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.