Once Upon a Time: The Garden of Forking Paths

First Aired October 20th, 2017

Cinderella/Jacinda (played by Dania Ramirez) is rescued from palace guards by Tiana/Sabine (played by Mekia Cox). In Hyperion Heights, Jacinda shows Sabine letters Lucy (played by Allison Fernandez) that Lucy hides in a well inside the local garden to keep in touch after Lady Tremaine/Victoria Belfrey (played by Gabrielle Anwar) claimed sole custody.

Henry (played by Andrew J. West), Regina/Roni (played by Lana Parrilla) and Wish Hook/Rogers (played by Colin O’Donoghue) continue their investigation of Victoria. Jacinda goes to leave a letter in the well when Victoria arrives with plans to build condos over the community garden. Rogers spies on Victoria giving a payout to the building commissioner and apprehends the man at a restaurant. Roni comes up with the idea of getting a neighborhood petition to stop the demolition.

In the past Tiana reveals she is part of a resistance against Tremaine and reveals Tremaine helped the now dead evil prince kill Cinderella’s father to convince her to join the resistance. Cinderella and Tiana learn Tremaine is transporting magic in preparation for war when Henry arrives at the camp with Regina and Wish Hook to help fight. In the present Lucy tells Henry she believes magic is located inside the well and jumps down the hole to find it. Henry is forced to follow and dismisses Lucy’s claims that not finding his family’s graves is a sign they never existed and finds what she believes is a piece of Cinderella’s glass slipper.

While this season continues the trend of retelling stories from the first season, Lucy mentioning the similarities is a nice wink to the audience about it. But things in the real world are moving faster than they did in season one so the curse should be lifted soon which will propel the story into more exciting territory. Until then we’re going to have to find ways to get excited about people rallying together to save the garden and political bribes.

The flashbacks continue to provide exciting insight into these new characters notably Tiana, who after being an unnamed side character the first two episodes stepped to the forefront. She continues the trend of Disney princesses being retooled as strong fighters and I can’t wait to see what new backstory she has. Wish Hook has a clear story of rescuing his daughter but I’m curious to see how he will fit into the group and what other storylines can be developed for him outside of finding his daughter.

Cinderella goes to Tremaine’s mansion and it’s revealed Tremaine harbors a grudge over something Cinderella did in the past. Tremaine has a coffin with her deceased daughter Anastasia and plans to use Henry’s pure heart to revive her and forces Cinderella to get it for her. Cinderella can’t bring herself to kill Henry and instead goes to kill another man before Regina stops her. The next day Cinderella tries to leave, Regina stops her and reveals that Anastasia died young and that it was her fault. Regina encourages her to stop punishing herself and start to fight back. In the present Victoria offers Jacinda and Lucy a condo to live in if she burns the petition which she does, which devastates Lucy.

Rogers witnesses Rumpelstiltskin/Gold/Weaver (played by Robert Carlyle) releasing the building commissioner while seemingly making the man an informant. Inspired by Roni, Jacinda gathers the community in the garden and gathers more signatures and encourages them to stand up to Victoria.

The garden was saved and the community came together, which is great and all but the more interesting story is what’s happening with Weaver. He’s working with/for Victoria but seemingly helping to take her down. He’s a flawed villain who can almost be an antihero which was Gold’s biggest running storyline throughout the series. Gold managed to retain his identity with previous curses and the idea that he’s awake and biding his time is very exciting. Cinderella was involved in the death of Tremaine’s daughter; I’ve resigned myself to seeing repeated storylines from season one but do we have to reuse all of them? The one plus is that it fleshes out Victoria’s character beyond an evil lady who just wants to make people miserable, she’s now also the grieving mother willing to do anything and kill anyone to save her daughter.

Lucy gives Henry the piece of the glass slipper hoping to speed up the process of getting his memories back, but along is way home he finds a cemetery along with his wife and daughter’s headstones. Victoria has a package delivered to her tower which contains the body of Anastasia. She visits a woman (played by Emma Booth) kept prisoner for help destroying Lucy’s belief, but the woman scoffs that Victoria has to it herself and then deal with her. It almost looked like Henry was starting to believe but a cemetery grew out of thin air so Henry is going to be living in denial a while longer. I’m going to make a guess and say whoever this mystery woman is she’s some kind of witch. This means that the magical world is slowly creeping into the real world so things should start to get a little more exciting.

Quotes/Thoughts

“All you have to do is believe, and you’re getting there.”

I love that Henry/Roni/Rogers team make their headquarters a bar, it makes sense when things get frustrating just take a shot.

“Don’t you forget, you’re my prisoner.” “Really? Because the way I see it is that we’re both shackled in our own way. And the question is who is the actual prisoner, and to whom?”

People were so desperate to save the garden but it didn’t look like anyone did much planting.

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