PREVIOUSLY ON: Once Upon a Time – Season Finale (Part 1)

First Aired May 10th, 2015.

Flashbacks show the Author/Isaac (played by Patrick Fishler) selling televisions while struggling to find success as a writer. That all changes when he meets he Sorcerer’s Apprentice (played by Timothy Webber), who takes Isaac to become the Author when he chooses the magical quill from a lineup.

In Storybrooke, Isaac finishes the final chapter of the new book and promises Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold (played by Robert Carlyle) his happy ending. Hook (played by Colin O’Donoghue) remembers that Gold forced him to trap the Apprentice in the Sorcerer’s Hat and they free him. The Apprentice instructs the heroes to put Isaac back into the door drawing to stop him. However, as soon as they get to work, the book is completed and everyone except for Henry (played by Jared S. Gilmore) is taken from Storybrooke. Henry drives to a nearby town asking if people have seen his family and notices a book, Heroes and Villains, written by Isaac. Henry goes to a book signing and threatens to trap Isaac in the door so Isaac explains that they are all trapped in the new book in which the villains always win. When Isaac claims the quill is no longer magical because he used it to write his own happy ending, Henry uses the key to enter Heroes and Villains to save his family.

Similar to how the wand chooses the wizard the quill chooses the Author (well technically Isaac chose it). While I like that Henry is given the role of saving his family rather than being saved by them, he’s a very unlikely person to save the day. His biggest asset is that he believes in people and builds up their confidence so they can stop the bad guys. Case in point: Henry drives around to random diners with photos of his family though they are clearly trapped in another realm of reality. Henry was lucky Isaac was having that huge publicity tour otherwise he would have never found him with those kind of investigative skills. If I were Henry, I would have held on to that key and used it to enter the world of Harry Potter and play a few rounds of Quidditch. But more importantly, we finally get to see what a world of victorious villains looks like.

Isaac follows Henry into the book and leaves him tied up to be eaten by an ogre, because if Henry changes the story too drastically it could destroy the book. Henry is saved by the “White Knight” Rumpelstiltskin and uses the book as a guide to find his mother Regina (played by Lana Parrilla). In the book, Regina story mirrors the original plot of Snow White (played by Ginnifer Goodwin) who is the Evil Queen. Predictably, Regina doesn’t believe Henry’s story and Isaac is captured by the Seven Dwarfs and taken to Snow’s castle. She lives there with Charming (played by Josh Dallas) who she controls through his heart. Here Snow’s true love was really his evil twin. Isaac offers to help Snow kill Regina if she will also kill Henry to keep him from altering the book’s plot. Snow corners Regina but before she can kill her, Robin Hood (played by Sean Maguire) intervenes and escapes with Regina.

This new world was nothing like I thought it would be. For the most part good still triumphed over evil but there was the exception that the heroes and villains switched roles. The buildup for the Author changing the rules was that villains wanted to start winning, which I took to mean they would succeed in all their evil plans. Technically, Snow White is enjoying power as the Evil Queen, and Regina once again comes up short (it’s truly amazing how much she gets screwed over). That’s not to say the role reversal is bad. The episode was very enjoyable and seeing new sides to all these characters made the plot feel fresh. As an author, Isaac should have known better than to fall into predicable tropes of revealing the weaknesses in his plan and leaving Henry to die instead of killing him. But Henry was captured two seconds after entering the book and proved that he really isn’t ready to be a full-fledged hero yet.

Robin and Regina go to a tavern and it appears the spark is still there, until he introduces his fiancé Zelena/the Wicked Witch of the West (played by Rebecca Mader). Regina leaves and Henry is distraught because the wedding is the story’s ending and then everything will be stuck the way it is. He asks about his birth mother, Emma (played by Jennifer Morrison), a.k.a. the Savior and it’s revealed Snow had her locked away in a tower. Zelena finally destroyed her sister’s happiness so at least one villain got her original happy ending. Henry is going to need Emma if he wants any chance at stopping that wedding even though she appears to have gone completely insane. But a crazy woman crashing the wedding is a surefire way to ruin the ceremony which should work in their favor.

Quotes & Thoughts

“Tomorrow, thanks to Gold and the Author, I could wake up a talking frog.”

The Author wrote that entire book in almost no time. Maybe he had some natural writing talents after all.

“It’s time for a world where up is down, where villains can have happy endings.”

This quote basically sums up the second half of the season. Although I’ll always wonder what it would have looked like if Regina the Evil Queen and other villains had conquered the Enchanted Forest.

If you enjoyed Manny’s return to Storybrooke, 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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