probably lost it for good. That aside, the revival of Rumpelstiltskin results in me
getting an answer to my earlier question- he does remember everything he’s done up until this point. Because Rumple’s heart is now apparently a
blank slate, Dark One Emma plans to mold him into the purest hero ever, so he
could pull out Excalibur. Yeah, that’s great and all, but wasn’t Rumple
supposed to be a sniveling coward? Now that the Dark One’s influence is gone
from him, shouldn’t he revert back to that, considering he now has nothing to
hide behind anymore? And there is the little issue of his limp, which should make it a bit hard for him to do any derring-do even if he can grow a backbone. Okay, this show has gone complete cray-cray now.
But things might get even more nuts after this. Killian is not going to let that Mystery Door
go, so he turns to Robin, asking him to utilize his old thieving skills to help
him find out what’s behind that door. I
admit, I’m completely on board with seeing Killian and Robin becoming
buddies. Whether it be teaming up for
some mad misadventure in order to set things right again or looking at Zelena’s
ultrasound picture. (And who else
laughed at Killian’s reaction to Robin’s poor attempt at explaining what it was
a picture of?) Like with Henry, I think
it’s time Killian branched out and developed more friendships. After all, Belle was able to develop nice
little friendships with Ruby (who has yet to reappear) and Grumpy. Why should Killian not have the same
opportunity?
To be honest, I’m still not completely convinced Emma really
is the big bad everyone thinks she is this story arc. I haven’t ruled out the possibility that
someone else cast this new curse instead of Dark One Emma as we’ve been led to
believe. It’s not as if we haven’t seen
it before. We spent the majority of the Wizard of Oz arc believing Zelena had
cast the second Dark Curse when it was ultimately revealed to have been Snow
and Charming. And then there’s the fact
that she still didn’t tell Killian what she’s planning, simply asking him to
trust her. While it could be just the
Darkness influencing her into toying with him and his feelings for her, there
is a fan theory going around that I'm on board with- that something or someone is actually PREVENTING
her from openly explaining things. If
that’s the case, it would give new meaning to her request for Killian to trust
her in this episode. It would mean she
was trying to inform him in a cryptic way that, even though she couldn’t be
completely upfront with him, she had a plan and needed him to trust her. However, I know I could be completely wrong
about that. That said, if Dark One Emma was the one to cast the new curse, this
episode might have offered us a clue as to why she did so. Maybe it was the only way to stop Arthur from
doing something really bad in
Camelot, but there was no real way to spare her loved ones from the mind
wipe. So it was either wipe away
everyone’s memories or do nothing and allow Arthur free reign or whatever.
Now I gotta discuss a certain aspect of Killian and Dark One
Emma’s conversation. More specifically
the part where they discuss Killian’s initial meeting with Rumpelstiltskin
centuries earlier. According to Killian,
he was the one at fault back then, and he shouldn’t have prevented Rumple’s
attempt at keeping his family together.
Okay, I completely get what his intent was in this moment, and that he
was trying to get Dark One Emma to realize becoming the Dark One did not change
Rumple for the better so she’d realize embracing the Darkness was not making
her better, either. He was trying to
convince her that the only thing that would really make her better was
rejecting the Dark One’s power and returning to the person he fell in love
with, walls and all. (It was also the writers’ way of showing how much Killian
has grown to be ashamed of his past misdeeds, and also disproving the belief
amongst certain viewers that Emma doesn’t know the whole story about
Milah. This exchange proves she’s been
told all about it.) But I really don’t
like the idea that Killian is quite possibly placing the full extent of the
blame on himself, because he really doesn’t deserve that. If they’re really going to play the blame
game for this incident, there was plenty of that to go around. If Rumple really wanted to keep his family
together, he should have made an effort to consider Milah’s feelings. Milah was dealing with serious depression
and wanted a fresh start in some other village where she wouldn’t be ostracized
by the neighbors because of her husband’s actions in the Ogre Wars. But Rumple refused to even consider moving
away. Even if Killian hadn’t entered the
picture, Miliah might very well have walked out on him anyway. And while it was possibly a low blow of
Killian to virtually mock Rumple when he ventured onto the Jolly Roger to get
Milah back, his actions in making Rumple believe they were abducting his wife might
very well have protected Milah’s reputation.
Better that people think she was kidnapped by pirates than know she
willingly ran off with another man. Somehow,
I don’t think people would be very open-minded about something like that in the
medieval-style world of the Enchanted Forest.
And it was entirely possible that Milah had also asked Killian to lie
for her, because she didn’t WANT to go back with her husband. Like I said, there was blame to share. The only one who was entirely guiltless in this
particular situation was Boy Baelfire.
So I sincerely hope Killian isn’t trying to place all the blame on
himself. Then again, this could have
just been him reverting back to his tendency to be all self-loathing. It has been shown repeatedly that people are
generally at their worst when they’re separated from their True Love. And Killian is in the unique position of
having his True Love being there physically but being gone at the same time. Regardless, I have a seriously hard time in
seeing how Killian simply acting like a smug frat boy in the past was
synonymous with him being villainous.
Maybe people just have a different morality back in the Enchanted
Forest. There have been a few instances
when this show has suggested actions that seemed reasonable enough to me were
actually a sign of giving into the darkness.
(i.e. Emma nearly punching the landlord guy in ‘Lily.’ I still say if
someone is callous enough to start badmouthing a dead person to someone who
might have been friends with said dead person, they’re ASKING to get hit in the
face.)
Once again, I am 1001% DONE with Zelena’s storyline, but
this time, however, I was equally miffed with Regina. She practically berates Zelena for wasting
all the chances they gave her to change her ways. Please remind me how many
chances YOU got, Regina. And then there
was her ‘you keep painting yourself as a
victim.’ Yeah, says the woman who
spent YEARS blaming Snow for people seeing her as the Evil Queen when she was
the one who chose to slaughter hundreds amongst other horrible acts. Says the woman who once spat Emma sympathy
back in her face during the Neverland arc, stating that Emma had parents when
she didn’t, even though it’s really Regina’s fault she no longer has her father
in her life. Says the woman who spent
the majority of season 4 throwing a tantrum at Emma for the whole ‘Not-Marian’
issue and then claiming the Author purposely set her up for failure. Says the woman who, just last episode, whined
about how King Leopold never danced with her and then tried to blame the
comatose Rumple for turning her into the Evil Queen. I don’t want to make a whole pot and kettle
analogy, but it’s getting close. And is
she seriously contemplating taking the child away from Zelena? Does Regina even realize when she’s telling
her sister that she can’t take that child away from his father that SHE’S
planning to take a child from its mother?
I realize this is a sticky situation to be in, but I just keep
remembering that this baby is the result of Robin being raped through
deception. I completely understand how
Robin must have mixed feelings about the unborn baby, but I can just see it
being a constant elephant in the room if Regina and Robin get full custody of
the baby and Zelena is cast aside. I’m
not one to promote the practice of sweeping problems under the rug so people
can just ignore they exist, but if all Zelena wants is to keep the baby, she’s
not going to go away willingly without that child. At the present time, I see no downside of
just letting Zelena walk off into the sunset with her offspring, just so we’d
never have to deal with her anymore.
Besides, I’m sure Robin and Regina could have kids of their own one
day. I’m still convinced Regina’s barren
state could be rectified if they just took a little day trip to Lake
Nostros. Seriously, why is it so hard
for people to spot the solutions that are right in front of them?
On a final side note, was it just me, or were the dwarves
major jerks in this episode? I realize
they’ve got a lot on their plate in trying to figure out how to restore Tree Dopey to his original flesh and blood state,
but like Grumpy said last episode, Emma used to be one of them. But now that she’s full-on Dark One, it’s
like they feel that they’ve got to completely wash their hands of her. Weren’t the dwarves supposed to be Snow and
Charming’s loyal guards? Where’s the
loyalty now? I mean, they’re talking
about the daughter of the royal couple they once swore to serve here. You’d think the ‘loyal’ guards would want to
stand by their rulers’ desire to find a solution that would help restore their
daughter instead of, you know, killing her or whatever. Then again, we have seen Grumpy resort to an
angry-mob mentality in the past, so I suppose I shouldn’t expect any better
from him anymore. (And to think Grumpy
was my favorite dwarf in the original Disney film.)
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