Once Upon a Time: The Faces of Jekyll and Hyde

First Aired October 17th, 2016.

The Evil Queen (played by Lana Parrilla) and Hyde (played by Sam Witwer) visit Rumpelstiltskin’s/Mr. Gold’s (played by Robert Carlyle) shop. Hyde takes a necklace and Gold tries to stop him, but is forced to back down when he realizes Hyde is resistant to his powers.

Regina and Jekyll (played by Hank Harris) inform everyone that Hyde has escaped. Flashbacks show Jekyll trying to perfect his serum and being denied entrance to an exclusive science academy. Rumple appears and uses his magic to complete the serum and Jekyll drinks it and transforms into Hyde, who uses blackmail to ensure Jekyll is accepted into the academy. In the present, Gold traps Belle (played by Emilie de Ravin) on Hook’s (played by Colin O’Donoghue) ship against her wishes to keep Hyde away from her. Snow White/Mary Margaret (played by Ginnifer Goodwin) returns to teaching, but doesn’t find it as easy as she remembers. Her teaching assistant Shirin (played by Karen David) helps her reach the students. Jekyll continues working on a serum to defeat Hyde, but the Evil Queen and Hyde track down Jekyll and destroy all of his work. However, Jekyll secretly stashed away some of the serum, but Gold takes Jekyll’s heart and forces him to pour it onto his dagger so he can kill Hyde himself.

That was a new experience for Gold: trying to intimidate someone but finding himself completely powerless. Putting up the protection spell was a good idea and if he had actually talked about it with Belle, she might have agreed to it. But Gold always just does what he wants regardless of anyone’s feelings and since he’ll never learn, his relationships will always be doomed to fail. Jekyll created Hyde in order to get into a fancy science academy, not the flashiest backstory but it makes sense for the characters. My reaction to Mary Margaret’s teaching storyline was the same as her students: bored and disinterested. It’s great that she wants to find a purpose in life, but I’d rather watch Snow White fighting instead of grading papers. It’s also disappointing that the Evil Queen is not taking a more central role, given that she is supposed to be the primary antagonist. It’s ironic that we have two versions of Regina and we’re not getting enough of the character.

Jekyll tells Belle and Hook about what Gold did, and while Hook goes to find him Jekyll tells Belle how Hyde ruined his chance for true love. Flashbacks show Jekyll’s crush Mary (played by Elizabeth Blackmore) pursue a relationship with Hyde over him. When Mary discovers Jekyll took the serum to become Hyde, she rejects him and in the ensuing struggle he accidentally pushes her out the window and transforms into Hyde—who is blamed for her death. Emma (played by Jennifer Morrison) attacks Hyde, but he escapes. Gold stabs him with his dagger but it has no effect because Hyde switched the vials. Now in possession of the dagger, Hyde forces Gold to take him to Belle, but says it’s not him who she is in danger from. Jekyll attacks Belle and Hyde forces Gold to watch as she can’t leave the boat due to his protection spell. Just as Jekyll prepares to kill Belle, Hook arrives and kills Jekyll in the ensuing fight. Hyde dies as well since he and Jekyll are technically the same person. Regina arrives and Gold tells her their only way to kill the Evil Queen is to kill Regina.

The monster Hyde turned out to be an innocent victim, and it was nerdy Jekyll who turned out to be the real monster. Sure these kind of twists are a staple of Once, but, in general, they manage to play out well. Jekyll wanted to make a better version of himself, but ended up with all the dark aspects of his personality. Evil isn’t something you can just make go away, Jekyll was just unable to accept that he couldn’t get everything he wanted in life—so he lashed out. Belle is no longer the love-struck punching bag of Gold, but it’s clear the character will never exist to be anything more than a piece of his story. Gone are the days where she would join the fight or at least help out with extensive research. The heroes will find some other way of stopping the Evil Queen because killing off Regina would be getting rid of the MVP of the show.

Regina makes Emma promise to kill her if it comes to that in order to stop the Evil Queen. Belle is furious at Gold for continuing to force himself into her life, but he warns her that sooner or later she will need him. Shirin seeks out the Oracle who gave Emma her prophecy of death, and it’s revealed she’s really Princess Jasmine who is searching for Aladdin. If Emma actually kills Regina there would be tremendous uproars from the fans. Shirin turning out to be Jasmine was a nice twist, but it’s worth noting it’s suspicious that she hasn’t told people who she is. Considering that Jekyll turned out to be a bad guy, there’s a good chance Jasmine might be up to no good.

Quotes/Thoughts

“Threats won’t make me love you, Rumple.” “No, but necessity will.”

Looks like the random opening scene from Agrabah in the premiere is finally going to get some context.

“It’s quite a twist don’t you think?”

Everyone made a thing about Gold cutting his hair. I guess when you change your style after a couple of decades people will notice.

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.

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