Recap: ONCE UPON A TIME There Were Reunions Galore
Episode 512 “Souls of the Departed”
Directed by Ralph Hemecker, Written by Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis
Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached episode 100!
First of all, I want to say that I loved this episode. The writers really pulled out the stops on this one. It was truly a fitting milestone episode.
Now let’s get the two things I didn’t like out of the way. The first of the two is a carry-over from the last episode. Rumpelstiltskin (Robert Carlyle) was turned into a hero in the first half of the season (proven by his ability to pull Excalibur from the stone). Then they immediately turned him back into the Dark One. There was no attempt to explore the character as a hero. Such a wasted opportunity.
The other thing I didn’t like is that the Underworld, so far, doesn’t quite seem to be the unimaginable hell that Rumpelstiltskin described it to be. That also disappoints me.
Now on to the stuff I liked; namely, the entire rest of the episode.
There were several characters we haven’t seen in a while. The first one was Neal/Baelfire (Michael Raymond-James). He warned Emma (Jennifer Morrison) in a dream that if she went to the Underworld, it would be exceedingly difficult to return. We also found out that he is in what is basically Heaven (using the words “in a better place”, similar to what is said later in the episode). Of course since we’re in the afterlife, every character that has been killed is fair game.
The Underworld version of Storybrooke was filled with people who died but still had unfinished business of some sort. Many of them had unfinished business with our intrepid heroes. I’m really looking forward to some of those storylines being revisited and played out. Though it is a bit weird to see a Storybrooke-like place that is all red filtered and looks like it’s on Mars.
Peter Pan (Robbie Kay) was running the Underworld version of the antique shop that Mr. Gold ran in Storybrooke. He provided the potion that would allow our intrepid heroes to contact Killian (Colin O’Donoghue) and find out where he was. According to Pan, this was done with no strings attached. But Gold was cautious and apprehensive, as he should have been.
When the potion was sprinkled on Killian’s grave, the apparition that appeared was a twisted sort of Zombie Hook that wasn’t able to communicate with them. But the potion worked for Regina (Lana Parrilla) later on. So there’s no telling what that was about.
But the episode really revolved around Regina. As much as I like to rave about Robert Carlyle and what he brings to the table, in this episode, Lana Parrilla really knocked it out of the park. The emotional range she has brought to the role from the very beginning has been wonderful and was on full display in this latest one.
It’s always good to see Cora (Barbara Hershey) return. I’ve missed her brand of evilness. She was, strangely enough, the mayor of Underbrooke. In flashback, we got to see Cora return to the Enchanted Forest from Wonderland through a magic mirror spell that was miscast by Regina’s father (Tony Perez). She quickly took Snow White’s (Ginnifer Goodwin) heart to give Regina as a birthday gift. Later, in the Underworld, Cora revealed that there was a worse place, namely a pit of fire which she demonstrated by magically causing fire to pull someone in.
Snow White’s heart was replaced with the heart of some random knight by Regina’s father, Henry. He was the conscience that never stopped believing that Regina could be redeemed, even when she was at her darkest. And using the magic potion, Regina was able to talk to an apparition of Henry at his grave. Ultimately, he got to leave the Underworld for Heaven. Just before he left, Regina introduced him to young Henry (Jared Gilmore). It was the two Henrys that believed that Regina could be redeemed. His soul’s departure caused the crashed library clock to tick one minute. The loss of the soul displeased Hades (brilliantly played by Greg Germann) who then turned Cora back into a miller’s daughter, and she would spend the rest of eternity without her power and authority.
When the others decided that they would try to rescue as many souls as possible, Rumpelstiltskin seemed to have left them, not wanting anything to do with the new mission, which young Henry called Operation Firebird. I really wanted to explore Gold as a hero. But I can hope that the return to the Dark One will have a decent payoff in the end.
Altogether a wonderful episode, and one of the best so far. With the introduction of Hercules coming up, the season looks to be getting even more exciting, and more complicated.
Once Upon a Time airs Sundays at 8/7c on ABC.
