Flashback opening – back to Regina in her Storybrooke
days, pursuing her eternal quest against Snow White while an increasingly sad
and even slightly desperate father who continually tries to take her off the
path of vengeance and to find happiness
Especially since Tinkerbell shows up to again remind
Regina that she had a chance to go for True Love and failed. Look I’ve said
before how
much we hate that particular
storyline. How Regina is shamed and blamed for her own lack of happiness
because she wasn’t willing to jump into a romance with a complete stranger.
Especially when we consider how much more pain that whole romance has brought
Regina. (or, for that matter, that her whole path to the darkside began because
her true love died on her. You want to blame Regina for being reluctant to
enter a romance?) Add in that Once Upon a
Time is really pushing that romance needs true love. So, yes, someone slap
Tinkerbell upside the head.
Anyway, daddy dearest has got on this train and tries to
get her to use cupid’s arrow to track down the person she loves most in the
world thinking this will lead her to Robin. Actually, no daddy, it will lead to
you. Which will be the laziest use of magic ever. At this stage she hasn’t met
Robin and knows precisely one thing about him –he has a tattoo. The idea that
he is already her true love is really bizarre even if Regina has a huge thing
for guys with ink
Not being into this game, Regina instead corrupts the
arrow to make it lead her to who she hates most in the world – and it leads her
tooooooooo a mirror.
Yes, Regina loathes/d herself more than anything, loathed
what she became, loathed who she was. And oh isn’t that painful
To the present and EQ is running around doing her evil, promising
Henry (who still thinks she’s redeemable) that she’s going to do more dark and evil
and terrible things because evil. She has grabbed the shears of fate snipping,
intending to use them to break the bond between her and Regina and therefore
free herself to kill her. And she’s going to use kidnapped Robin to bait the
trap.
And even Robin realises EQ needs a fresh start and saving
from herself. Not that she’s ready to hear that.
Despite knowing it’s a trap, Regina walks into it – there’s
a snipping of fate and the fight is on. Sadly it’s more swords than magic, c’mon
CGI department, Regina vs Evil Queen should not be a sword fight!!
More than the fight itself is the nice way they
exposition their emotional conflict while still fitting naturally: with Evil
Queen pouring scorn on how Regina has “filled the hole inside her”
(recognising, in the foundation of that self loathing, that there is a hole
inside her) with love and family while Regina is equally determined that they’re
real and powerful and have changed her.
And then Regina wins the upper hand… and doesn’t kill
Evil Queen. The EQ spits “I hate you” but Regina doesn’t hate her/herself… not
any more. She has found love, redemption, family, she has been redeemed, she
isn’t that self-loathing person any more. And because she loves not hates she’s
going to not kill the EQ
I admit I cringed and thought she had been infected by Snow White’s sappiness!
Instead she removes not only EQ’s heart – but her own.
She pushes them together, taking some of EQ’s darkness and giving the EQ some
of her love – filling that hole, sealing the self-loathing, letting her feel
what she does and becoming redeemable.
“I you part of me. I love myself. And so should you.”
They talk – about Robin not being her happily ever after
and how she doesn’t even regret not going to him when Tinkerbell showed her
because if that was the case she wouldn’t have Henry or the family she has now.
Robin isn’t her happily ever after, the life she’s leading here is. And the EQ
is redeemable – because Regina is redeemed – and the EQ is Regina
Ok, yes, I’ll run with this. I’ll run with this more than
Regina finding her true love in many ways – though I want a moratorium on
Regina pain. I’ll run with this because Regina loving herself, because Regina
finally ending up loving herself, embracing her redemption, and accepting her
past rather than trying to excise it is a wonderful conclusion to this. This is
the ultimate path for Regina – no more wallowing in guilt, no more suffering,
no more “I’m a villain so don’t deserve happy endings”
The rest of the gang is a little suspicious, but EQ makes
nice to Snow White and they magically whisk the EQ away to a different realm –
the realm fake!Robin has been shipped to – so they can probably forget a HEA
there.
Y’know, I’d have preferred a “we don’t know where she’s gone
but I know she’s on a better path” mystery than “ha even she’s going to get a
love interest, unlike Regina”.
So time to catch up with Killian who is full of angst and
sharing this with Nemo who points out that Killian needs to deal with his guilt
– either by telling Emma and hoping for her forgiveness or by learning to
forgive himself
He does neither and instead tries to burn his memory away
in one of the magical Dream Catchers – and is seen by Emma doing so. Emma also
sees the memory
Emma isn’t furious with Killian for what he did – I mean,
she does know who Killian was. She knows his past. Knows he has changed. Knows
he loves her and knows he is working very hard to be a better person. I’m less
inclined since I don’t think Killian has had near the arduous redemption train
that Regina has nor do I think love is inherently redemptive – but he HAS
proven to the Charmings that he is a better person (so it’s his actual victims
at least, who we’d be looking to for redemption)
Emma has no doubt that David and Snow would forgive him
and, honestly, nor do I because that’s them. But it’s less about that for
Killian and his own guilt – whether he could endure living so close to his
victims and not be completely overwhelmed by it. Self-loathing, not fear of
rejection
In some ways this could be a third part of our redemption
posts: when self loathing and guilt in itself can be an over the top
barrier and how part of it is, again, very self-indulgent (see also Stefan from
the Vampire Diaries)
Emma is angry that he didn’t come to her with this – he doesn’t
know how to deal with it: the answer is to come to her and let her support her,
to trust her and work through it with her. Him not doing so is both an item of
secrecy (and, yes, I’m not generally in the “you’re a couple share everything
camp”, but Emma has a definite point here) and a failure to act as a couple
She gives him back his engagement ring until he’s ready to commit to what it actually means. Again, I’m impressed by how this was handled – not with high drama but with a lot of feeling
Killian is all ready to run off to see with Nemo on the
Nautilis to find himself when Snow White arrives and recaps him on Regina and
the Evil Queen. Killian realises that the Evil Queen (even more than Regina)
just got her Happily ever After. Despite the refrain being that villains can
never get that – he realises if she can be redeemed and accepted as redeemed
then he certainly can. He runs to tell the good news to Nemo and that he’s not
coming
And then Gideon screws it all up by sending the nautilus out to sea
