Okay! Double episode! I'm going to try to reign myself in and keep the plot summary to a minimum, but there were so many things going on here!
Let's start with the Arendelle plot. We see Ingrid sneak off to hide the Sorcerer's Hat, and then go talk to the Sorcerer's Apprentice. She wishes to make a deal with the Sorcerer - she will return the Hat to him, if he helps her to find her third magical sister. The Sorcerer's Apprentice agrees, because the Hat is very important.
Back in the castle, Ingrid tells Elsa that Anna was planning on taking away her magic with a magic hat. Elsa pretends to believe Ingrid, going down to the dungeons to yell at Anna. Once she sends the guards away, Elsa tells Anna that of course she believes in her - the two of them now know that Ingrid is no good, and they decide they have to trap her in the urn again. Anna, Elsa, and Kristoff search the castle to find the urn. Once they do, Elsa brings Anna back down to the dungeons. The plan is to send Ingrid down to the dungeons to banish Anna, but Anna will be waiting with the urn to trap Ingrid.
However, the plan goes awry - it turns out that Ingrid was ready for this possibility. She casts a spell on Anna, the Spell of Shattered Sight. It makes it so she can only see the worst in her sister. Later, she confronts Elsa about their childhood, yelling at her for shutting her out all those years. Elsa is hurt, but when Ingrid shows up she realizes the truth - Ingrid must have cast a spell on Anna to make her say those things! Ingrid says the spell only reveals Anna's deepest, truest feelings. Ingrid tells Elsa to hurt Anna, but Elsa refuses. Anna captures Elsa with the urn. Once she does, she comes out of the curse and realizes what she's done. Ingrid decides to embrace her villainy, and she freezes the castle, along with Anna and Kristoff. She also uses magic to erase some of Elsa's memories while she is inside the urn.
Then, Rumple shows up and steals the urn, which of course contains Elsa. Ingrid wants it back, but Rumple says he'll only return the urn if Ingrid gives back the Hat. Ingrid decides to retrieve the Hat and give it to Rumple, but just as she's about to summon him, the Sorcerer's Apprentice shows up again. The Apprentice says that if she gives the Hat to Rumple, she'll never get her happy ending. However, if Ingrid gives the Hat back to the Sorcerer, then Ingrid will eventually find her third sister, and she will be reunited with Elsa. Ingrid decides to believe in the Sorcerer, so she hands over the Hat. She then walks through a magic door and appears in our world, 1982 New York City. From here, she will become Sarah, eventually meeting Emma as her foster mother.
Okay. Meanwhile, in Storybrooke... Emma sleeps in her car; her magic is still acting up and she's scared to go home. In the morning, Henry finds her and tries to reassure her. However, as he reaches for her hand, Emma's magic blasts outward and throws Henry across the clearing, injuring him. Ingrid finds Emma and tells her to embrace her magic, but Emma is afraid of hurting the people she loves. She goes to Rumple, who says he has a way of taking away her magic permanently. Emma decides she wants to do it. Rumple gives Emma a place to meet him, at the old manor far away from the center of town. Little does Emma know... Rumple has plans for her.
Henry comes back to the apartment, where Mary Margaret, David, Hook and Elsa are all try to figure out their next move to find Emma. Henry tells them what happened. Regina, after having some morning sex with Robin, comes over to give them a locator spell to help them find Emma. Regina then goes upstairs to comfort Henry. Turns out, Henry feels useless because he doesn't have magic, so he can't help Emma. Regina reminds him that everyone has something different that makes them special. Henry has the Heart of the Truest Believer, after all! He brought them all together!
Emma calls David and tells him that everything will be okay, because she has found a way to get rid of her magic. David and Mary Margaret think maybe it's for the best - if Emma wants to be sure not to hurt anybody, maybe this is what she needs to do! Hook, however, suspects that Rumple's dangerous Hat might be involved, so he rushes off to Gold's shop to figure out what's going on. He leaves Emma a message, revealing that Rumple has sinister plans for her. He apologizes for lying to her and not coming clean about working with Rumple. However, he hopes she never forgives him, because that will means she'll get the message in time to save herself.
Rumple needs to cover all his bases in order for this plan to work, so he goes to pay Ingrid a visit. He uses the shards from the broken urn to temporarily trap Ingrid to keep her out of the way. However, Ingrid is able to use her mirror to project an image of herself onto the road in front of Emma. Emma skids off the road. Ingrid tries to warn Emma not to go ahead with Rumple's plan, but Emma doesn't listen to her. She continues on her way to the mansion.
Elsa hears Mary Margaret and David talking about how Emma might be better off without her magic, and Elsa decides she can't stand for this, so she takes the locator potion that Regina left for them. She uses it to follow one of Emma's belongings to her. Regina, upon hearing that Emma wants to get rid of her magic, declares that this is a terrible idea. David and Mary Margaret realize that Regina is right, and so set out to find Emma.
Emma arrives at the mansion, where Rumple has set up the Sorcerer's Hat. He tells Emma to go through the door and the rest will take care of itself. Emma hesitates, unsure. Rumple goes outside to wait for Emma to be sucked in to the Hat. At this point, Hook shows up. Rumple restrains him against the gate and taunts him that he'll get over Emma eventually, like he did with Milah.
Elsa shows up just as Emma is about to step through the doorway. She tells Emma that she needs to embrace her magic, because it's a part of her. Emma listens to Elsa, and decides not to go through with it. Outside, Rumple is angry that he didn't get Emma's powers, but the day isn't a total loss - it turns out, the missing ingredient he needed to break the dagger's control over him is actually a heart. And not just any heart - the heart of someone who knew Rumple back before he was the Dark One. Only one person fits the bill - Hook. Rumple takes his heart, meaning that Hook is now Rumple's puppet, and will do whatever he says.
Hook is relieved that Emma is alright, and Emma is a bit flummoxed at how relieved he is. Of course, she didn't know that the Hat would suck her up along with the magic. Emma goes outside, where she reunites with her family. As she and Elsa cause fireworks to go off with their magic, they notice that they are both wearing ribbons around their wrists.
Rumple goes to talk to Ingrid. Ingrid reveals that the one thing she needed before she, Elsa and Emma could all be bonded was for all of them to embrace their magic. Now that Emma has done so, the ribbons have been put to work. Ingrid declares that she will be powerful enough to kill Rumple! Rumple warns her not to overestimate her magic, and Ingrid warns Rumble not to underestimate it. She plans on enacting the Spell of Shattered Sight over the whole town, so they will all turn on each other! (Except for Emma and Elsa, whose magic is being harnessed to help Ingrid with the spell).
There's also a subplot with Regina, Robin, and Will. After Regina and Robin have their night together, Robin goes to talk to Will. He has the book of fairy tales that he took from Regina. He wants to fight out more about it so that he can figure out why Regina only gets unhappy endings. Will takes Robin to the library, where they try to find more information. It seems totally hopeless, but then Robin finds a piece of paper in his bag. It just appeared mysteriously - it looks like it's been ripped out of the book, and it shows Robin and Regina kissing. It is numbered exactly the same as an existing page in the book, which shows Regina walking away from Robin at the tavern. Robin shows this to Regina, telling her that she has all sorts of bright possibilities waiting for her, even if she misses some of them along the way.
Whew. I tried to be as brief as possible with the plot summary, but so many important things happened, and it was a double episode, after all! Let's start with my complaints, shall we?
Ingrid's plan is just... well, it's crazy. Why is it that with Regina, Zelena, and now Ingrid we get these weird female villains who are fixated on forcing people to be in their family? Regina wanted Graham to love her and she wanted a son, no matter what. Zelena was going to destroy a lot of lives for the sake of being worthy of a family's love, and now Ingrid is so weirdly desperate for sisters that she's ruining everybody's lives just to get what she wants? It's weird! Why can't we get a good ol' fashioned villain who just wants power? I mean, I guess we have that now with Rumple, but you get what I mean. It seems weird to complain about a villain having a complex back story, but all of this convoluted stuff with Ingrid is giving me a headache.
There was one really awkward moment in the scene between Regina and Henry. Henry is upset because of what happened with Emma, but it turns out he's not upset that his mother injured him, but more that he wasn't able to do anything to help her. Apparently, Henry has been feeling inadequate because he doesn't have magic. O... kay? Since when? This seemed to come out of absolutely nowhere. Also, it's annoying because Henry is too much of a saint. It would make a lot of sense for him to feel legitimately upset and scared because Emma had hurt him. But no. He's so selfless that he's only worried about Emma, not about himself at all. That annoyed me.
I was going to complain about the pacing, because if we're being honest, this same thing could have been done in one episode. However, I actually like the fact that we could slow down and focus on some character development. Even so, maybe the pacing could have been a little more snappy? I'm not sure.
Not enough Captain Swan! Okay, I'm aware that's not a legitimate criticism. Ultimately, this episode was about Emma, and Hook was still a very large presence. I still missed seeing them onscreen together more. This is the second week in a row that we were denied a plethora of Captain Swan. I think we've gotten spoiled, so now we're missing it.
Let's move on to the good stuff, though, because ultimately I enjoyed myself a lot while watching this episode. It was intense and interesting and it set up some really delicious stuff for next episode.
First of all, I actually enjoyed the Arendelle flashback stuff. The reason for my enjoyment? Anna. I just love her. She's so funny and adorable. I think her best moment was when Elsa was pretending to yell at her, and then the guards left and Elsa told Anna she was only pretending to believe Ingrid. Anna's response? "You were fantastic! I believed every word, I was absolutely crushed!" The way she says it is just too precious for words. She also makes a joke about Ingrid having "skeletons in her closet... because we did just find Hans in her closet, and his body contains a skeleton." She's really funny and cute, but at the same time we got to explore a bit of a more serious side to her as well. Obviously, the Spell of Shattered Sight made Anna act in ways she normally never would, but the things she was saying really weren't all that crazy. She's bound to feel some resentment for all of the childhood heartache that Elsa put her through. Even if she understands the reason for it now, it makes sense that she might still be subconsciously hurting.
Regina and Robin's stuff was so great. Very sexy. And also very sweet. I love how Robin wants Regina to believe in happiness, even if it doesn't mean that they're together. And the mystery continues... how did that page get there? Who put it there? I love the idea of exploring the magical book. As we know, all magic comes with a price, so this book has got to have more going on than just existing to help Henry. Regina and Mary Margaret actually had some character development together in this episode, which was super adorable and I think super important. They are family now, and they have such a complicated past. Their conversations were some of the highlights of the episode for me. Also, it's super hilarious that Regina's shirt was unbuttoned when she showed up at Mary Margaret and David's place.
The best thing about Regina in this episode, though, was that she understood what Emma is going through and she gave advice to Mary Margaret and David about this. She reveals that one of her biggest regrets is the way she treated Henry, when he started to discover that he was special. She tried to convince him that he was crazy, which was really stunting to his creativity and happiness. Now, she wants to warn these two people not to do the same thing to their daughter. She knows that Emma needs her family to support her in this dark time.
Okay. Then there's Elsa and Emma at the end. I know some people were angry that Emma had that moment with Elsa, instead of with Hook. But to be honest? Hook loves Emma, but Elsa can understand about her magic better than anyone else. She knows what it's like to be a good person who hurts the people she loves due to magic. Elsa and Emma's friendship continues to be one of the most beautiful things going on in this show, and this moment between them was the perfect climactic manifestation of their growing bond. I love that Emma had to learn to accept her magic as a part of herself. Just as Regina helped Emma's family realize what they needed to do, Elsa helped Emma realize what she needed to do. Emma has always had problems with doubt and insecurity, so it was really beautiful to see her come into her own in this way. You go, Swan!
Rumple is just straight up evil, yo. I want to be pissed about this, but honestly Rumple is much more interesting as a villain than he ever was when he was "sympathetic." The messed up thing is, he really did love his son, and he really does love Belle. But even that is not enough to truly change him. I sort of like the idea of an irredemable villain, because it contrasts nicely with Regina, who is slowly being redeemed (although I maintain that she still has a long way to go). I hope that Belle realizes what Rumple truly is, and decides to leave him for her own safety. I'm getting a bit worried about her...
But in any case, Rumple was awesome. Especially in that last scene with Hook. "As luck would have it dearie, you're my oldest friend!" My goodness, that's a great line. Rumple really goes all out when he's taunting Hook. It makes it clear how truly bad Rumple is, because he doesn't seem to have any particular remorse in killing Emma. Sure, he has nothing against her, but that doesn't even matter to him. And the fact that her death is going to hurt Hook is a bonus - "I need Miss Swan. Surely you understand that." Ugh. And to bring up Milah? Low blow, dude! That scene between Hook and the Crocodile was one of the most intense things this show has ever done. Very brilliant.
Of course Hook is just an adorable puppy during most of this episode, as he desperately tries to tell Emma what's going on. I love how this story is ultimately Emma's, with Hook starring as her love interest. He's still dynamic and well developed, but he's ultimately there for her. When he kisses her and says "I'm a fan of every part of you," I just melt. So sweet. Now we've got this lovely Rumple-has-Hook's heart plot twist thrown in there. What I'm curious about is this: if the Spell of Shattered Sight makes everyone see the worst in each other, will Hook-without-a-heart be affected differently? Maybe since someone else has control of his heart he won't be affected? In any case, we're sure to see some deliciously angst-y betrayal going on here, as Hook will have no choice but to turn against Emma, even though that's the last thing he'd ever want to do. It's gonna hurt so good!
I'm going to stop there, because if I'm not careful I'll talk on and on for pages about this. Great double episode. Not perfect, but there was nothing about it that I absolutely hated, so I'm gonna chalk it up as a win. I can't wait to see what's next!
8.5/10
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