Opening back in the
fairy tale past where we have Rapunzel driving a cart with her sick husband and
two young daughters. Desperate she resorts to stealing some food from a garden
to try and feed them
And is confronted by
Mother Gothel - which is a close parallel to the original fairy tale. She
offers Rapunzel a deal: her family with have lots of wealth and happiness and
what will Rapunzel give for that. She says “anything”
Which is so
monumentally stupid. Honestly she should be happy she was dealing with Mother
Gothel and not Rumpelstiltskin because he’d take her to the cleaners
Rapunzel ends up
locked in a tower for funsies, crying out for her family until she finally
manages to escape using her hair to climb down. It’s been 6 years before she
finally returns to her daughters: Anastasia and Drizilla and her husband
Marcus. Who has married again in her absence: married Cecilia and is raising
his new step-daughter Ella
Awkward.
Marcus thanks her dearly
for all the many sacrifices she’s made for their family and, yes, he still
loves her. But he loves Cecila too. Soo polyamory?
Apparently not. More
Awkward.
They try to bring
their family together but Drizilla was so young when Rapunzel left she’s
clearly bonded with Cecila more: while Anastasia still loves her mother
Rapunzel, Drizillia is just drifting away. And Once Upon a Time can only
bring together blended families after a few seasons of crawling over broken
glass. It’s a thing.
Mother Gothel returns
to offer a new deal - have a magical Wonderland poison mushroom to use on
Cecila to make everything better! Rapunzel refuses - that’s appalling and evil
and Cecilia is an innocent. Gothel comments that she thinks if Rapunzel keeps
this up she will find happiness which is part of Once Upon a Time’s
message that being good means you earn a Happily Ever After
Can we have an aside
to say this is not a good message. Being good is not always or even usually
rewarded (and a poor motive for being good besides): nor is being evil always
punished. Someone without a “happily ever after” has not earned that through
their deeds.
And then Drizilla
calls Cecilia mother at her birthday party after being thoroughly disinterested
in Rapunzel’s present (also is Rapunzel being a waitress at this party? Marcus
did you turn your ex-wife who sacrificed everything for your prosperity into
the help?) at which point Rapunzel snaps and uses the mushroom on Cecilia’s
drink
We’re going to break
to the modern world now and first we have to say
VICTORIA BELLFREY IS
RAPUNZEL?!
Ok, I admit it, I did
not see that coming. Not at all. This also means since she is AWAKE I’m going
to call her Rapunzel from now on along with Rumple, Regina and Drizilla
She’s in prison at
the moment and Drizilla visits so they can both practice venemous barbs -
Drizilla wants Anastasia but Victoria won’t say where she is. She has another
plan to get out of prison: Rumplestiltskin. She lays it out quickly to Rumple
that she knows the truth and after much poking and invoking Belle he finally
admits it: Because he has information on the Guardian, this unknown person who
will be able to take the power of the Dark One, not go evil and therefore allow
Rumple to reunite with Belle in a whole convoluted fashion. Rumple agrees to
get her out of prison for this.
Killian is not
amused.
Rapunzel’s plan now
is to get everything together to wake Anastasia, the first of which is to go to
Jacinda to give her full custody over Lucy. Jacinda is obviously thrilled while
Tiana is suspicious
Rapunzel claims that
it was all a test: she presented the custody papers to Jacinda expecting her to
tear them up and hand them back. Jacinda didn’t, failing the test - but now
she’s getting with Nick, hiring a lawyer and fighting for Lucy’s return then
she has passed and plainly is willing to fight for Lucy
Oh does anyone believe this? Why isn’t Tiana giving her serious dubious eyes?
Jacinda is super
happy about this and shares her celebration with Nick who kisses her. And
Jacinda pulls back because whoa reading the signals wrong. Yes she wants Nick
around and to be involved with his daughter’s life but she’s not looking to
rekindle their relationship. Instead she now holds Henry’s mix tape (and, again,
what person born after the mid-80s even knows what a mix tape is? Shouldn’t
this be a spotify playlist?). Clearly she now sees everything wide open for her
and Henry to get together
Rapunzel goes on to
collect more shinies with Rumple playing chauffeur, followed by Drizilla and
Gothel being very very unsubtle. Rumple tries to call Rapunzel out on this
because he finds it highly dubious she’s jumping through so many hoops for one
daughter and completely ignoring the other one. And he knows what it’s like to
have a son who hates him but he still fought for reconciliation and to be
reunited.
Rapunzel announces
that Rumple totally doesn’t understand her pain but Rumple stomps on that - his
motivation for the first 3 seasons was “missing son who hates me”. He embodies
this pain. So she insists he must understand why she can’t stop. Which we can
kind of see - I mean, look at what Rumple engineered to get back to his son
Time to catch up on
what happened to make Anastasia comatose in the first place: to the fairytale
land. With Cecila magically poisoned and made to flee, Rapunzel gets back with
Marcus (sorry but I’m increasingly becoming suspicious of Marcus and think he
may be a colossal fuckboy) and even accepts Ella and everything is happy. Sort
of. Until Ella and Anastasia fall through a frozen lake - Marcus jumps to save
them and saves Ella, only having chance to save one. Rapunzel is most not
amused that he didn’t save their daughter (so, so much for the whole Ella
acceptance).
She turns to Mother
Gothel who agrees to freeze the last breath in Anastasia’s chest so she doesn’t
die and drops some exposition on us all. Gothel is also trying to find the
Guardian, a person utterly incorruptible by evil (hence why they can take the
Dark One Dagger from Rumple and not go dark side). She thought she had it in
Rapunzel, willing to sacrifice all for her family, but then she went and
poisoned Cecilia. She’s now hoping Anastasia may be the one because bloodlines
(morality is genetic now?) but Rapunzel turns the tables and springs the trap
which gets Gothel trapped in the tower
And leaves me
wondering if Gothel is trying to find the goodest of goodie two shoes then,
perhaps, she has an underlying positive motive? Or are we looking at needs the
super good for nefarious means.
In the present,
Gothel and Rumple exchange barbs - with Gothel revealing Rapunzel is after his
great-grandaughter - Lucy. Which, honestly, I’d completely forgotten. Everyone
on this show is related.
Rumple goes looking
for Lucy but instead finds Killian who has just broken into Rumple’s storage
locker which has lots of ominous artefacts, like Killian’s own hook - and files
on everyone. Shame Rumple’s not doing anything with them. But following up on
his old cases he finds that Rumple is asking people to touch his Dark One
Dagger (behave) to see if they feel anything. I mean, really? Rumplestiltskin,
the Dark One, who plotted for several seasons in ever more convoluted ways is
reduced to handing people his dagger and asking if they feel woo-woo?
Killian confronts
Rumple and he says it’s all so he can reunite with his wife. This makes
absolutely zero sense but Killian decides to believe it for REASONS
Lucy is actually with
Rapunzel in the hospital where Anastasia’s comatose body is laying (no-one
thought to check here?). She needs one more thing to wake her up - to crush the
beliefs of the truest believer. She pulls out a Once Upon a Time fairytale
book, the same book that Henry had. In it she can see the stories of all her
relatives and everything she believed is proven true, including that her mother
is Cinderella! Lucy is overjoyed - except Rapunzel then tells her story
The story that she
did everything a hero should do (except for that pesky poisoning) and still
didn’t get a happily ever after. That while fairy tales are real, that doesn’t
mean happy ever afters are (I actually want this - to counter the
aforementioned implication that someone with a bad ending deserved it. Except,
Rapunzel? Not a good guy. Really. Poisoning bad. This is not complicated)
To drive that home
she also has a video of Jacinda kissing Nick - telling Lucy that Jacinda and
Henry will never get together, her happy ever after is doomed. Lucy,
unsurprisingly cries and runs out - Rapunzel catches her tears
And with this tear
she can wake up Anastasia - and Drizilla watches with tears in her eyes. But in
doing, Lucy collapses. Belief was important it seems
Ok, I have a lot of
kudos for Once Upon a Time completely surprising me with the Rapunzel
revelation. And I say again, I actually think they manages to reboot this
series. They have taken the core elements, introduced a new cast and not
allowed the old cast to dominate or drag it down. I didn’t think they’d manage
it but they have - the story is original, not copying what has gone before and
is still managing to keep the same theme and feel. Well done
I also quite like
this complicated depiction of love being a danger - ultimately this is
Rapunzel. Rapunzel’s love - her utter obsession - with her daughter has driven
her to evil. Love conquers all but that’s not always a good thing - some things
shouldn’t be conquered
But I do frown at
Rumple because… what happened? This master, powerful, brilliant manipulator
just seems to have no plan at all. No plotting, no thinking, no cunning - he
has this big storage container full of files and artefacts but he’s doing
nothing with them and Rapunzel is just manipulating him so easily. Rumple was
never this simple or this easy
