Once Upon A Recap
By Kelvin Cedeño
Nasty Habits
(Episode 3x04)
The Enchanted Forest Flashback
We join young Baelfire not long after his father
Rumpelstiltskin has become the dark one. Rumpel keeps Bae indoors at
all times for fear that his enemies will come after his son, but Bae
believes the real reason is because Rumpel’s afraid he will run
away. The two have an argument over this, and when Rumpel returns
later hoping to win him over, his fear has been realized: Bae’s
gone.

Rumpel tracks Bae to the village of Hamlin. All the
children in the town have been lured away overnight by a mysterious
cloaked figure playing a pipe. Rumpel waits for the stranger and his
music to return and hears it that night. He follows all of the
children drawn to the music into the woods and finds them all
dancing around a campfire. The cloaked figure with the pipe turns
out to be Peter Pan.
Peter has been lonely in Neverland and has lured
away boys who feel unloved by their parents to join him on the
island. Rumpel doesn’t believe Bae could be persuaded so easily, so
Peter lets Rumpel ask Bae for himself. Instead, Rumpel magically
transports himself and Bae back home. Bae is furious. Peter told him
beforehand about making the offer to Rumpel, and Bae’s upset that
Rumpel didn’t trust him enough to even ask if he wanted to stay with
Peter, especially since he would’ve gone home if given the choice.

Neverland: The Quintet
Snow White, David, Emma, Regina, Hook, and Tinker
Bell all hatch a plan to break into Peter’s campsite. Unfortunately,
upon finding out the group hasn’t come up with an escape plan, Tink
leaves. Hook mentions that there’s been only one person who’s
managed to leave the island without Peter’s permission: Bae. They
head over to a cave Bae lived in during his stay and find it covered
with drawings. Emma discovers a coconut with holes at the top and a
candle inside. The holes form a map of the stars on the ceiling – a
map to home. The group is discouraged, though, when Hook realizes
Bae disguised the map with a certain code only he could understand.

The Bae-centered evening takes its toll on Emma, and
she runs off upset over her lost love. Neverland: Rumpel, Bae, and
Henry Bae is caught by Felix upon his arrival to Neverland but
escapes. He runs into Rumpel who at first thinks he’s an illusion
like Belle has been. Upon realizing Bae’s real and alive, Rumpel
joins him in a plan to get Henry back. The two of them kill a squid
in order to retrieve its ink, ink that can freeze a magical being
like Peter.
Peter tries to get Henry to join the other Lost Boys
in the festivities, but Henry refuses. When Peter tries to play his
pipe for him, a pipe only boys who feel unloved can hear, Henry
hears nothing. Suddenly, everyone but Peter is knocked out by a
sleeping spell, and Rumpel and Bae make themselves known. Bae shoots
an arrow at Peter, and although Peter catches it, the intention is
done: the arrow was laced with squid ink. Bae retrieves Henry, but
as he and his father leave, Peter mentions the prophecy.

After they’ve gone, Bae demands to know about the
prophecy and is horrified to know Rumpel had considered killing
Henry. Rumpel swears that’s no longer the case and that he’s a
changed man ready to sacrifice his life for Henry’s, but Bae doesn’t
want to take the chance. He freezes Rumpel with squid ink and
carries a still unconscious Henry away. After the spell wears off,
Rumpel confesses aloud to Belle his concerns over Bae’s mistrust and
whether or not it’s valid. Despite her comforts, Rumpel sends the
vision of Belle away.
Bae arrives at the quintet’s campsite but is caught
by Peter and the Lost Boys. Henry wakes up after Bae’s already been
taken away. Peter and Henry talk, and during the conversation, Peter
stresses the fact that Henry thinks Bae’s dead and that Emma still
hasn’t come to rescue him, yet. Playing his flute again for Henry,
Peter’s pleased to see Henry can hear it, now, and Henry proceeds to
join the Lost Boys in the celebration.

Once Upon A Theory
The biggest surprise of the episode is the
revelation that Rumpel and Peter knew each other as children. Rumpel
mentions Peter betraying him somehow, a plot point we’re sure to get
a flashback narrative for at some point. Peter seems to know an
awful lot about Rumpel as he mentions how both Rumpel’s father and
wife Mila have left him, the latter being something that happened
presumably long after Peter and Rumpel parted ways. Turning Pan into
the Pied Piper of Hamlin was a clever touch, and it’ll be
interesting to see what other roles he may play in the series. At
the moment, Rumpel thinks Bae still has Henry, so we have yet to
know what his next move will be. As soon as he somehow finds out
Peter’s got Henry again, it wouldn’t seem out of the question for
Rumpel to sacrifice his life by the season’s end as it would
complete his character arc of trying to become selfless.
It still hasn’t been revealed, yet, how Bae escaped
from Neverland as a boy, so that’s something else to watch out for.
There’s also the ticking clock of David’s dreamshade wound which
only Hook knows about at the moment. It’s already been explained in
the previous episode by Tink that Regina’s magic can’t work against
dreamshade, but that doesn’t mean Rumpel’s can’t, either.

Despite the visions we have of her (the cause of
those still being a tad unclear), we don’t know what Belle’s up to
at Storybrooke, nor do we know what any of the town residents are up
to. Despite this clearly being a Neverland-centric season, with the
cast of characters the show has at its disposal, it seems only
logical we catch up with the town (not to mention the present-day
Enchanted Forest). There’s still an obviously large gap in Aurora
and Phillip’s story that needs to be filled soon.