CATCHING UP: Once Upon a Time – Season Four, Episode Four

First aired October 19, 2014.

The Snow Queen (played by Elizabeth Mitchell) hasn’t shown her face for a while and Emma (played by Jennifer Morrison) wants to use the downtime constructively. She asks Hook (played by Colin O’Donoghue) on an official date before any more trouble is stirred up.

Hook decides that he wants his hand reattached to be a whole man for her (or something like that) and goes to the person who cut it off, Mr. Gold/Rumplestiltskin (played by Robert Carlyle). Gold is forced to give Hook his hand back when he is again blackmailed about giving Belle (played by Emilie de Ravin) the fake dagger, but hes warns that that it would come at a price. While on their date, they run into Will Scarlet (played by Michael Socha) and Hook mercilessly beats him with his new hand. He looks worried, like the hand was acting on it’s own. He returns to Gold and begs him to remove the hand but is forced into helping him track down a man (played by Timothy Webber) from his past. The man was the owner of the magical hat Gold found in the premiere and he traps said man inside of the hat. Later, Gold claims to have a video of what happened, altered so that only Hook is on the video, and tells Hook that his hand was never possessed. It was all just a mind game. Now Gold is able to turn the tables on him and promises that as long as Hook is alive he will be forced to do whatever Gold wants.

Emma later captures Will after he drunkenly breaks into the library. He tried to steal a copy of Alice in Wonderland and becomes emotional when Emma questions him about it.

I’m glad Hook didn’t keep his hand. Killian is not a bad name but it doesn’t sound as cool as Hook. He should have known better than to continually blackmail Gold. Nothing about that guy suggests he would take that lying down. I like how instead of just using magic Gold resorted to utilizing his wits to get what he wanted from Hook. People with magic on the show are a little too dependent on it. Case in point, when Gold and Hook followed the walking broomstick to the Apprentice’s house, that was just ridiculous, and this is a show with poorly designed plastic hearts. The Will character was introduced pretty abruptly, but he’s starting to fit into the show pretty well. I hope people aren’t too shocked when they find out he’s the Knave from the story. They’ve met just about every fairytale character and should assume everyone is real.

The look on Will’s face suggests that whatever went down in Wonderland that forced him to come to Storybrooke was really bad (like it would have been good). I’ve never seen the spin-off Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, but I’m really curious to see what happened there.

Flashbacks show Anna (played by Elizabeth Lail) when she went to Rumplestiltskin for assistance finding out why her parents traveled to the Enchanted Forest. Rumple offers to help but, of course, nothing is ever free. She has to slip a potion to the man he would later trap inside the magical hat. The man is known as the Apprentice and is a protégé for a powerful wizard but Anna is unable to give him the potion. However, Rumple tells her that the potion was the antidote to a poison he slipped the Apprentice and makes her watch him transform into a rat. His goal was to steal the hat because it absorbs magic and he hopes it will make him powerful enough to break free of the control of the dagger, making him invincible. He is able to open the box by using one of Anna’s tears since only someone good can open it. He also says that her parents came to him because they wanted to remove Elsa’s (played by Georgina Haig) powers. They were afraid of them. Anna managed to get ahold of the dagger and forces Rumple to hand over the container with the hat, change the Apprentice back into a man and send her home to Arendelle. Once home, she agonizes over whether or not to tell Elsa that their parents thought she was dangerous and died trying to take her powers away.

Anna is a serious badass. After spending two days in the Enchanted Forest, she took down a warlord and bested Rumple. If she would have stayed a few more days, Anna might have been able to take down the Evil Queen Regina (played by Lana Parilla) and rid the forest of all evil.

With all the mind games Rumple has been playing this episode, he’s kind of like a medieval Jigsaw. All he’d need is a creepy puppet version of himself.

The reveal that Anna and Elsa’s parents were trying to take Elsa’s powers away wasn’t exactly a surprise. What else could they have been looking for? Although I guessed this, we also know for sure that whatever happened to Anna had something to do with the Snow Queen (played by Elizabeth Mitchell).

I could see why Rumple would have wanted this hat back in the Enchanted Forest, but why Mr. Gold is trying to get it is beyond me. Even if he succeed,s it will drive away Belle, who will see it as another example of him choosing power over her.

Meanwhile, Regina is trying to find a way to reverse the freezing spell on Marian (played by Christie Laing) but isn’t making progress. Henry (played by Jared Gilmore) tells her that since true love’s kiss didn’t work when Robin Hood (played by Sean Maguire) kissed her it means he loves Regina. She tells him that even if that’s true the situation is too complicated for him to understand. Instead, they focus their efforts on “Operation Mongoose” to find the author of the storybook and Henry thinks he has a lead. Gold was/is a villain but found a happy ending by marrying Belle. Henry thinks that Gold knows who wrote the book and made him write a happy ending for Gold. Regina knows that Gold would never willingly give up that information if he had it, but Henry decides to use his connection to Gold as his grandson to go undercover. He tells Gold that since his father died he is last connection to him. Gold then agrees to take Henry on as his apprentice in the shop.

Of course Robin Hood wouldn’t see divorcing Marian as an option because they didn’t grow up in the real world where divorce is as common as the seasons. In the Enchanted Forest people took the “till death do us part” thing seriously. Separating was probably seen as an ultimate evil or something.

Since Marian was supposed to have died, I wonder if it’s possible she has no true love. That’d be a first.

Henry’s assumption that Gold knows the author of the storybook is actually pretty smart. Gold was the only person not affected by the original curse and he has a knack for knowing who everyone is. Although it does seem wrong for him to use his father as the way to get close to Gold. His son was one of the few things he cared about that made him want to try and be good. Whenever reformed villains on this show suffer an emotional trauma, it usually leads to them backsliding into their evil ways.

Quotes & Thoughts

“I assure you, your daughter couldn’t be in better hands.” “That’s exactly what worries me especially now that you have two of them.”

Why was that two-second chase between Emma and the Snow Queen in the episode? There was no point in Elizabeth’s Mitchell’s silent cameo, were the writers that hard up to fill up time in the episode?

“I should have known the moment I met you, you’re a monster. You take the most precious thing in this world, love, and turn it into a weapon.” “Love is a weapon, dearie, always has been. It’s just so few people know how to wield it.”

The box containing the sorcerer’s hat was supposed to be guarded against evil but somehow Gold opened it.  He’s either leaning toward the side of good or that’s a continuity error.

“So here we are captain, still in business together. I think you and I are going to have some fun.”

If you enjoyed Manny’s review, you can find the rest of his work right HERE on Sci-Fi Bloggers. You can also follow him on Twitter @KN_Manny.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Friday Fiction: I Saw a Librarian At Night
• The Far Reaches Reviews: “How It Unfolds” by James S. A. Corey
• The Magnus Protocol Reviews: “Futures”
• Friday Fiction: Talking to A Ghost – Part 3
• What If…? Is A Really Fun Marvel Show