Monday, May 1, 2017

Once Upon a Time 6.19: “The Black Fairy”

“Sometimes I feel that this is our family’s fate. For parents and children to always be torn apart.”
- Rumple

This is the episode and backstory we’ve been waiting for since we learned that the Black Fairy was Rumple’s mother. And boy did it deliver with a lot of answers I wasn’t expecting to get! In the Enchanted Forest many (many) years ago, we see Fiona giving birth to a little boy alongside her husband, Malcolm. No sooner has she held the babe in her arms but two fairy godmothers show up. Apparently, there’s a prophecy about the child and he will be a Savior and this meant that Blue had to accompany Tiger Lily on the trip.

In the present, Rumple uses an expired dragon egg to wake Blue but things go wrong. Namely, Gideon and Fiona have impersonated the Charmings and she kidnaps Blue back to the mines. Rumple manages to slap a magic suppressing cuff on Gideon’s arm before he can leave and ties him up. He’s going to get his son’s heart back if it’s the last thing he does! We also have some C-plot stuff with Regina and Zelena. Basically, a now de-powered Zelena needs to learn to cope and drive and get Henry out of dodge if the final battle goes south and people start dying. The driving bit is admittedly pretty funny. Fiona and Regina are facing off and Zelena slams into the fairy with the car Regina gave her. I guess fairies are more indestructible than normal folk because she just got back up and poof’d herself away no worse for wear, although a bit pissed off.

When Gideon can’t tell his father where his heart it (Fiona’s done a number on him if he resists her commands), Rumple decides the best option is to go into the dream realm to have a chat with his boy. He brings Emma along to keep from doing anything stupid. We quickly find out that the dream realm is Rumple’s, not Gideon and Emma tries to appeal to his sense of being an orphan to try and show him he’s not alone. It was a good try, Emma, really. He’s afraid to learn why his mother abandoned him and he’s in for quite the rude awakening. We see in the past that Fiona became obsessed with the prophecy which said a great evil, marked by a crescent scar, would kill her baby boy during the final battle. She even turns herself into a fairy to protect him. Rumple sees how much his mother loved him and that he was mean to be a savior. So, he believes he needs to face his mother alone. I have to admit I wasn’t expecting Rumple to have been born a Savior or that Fiona was actually married to Malcolm or that she wasn’t a fairy this whole time. I can definitely see where Rumple gets a lot of his traits now. That fierceness to do anything to protect his children and the propensity to royally mess it all up when he tried.

It's a good thing Regina and the Charmings found the rest of the wand during his nap because he’s going to need it. Or at least he would if they actually fought. Instead, Rumple just talks to his mother but she says he doesn’t know everything. She shows him what happened at the very end of things. She was in the fairy vault trying to put together a dark curse (likely the one that kicked off season 1) so that no one can harm her son and taking Tiger Lily’s heart turns her evil and we see she’s the evil destined to kill her son in the final battle. Tiger Lily says (after Blue comes to her rescue) that they could use the Shears of Fate to sever Fiona’s connection to her son’s destiny but instead, Fiona uses them on her son. Then promptly gets banished and sullen, drunk Malcolm gets dumped with the child that will always remind him of his lost wife. So, he gives Rumple his name because he thinks it will hurt him or something. Way to resent a baby who literally did nothing to you! In the present, Fiona asks Rumple to forgive her, since he’s had personal experience with the things she’s done. I did find it interesting the parallel of things Rumple did that his mother did as well. I still don’t get why she was kidnapping children and making them work in her mines? Was she just lonely? Did she only take Gideon and not Bae because she knew Rumple was her son at that point or did she need Gideon for his magic? Yes, we got lots of answers this week but I could have used a few more.

We cut to him plopping a blackened heart down on the table for the assembled heroes at Granny’s and Emma commends him (even calling him Savior) and then he goes back to the shop and returns his son’s heart. He promises Belle and his son that whatever he does, even if it doesn’t seem it at the time, is for them and to keep them safe. Those are pretty words and I hope they’re true because by episode’s end, he’s aligned with his mother for the final battle. In a way, I’m not surprised that this happened. His loyalties shift constantly on this show and we know he’s always longed to belong and be loved. But he really isn’t going to get it from this woman and I sincerely hope the bonds he’s formed with the Charmings since finding out Henry is his grandson are enough to stop him from hurting them. Yes, he saved one son but could he really harm the memory of his other son by harming the woman he loved? Oh, and next week Emma and Hook are going forward with their wedding (although Fiona claims Emma is going to die).

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