So begins the double episode season finale of Once Upon a Time. Which begins with a
flashback that primarily serves to remind us just how much Henry has grown over
the last 6 seasons
Last week, because everyone decided that getting married was way more important than actually stopping Fiona, the Black Fairy. She unleashes her curse on everyone.
This curse resembles very much the curse Regina unleashed.
It turns Storybrooke into a magicless world with everyone forgetting all about
the supernatural – only instead of Regina, we have Fiona as the evil Mayor
While Snow, David and Regina have all been zapped to the
Enchanted Forest.
In this Storybrooke Emma is in a mental institute being
fed pills and encouraged to let go the “delusion” of magic etc. She’s going
along with that in the hope that she will be released so she can go back to
Boston
While Henry is running around as the only person who
knows what is happening and trying to convince Emma that magic is real. Again
(Fiona is also playing his mother, having completely filled Regina’s role in
the curse). This again leaves us in the awkward situation where the good guys
demand people believe in fairies, magic and that sharp hooks are reasonable
prosthetics without any kind of evidence at all and not doing so is apparently
a bad thing. It was weird in season 1 and it’s even more weird now.
While Henry is trying to encourage everyone to embrace
make believe, not everything is going Fiona’s way. Because she’s also got to
convince Rumple and Gideon to go along with her fantasy world. Rumple is
struggling, not believing that Belle has run out on them when Gideon was a baby
(leaving Fiona to act as mother figure for Gideon). If nothing else with
Rumple, we know he is always desperately obsessed with Belle and there’s no way
that he’s going to let a few photographs produces by Fiona convince him that
she’s gone on a world tour.
In Storybrooke, the gang is joined by Aladdin, Jasmine,
the Evil Queen and a few others because all of the lands of story are
dissolving. Apparently they’re all linked to the Saviour’s belief system
(despite that there’s been a whole lot of Saviours so do they all have to
belief). How this happened during all those years when Emma didn’t believe I
don’t know; it’s Once Upon a Time don’t
poke the plot too much
This is the last battle. No big sword fight – but a
battle for Emma’s soul, in making her embrace terrifying delusion of magic, or
everyone she loves dies.
Henry tries to step it up, but Fiona is far craftier. He tries
to get Rumple onside – who is awake. Of course he is, because Rumple never gets
caught in his own curses – but he’s obsessed with Belle and not ready to save
the world. He tries to get through to Emma but Fiona outflanks him and instead
convinces Emma that she has to crush her own “delusions” in order to save Henry
from himself.
She burns the Storybook and returns to Boston. Seems like
a win for team bad guy. Henry you totally failed. This leaves him with no
recourse but to go after the Black Fairy with a sword, which is unlikely to end
well
In the Enchanted Forest things are going from bad to
worse – Killian and David have found a beanstalk to climb (a
nice call back to how Killian and Emma first met) to try and get their
hands on a magic bean to get everyone out, complete with dragon duelling and
David nearly dying but being revived by Snow White’s kiss (because kisses are
now first aid in Storybrooke). They get the bean back to the castle – but there’s
little magic left with the loss of the Saviour’s faith. The castle is pulled
into the void of the curse as more and more worlds go down – and the Evil Queen
(who moved on to a different world because the wish world that Regina sent them
too had the downside of the Evil Queen being considered evil. So she and Robin have
taken to robbing the rich and giving… most of it to the poor. I do like her) shows her full redemption
pathway by sacrificing herself to buy everyone more time. It’s like an ultimate
martyrdom for Regina without her having to martyr herself. When even the dark
side of Regina is now willing to give up everything so everyone else can live.
In the real world Emma arrives in Boston to find that
Henry has sent her a delivery – a new storybook, hand written by himself,
depicting all the adventures Emma has. All she has achieved.
Apparently a hand written book is all it takes to
convince Emma, because she heads back to join Henry on his battle against the
Black Fairy. Look I know this is supposed to be all about hope and belief – but
I just can’t get on board with “I saw a sketch book so fairies are real” idea.
But let’s run with this – throw out the logic this is for
epic and emotion and lots of characters making big dramatic speeches about love
and hope and positivity with big epic moments. I’m not being snarky here. This
is an episode that is ALL ABOUT THE FEELS. This is big emotions and big
speeches and connections and hope and doesn’t need or want you to look too
closely at the man behind the curtain. And perhaps that’s not all bad, it is a
fairy tale after all
And Emma finding that bit of belief, of the person she
wants to be even if she’s not all there yet, means the Enchanted Forest clings
on, a tiny island of survivors left to use the bean.
On another front Rumple finds Belle – and the Dark Fairy
has turned her into a terrified, agoraphobic shut in who can’t face the world
and doesn’t know him. Rumple is not amused.
He returns to his shop where Fiona the Black Fairy has
reclaimed her wand so she can translate Henry’s last prediction of the last
battle as author. She also still has Gideon’s heart and uses it to control him
and give him his marching orders
Rumple confronts her and she reveals the truth of the
Last Battle: yes it’s not just Emma’s belief: she needs to kill Emma and the
only thing that can kill a Saviour is light magic (well, the dramatic tension
of the last 6 seasons just vanished). You need light magic to kill light magic
properly so Fiona can’t do it. But Gideon can (he has light magic? Apparently?
Somehow? Don’t stare at the man behind the curtain!) and by compelling him she can
get Gideon to kill Emma. Or get Emma to kill Gideon which will turn her soul
black for killing an innocent…
An innocent trying to murder her. In self defence. This
is apparently soul blackening and… c’mon Once
Upon a Time, your plot is screaming here!
Fiona claims a win-win situation and how she’s totally
going to have ultimate cosmic power – and with that she’ll be able resurrect Baelfire
and make everything right again and make everyone love Rumple and get to keep
his dark magic. He tells her no. For once he is not going to be tempted by the
Dark Side. He is not going to take the easy way for once. For the first time
Rumple says no to the offer of power and love on one plate and finally says: “Magic
has a price, and I’m not going to pay it”. And being the Dark One he not only
fights the Black Fairy, he kills her – reducing her to dust
And we know it’s real because the curse drops and everyone gets their memories back, including Belle. But that doesn’t free Baelfire with his magical compulsion so Rumple has to run to find his heart, which he does. And again he is tempted – this time by the Dark One on his should again pointing out how much power he could have, how he could have everything. And again Rumple makes the right choice and says no… but he can’t break the compulsion on the heart, the Black Fairy is too good for that.
Emma, reunited by the newly portalled guys from
storybrooke (having had Henry clong Gideon on the back of the head with a fire
extinguisher to help them get away) has made the same realisation: murder
Gideon and go dark or let the darkness win. And again he makes the right
choice.
OR you realise you have 1 pirate, 2 soggy Charmings, a
Dark One, Regina, Henry, Belle, human who thinks he’s a cricket and a dog. You
could just dog pile Gideon. You could just clong him in the head with a fire
extinguisher again and lock him in a cage. Duct tape, wrap him in duct tape!
There are OPTIONS here folks.
Instead Emma decides to lower her sword because she
refuses to kill and innocent. She lets him stab her in the name of hope and
goodness and who even knows. It creates lots of fireworks and sparks and pretty
lights though.
Emma falls and Henry kisses her – True Loves First Aid
Kiss. This breaks all curses, cures stab wounds, brings people back who fell
into storyland (including the Evil Queen) and turns Gideon back into a baby.
I… ok… fine?
Henry sums up the remainder of the story “Good and Evil
both did the right thing and the Last Battle was one”.
To return to my previous point – this seems to be this
entire episode and, to a degree, the entire season. There’s lots of holes, lots
of plot failures and lots of woowoo being used to cover and heal everything.
True Love’s kiss has gone beyond all rational and everything is just shaky as
hell. This whole season finale feels like one hand wave after another with
absolutely no real coherent logic. Magic is just rammed in to move the plot
along and it’s a distinctly disappointing end to the actual season finale – it’s
lazy, it’s weak, it’s shaky to say the least; I’m not impressed.
Of course, equally, this episode was clearly not about
the plot or coherence but about the emotion. Killian and Emma, Regina sealing
her redemption train, Rumple finally making the right choice (after so many
chances that it’s unreal), reunions, lots of shout backs to the previous
season. This sealed by a completely mind-numbingly long closing montage as
everyone lives their newly happy lives and is all happy and peaceful and joyful
and everyone has forgotten that Rumple has screwed them again and all the
Realms are back etc etc etc. Seriously this thing goes on forever
Because this is the end of season 6 – and season 7 is
apparently going to be a whole reboot: and we see a hint of that. An adult
Henry, his daughter Lucy with the Storybook apparently trying to convince him
that she’s his daughter, so a complete shout back to season 1. That’s going to
be interesting. So this episode was all about saying goodbye to the plots and
characters we won’t see again
But in some ways that makes me more frustrated because if
this is going to be the LAST BATTLE and close off all these storylines then
that’s even more reason to include a little more coherence than we have here. Show
some respect for your creation and the end of the era – don’t brush it off this
quickly, this clumsily. Doesn’t it deserve better than this?
I am looking forward to the reboot though – a lot of the
core cast of Once Upon a Time, especially
Regina, Henry and even Emma have felt increasingly superfluous. Despite being
the Saviour and having this big ominous legacy, Emma seems more focused on
being the love interest of Killian than anything else. They feel like they have
side character inserts more than main plot-line driving protagonists.
Diversity wise it has also failed quite poorly. We have
Regina, but, again, she’s kind of taken a big step back for many episodes. We’ve
had bit part POC but they’ve largely been here for one or two episodes then
faded out. I’m not even sure why Jasmine and Aladdin and Agrabah were even
there for all the meaningful amount of input they have actually had on the
show. Why were they there? Their aborted non-storyline was just thrown in to,
what, world build Saviourness?
And did Mulan and Dorothy even appear this season? This
tiny, non-existent crumb of inclusions seems to have been 1 episode of tokenism
to tick the LGBT box, never ever to be mentioned again.
We’re coming to a reboot – so take the opportunity Once Upon a Time. Do better.
