Warning: This post does have SPOILERS.
NDM Jen is a HUGE fan of “Once Upon A Time” & will be here every week to recap the episode and share her thoughts. Be sure to check back every week and share your thoughts with Jen, too!
Boston 1982. Ingrid is walking down the street in her gown, as she does, having just stepped through the portal from Arrendelle. She pays a visit to a psychic, thinking she’s a real sorceress, asking where to find Emma….yeah, that doesn’t go so well. Welcome to this world, Ingrid.
Present Day. Ingrid is walking through Storybrooke enjoying the chaos wrought by the Shattered Sight Spell. Snow and Charming are in their jail cells, being amusingly horrible to each other, while Kristoff hates on Anna, who tries not to be upset by it. Anna tells Elsa and Emma about the legend that Ingrid got the idea for the curse from, and says that they will have to kill Ingrid to break the curse. Emma and Elsa take off to find Ingrid, leaving Anna behind to baby-sit the sleeping Prince Neal.
Regina, having sealed herself in her vault for safety, is naturally trying to get OUT of the vault. She decides it’s Emma’s fault that she’s sealed in there, and plots her revenge. First awesome Regina moment of the episode: “What the hell am I wearing?” Man, I didn’t realize how much I missed her over-the-top villain-wear until now. How come I like it on her, but find Ingrid and Elsa’s devotion to their fairy-tale outfits so ridiculous?
Gold explains to Hook that he has been spared the curse because he doesn’t have his heart. He says that tomorrow night the stars in the sky will align with the stars in the hat, and he will be able to cleave himself from the dagger and leave town with Belle and Henry. He orders Hook to find Henry and deliver him to the town line, and reveals that he plans to head for New York City, a hero who saved everyone he could.
Emma and Elsa find Ingrid, but they can’t use their magic against her because of the yellow ribbons. Ingrid says soon they won’t want to hurt her, because they will love her. She’s loony, right? But then we have a flashback to…..
Richfield, Minnesota, 1999. Emma in the foster home, the same scene with the jerky kid and Ingrid-as-foster-mother that we saw on the videotape. The kid threatens to make Emma’s life miserable, so naturally she decides to run away. Ingrid catches her, and convinces her to stay by telling her that the kid has a terrible fear of spiders, and there just happen to be some fake spiders in her desk. Nice parenting there, Ingrid.
Emma and Elsa go to Gold’s shop for help, but he’s not there, so they just go through his magical inventory, trying (and failing) to get the ribbons off. Emma thinks that since love is keeping the ribbons on, maybe hate will get them off, so, naturally, she wants to go find Regina. Hook is out on the street, where all hell is breaking loose. Back at the jail, Snow and Charming are still being hateful to each other, and Anna is futily trying to calm them down.
Ingrid is in her Fortress of Solitude, playing with some purple rocks and making snowflakes. Flashback to Emma and Ingrid bonding over a claw machine, where Emma’s powers seem to show themselves for the first time. Ingrid is super psyched. Emma is a little overwhelmed by Ingrid’s reaction, but then gets very excited when Ingrid tells her she’s filling out the paperwork to adopt her. Lots of hugging, and Emma tells Ingrid she loves her.
Back in Storybrooke, Emma breaks the spell on Regina’s vault and she and Elsa go in. Regina is BACK!!! Yaaaassss. Emma baits her by saying she brought Marian back on purpose. Regina throws some magic her way and Emma and Elsa raise their ribbon hands up to catch it. Emma’s plan worked, the ribbons are gone. Emma stuns Regina and they split, with Regina hot on their heels. “RUUUUUUNNNNN!!!” Lolz.
Hook goes to Mayor’s office to get Henry, who shouts “There’s no way I”m going anywhere with a dirty pirate!” So Hook uses some Gold-given-magic to get through the protection spell, and Henry totally Home-Alones him and escapes. Will Scarlett shows up to pick a fight with Hook. Right. Will Scarlett. Hook. We all know who’s the hotter better man. Hook takes off after Henry.
Emma and Elsa go to Ingrid’s lair. In the past, Emma makes an idle remark to Ingrid about wishing she had magical powers. Ingrid asks her if she remembers the lights flickering on the arcade game. She says Emma is on the cusp of great self-realization, and yanks her into the middle of the road and tells her to stop the approaching car. Emma freaks out and almost gets hit. Ingrid says she’s sorry, it took a traumatic experience to unlock her own powers and she thought maybe the same would happen for Emma. Emma thinks she’s crazy, and runs away, heartbroken.
Heeeeeeeeere’s Regina! All photos courtesy ABC Television.
Regina arrives at the Sheriff’s Department and is totally psyched to find Snow and Charming locked up. She wants to kill them both, but says she’s going to take Prince Neal first, though. Anna and Kristoff are annoying her, so she poofs them “back to where they came from,” then decides to let Snow free so they can have a sword fight. Because why not?
Maine, 2001. Ingrid walks down the road with the scroll from the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, when all of sudden she apparates into Storybrooke. In present day, Ingrid confronts Emma and Elsa and notices their ribbons are gone. She says it doesn’t matter, they are still going to love her. The purple stones she was playing with are the memories that she took from them, good memories of them together, and she’s going to give them back to them now so they will love her again. She acknowledges that the only way to stop her is to kill her, but says they don’t have it in them to do it.
Storybrooke, November 2011. Emma goes into the ice cream shop and sees Ingrid. Total freak out. (It’s important to remember that at this point in the timeline, Emma has come to Storybrooke to be with Henry, but the original curse has not been lifted, Emma has not bought into Henry’s theory that they are all characters from his book, and she has no idea that she is meant to be the Savior). Ingrid immediately starts going on about magic, which only convinces Emma that Ingrid is crazier than ever. Ingrid reacts by taking all of Emma’s memories of their shared past. So that explains THAT.
SWORD FIGHT! Charming helps Snow disarm Regina, but that doesn’t stop Regina, who strolls over to the baby. Ooooh, don’t wake up Snow’s baby!! Awesome fight. “You said you could keep a secret!” “I was TEN!!!!” Campy awesomeness ensues.
So, this happened.
David kinda liked it.
YEAH he did.
Anna and Kristoff are on the beach (which is, technically, “where they came from,” so much for hoping they’d been sent back to Arendelle). Kristoff says lots of hateful things so Anna picks up a bottle (it’s the bottle with the message in it that washed ashore in the last episode) and cracks him over the head with it, releasing the paper inside. And of course, tt’s the letter Anna and Elsa’s mother, Gerda, was writing in the season premiere, when their ship went down. Anna reads it and runs off to take it to Elsa.
Emma is about to use magic against Ingrid when Anna runs in with the letter. Gerda says they were wrong to tell Elsa to hide her powers, and confesses to her daughters about Ingrid and Helga, how much she loved them, and how wrong she was to treat Ingrid so badly. There is a crystal sealed with wax to the bottom of the letter, with all the memories of the people of Arendelle that Grandpabby erased for her. Ingrid does not handle the news well, but finally takes the letter, touches the crystal and has a flash of all the good memories. Now she’s full of remorse and says she has to reverse the curse, which means destroying herself. As she disappears, she gives Elsa and Emma their memories back. Buh bye Ingrid. I know this was meant to be poignant and powerful and all that good stuff, but honestly, all I felt was relief that Ingrid was gone, and a mild interest in Googling who wrote the creepy/cool music that underscored the whole sequence. Anyway, it starts snowing, and Elsa says they have to return to Arrendelle and give the people their memories of the sisters back. Yes!! GO! DO IT!!!
It starts snowing on the crazy people of Storybrooke as the spell is lifted. Snow and Regina stop fighting. “What am I wearing?” Lots of laughing. Lots of hugging, and Prince Neal slept through the whole thing, haha, isn’t that so precious? Oh well, it was nice having the Evil Queen back, even for only one episode.
So, like…..NOW do you wanna build a snowman?
Belle is asleep, Gold watching her. Kinda creepy. Hook arrives and admits that Henry got away. “So you failed at kidnapping a child?” Nice dig, even if it was at Hook’s expense. So Gold’s still gonna kill him, and Hook requests a dying wish: Gold leaves Emma and Storybrooke alone. Gold says once he steps over the town line, Storybrooke has nothing to fear from him, but he can’t make that promise to the rest of the world. Duh-duh-DUUHHHHHH!
And that’s it, just one episode left before the mid-season finale, which really really has to mean that Elsa and Anna will make their merry way back to Arendelle at last (and some very promising new baddies will arrive). It’s no secret I’m ready for the change….what about you? Are you happy to get to the end of this particular story line? Do you like how Frozen was incorporated into OUAT? Are you ready for something new, or do you wish Anna and Elsa would stick around?
Let me know!
Jen wears polka dot dresses with crinolines, and rocks a faux-hawk and the ukulele. When she’s not completely immersed in working on one theatrical production or another, she’s busy homeschooling her kids, making costumes and throwing elaborately themed parties. Jen lives in a small town on the coast of North Carolina, with her amazingly supportive husband, Adrian, and their two boys, Max and Milo. She shares some of their adventures on her blog, Sartor.
I’m with you. I’m ready for the new arc, whatever it will be, and for the sisters to return to their snowy homeland – not that I’m not a huge Frozen fan, but I just haven’t been impressed with the treatment it’s been given on this show – I think you mentioned it somewhere back a ways – why did they feel like they needed to be so literal with this translation when all of the other story lines have been so cleverly modified? Are they worried about kids in the audience being too in love with this movie at the moment? Or, more disturbingly, are they worried about the adults being too in love with this movie at the moment? Either way, it has been disappointing.
I was, however, more moved by Ingrid’s final moments than I expected to be and was a little irritated with myself as a result. My response to the creepy/cool music was a little different than yours – and no offense to Mark Isham, whose score I typically really appreciate – all I could think was, why are they trying to make this sound like the looking at the sunken artifacts of the Titanic music?
Very interested to see what’s coming next.