Recap: ONCE UPON A TIME A Boat Became A Prison

Episode 604 “Strange Case”
Written by David H. Goodman and Nelson Soler
Directed by Alrick Riley

In this episode, my hopes of Jekyll and Hyde not having any prior connection to the main characters were dashed.

In flashback, Dr. Jekyll (Hank Harris) got Mary (Elizabeth Blackmore), a woman he was friends with “and had feelings for”, to try to talk her father, Dr. Lydgate (Jonny Coyne), into getting him into a scientific academy to pay for his experiment. Lydgate thought is was nuts and turned him down. Enter Rumpelstiltskin (Robert Carlyle). Really??? All this time they were completely independent from the existing story, coming in from another world. But now the oddity of universal connections has stretched to this one.

Rumpel fixed the experiment for him because it was supposed to help the Dark One as well. Jekyll took it himself, and … well, you know how that part of the story goes. Rumpel talked the new half into confronting Lydgate and even gave him the name Mr. Hyde, since he couldn’t walk around calling himself Dr. Jekyll. Hyde used extortion about the alleged affair he was having. Jekyll was surprised to find the membership card in his pocket later.

Hyde then wooed Mary, who said she had no interest in Jekyll. When she woke up in the morning, it was Jekyll in bed with her instead of Hyde, and he had no idea what happened. She figured out that the serum worked and he used it on himself. She tried to get away and he fought to stop her. In the struggle, she fell out the window and died. He took the serum so that Hyde would take the blame. And not once did they ever explain how the two became separated. Perhaps the same way Regina and the Evil Queen did? Maybe there will be an explanation in a later episode.

In Storybrooke, Gold cut his hair before being visited by Hyde and the Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla), with Hyde demanding a necklace that belonged to Mary. Gold discovered when delivering a force choke to Hyde that he couldn’t be killed. The Evil Queen assured Gold that her deal not to harm Belle (Emilie de Ravin) or their unborn baby was still intact, but Hyde harming them was fair game. So Gold put up a protection spell around Hook’s ship that would keep Hyde out … and Belle in. She was not amused.

Jekyll was working on a new serum. Hyde and the Evil Queen stopped by and ended up trashing the lab equipment. When Regina and Gold got there, Jekyll had a small amount of the serum left. Gold took his heart, put the remaining serum on his dagger and went after Hyde in the woods. After Hyde overpowered Emma (Jennifer Morrison) and David, Gold showed up and stabbed him in the heart. But Hyde had switched out the serums in the garage lab. He then took the dagger and ordered Gold to take him to Belle.

Hyde couldn’t get on the ship due to the protection spell. So Jekyll went on. He attacked Belle when Hook came to the rescue. He ended up killing Jekyll unintentionally by impaling him up on a harpoon. Hyde died with him. It then became clear that the only way to kill the Evil Queen was for Regina to die.

Gold released the protection spell and let Belle go free. He tried to explain to her that the reason for his wanting the serum in the first place was because he was falling in love with her when she was his servant. He wanted the serum to separate him from the beast inside to protect him from his feelings. But it never happened. She told him that she would never love him again. His response was that eventually, in order to protect the child, she would eventually have to. Why is it that after he seems to play all his cards he always seems to have more?

Snow (Gennifer Goodwin) went back to teaching at the school, but was having no luck reaching her students. So her teacher’s aide, who would turn out to be Princess Jasmine (Karen David) looking for Aladdin, suggested she take a different route. So she had her students learn Newton’s Third Law of Motion by shooting arrows at their F-grade homework.

Although the setup for Aladdin was good, I’m still annoyed that they had to have a history crossover with the established characters. It’s being overdone. Otherwise not a bad episode. And it’s good that they didn’t wear out the Jekyll and Hyde characters.

 

Once Upon a Time airs Sunday nights at 8/7c on ABC.