Once Upon A Recap
By Kelvin Cedeño
Quite A Common Fairy
(Episode 3x03)
The Enchanted Forest Flashback
During her early years of learning magic with
Rumpelstiltskin, Regina feels trapped in her current predicament and
skips a lesson with Rumpel. Her frustrations cause her to fall from
her chamber’s balcony, but she’s rescued in midair by a fairy who
introduces herself as Tinker Bell. Regina and Tink talk, and upon
finding out how unhappy Regina is as Queen in a loveless marriage,
Tink decides to find her a new love. The Blue Fairy warns Tink about
associating with Regina, but Tink’s determined to bring good to her
life.

Stealing some pixie dust, she
brings it to Regina, telling her the dust will
lead her to true love. The two of them fly off
together and are led to a pub. Tink points out
the man Regina’s meant to be with is the one
with the lion tattoo on his forearm. She leaves
Regina to her own devices, and while Regina
initially is willing to approach the man, she
gets cold feet and runs off. Tink returns to
Regina’s chamber to find out how it went, but
Regina lies and says the man was horrible to
her. Tink suspects it’s a lie and calls her out
on it, and Regina lashes out at Tink for trying
to interfere in her life. Upset at breaking
fairy law for nothing, Tink flies off and is
approached by the Blue Fairy. Her magic and
wings are stripped away as punishment for her
crime.
Neverland: The Quintet
As the group continues the
search for Henry, they discover that Peter keeps
relocating his campsite in an effort to toy with
them. Hook suggests there’s one person who Peter
trusts who can get them to Henry: Tinker Bell.
Regina is uncomfortable about this, but the
others agree to seek her out. During the search,
Hook notices David’s wound and inspects it while
the others aren’t around. David only has days to
live, and while Hook feels Snow and Emma deserve
to know about it, David believes Tink’s pixie
dust can cure him.

Regina stays behind as she feels
her presence will make Tink uncooperative. The
others go up to Tink’s treehouse, but not only
is it unoccupied, there’s not an ounce of pixie
dust anywhere. Snow finds Regina’s handkerchief
and realizes Tink’s been trailing them and has
likely gone after Regina. Tink, meanwhile, has
blown poppy dust at Regina, knocking her
unconscious and dragging her into a cave. When
Regina comes to, Tink threatens to kill her, so
to make it easier for her, Regina rips her own
heart out. She offers Tink the chance to destroy
it but warns that doing so will send Tink down
the same dark path Regina’s taken. Tink’s unable
to do it, and Regina admits she never went into
the pub that night because she was afraid love
would make her weak.
The two emerge just as the
others catch up with them. They explain that
Tink is powerless now but is willing to help if
she can go back to the Enchanted Forest with
them.

Neverland: Henry
Peter has a bit of fun with
Henry when he has him shoot an apple off Felix’s
head. Henry instead tries to shoot Peter much to
his amusement. Peter explains that the Lost Boys
engage in all sorts of dangerous games, but
Henry feels he doesn’t belong with them. Peter
tells him that the reason he’s been looking for
Henry all these years is because, being the
product of a mother born from true love and a
father born from the dark one, Henry is the key
to saving magic. Henry is dubious that he could
be so important until Peter shows him the
parchment with his likeness on it.

The Present-Day
Enchanted Forest
Bae is desperate to find a way
to Emma and Henry as he knows first-hand how
cruel Peter could be. At a loss as to how to
travel there, he gets an idea when he discovers
Robin has a four-year-old son. After much
pleading, he convinces Robin to use the boy as
bait for the Neverland shadow. They have the boy
stand in front of a window saying aloud that he
believes. With that, the windows burst open, and
the shadow turns up. It tries to drag the child
with him, but Mulan swipes at it with her sword.
As it turns to flee, Bae jumps out the window
and hangs onto the shadow as they fly to
Neverland.
Robin offers Mulan the chance to
join his Merry Men, but seeing Robin and Bae
talk about their lost loves has made her realize
she needs to confess hers first. She finds
Aurora at her palace and is about to tell her
when Aurora drops the news that she’s pregnant.
With that, Mulan makes the decision to join the
Merry Men. When she returns to Robin’s camp, we
see that Robin has a tattoo of a lion on his
forearm.

Once Upon A Theory
As per usual with “Once Upon a
Time,” questions are raised that will surely be
answered later on. The biggest is in regards to
Mulan and her love for...someone. The way it’s
presented in the show, Mulan could be in love
with either Phillip or Aurora (or both). Having
her be either a lesbian or a bisexual is a bold
move, but at the same time, it feels a tad too
predictable that they would chose the
cross-dressing female warrior of all people to
be one. We still don’t know how Phillip was
brought back, so hopefully the flashback of that
storyline will make Mulan’s feelings clearer.
Not one, but two Wizard of Oz
references are dropped in this episode: Tink
uses poppy dust to knock Regina out (since she
has no magic of her own), and Bae mentions ruby
slippers as being one of many magical items that
can transport people. Legally, the latter can
never appear in the series due to MGM securing
the rights to them from their famous 1939
musical (the slippers are silver in the book),
but it does make one wonder when the series is
finally going to be incorporating Oz into its
mythos. Hints like these have been dropped all
throughout seasons one and two, so it seems
inevitable.

The idea of Regina and Robin
being each other’s true love is an interesting
one. At this point in the show, Marion’s dead,
and Tink tells Regina that her actions of avoiding her destiny
have destroyed Robin’s life, too. More importantly, should Regina
and Robin finally meet, there will be a familiar dynamic of her
becoming close with a widowed gentleman who’s been left with a son
to take care of (Kurt and Owen/Greg). Let’s see if she doesn’t
completely wreck that family the way she did the Mendells. It would
give her a chance at a happy ending, and she can try to be a more
well-rounded mother since (if we’re going by Henry’s disdain of her
for most of the series) she wasn’t the most nurturing despite
clearly loving him.