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Once Upon a Time: Best Laid Plans

“We are not heroes anymore.”

If you bought what this episode was selling, there was a lot to like. Personally, I found it a little difficult.

To believe that two characters we’ve known for so long have been harbouring something they believe to be deceitful and cruel for this long is a little hard to take. It was a test of my patience to accept that Belle saw something happen to Anna in ‘Family Business’ and basically forgot all about the innocent girl who helped her. In this instance Snow and Charming rationalised Maleficent’s child being taken away from her (and cursed with an evil future) by saying they would make up for it, and it’s even harder to take.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it makes sense that they could forget about what they did by easing their conscience with their own child and the kingdom’s futures; at least if you let it slide that these are supposedly the two biggest heroes in this show. With titles like that they certainly haven’t done much to earn it recently, though admittedly it does make them far more interesting.

Emma learning what they did was obviously going to upset her. It feels a bit contrived for the show to throw this in just as a way to get Emma on the fence so Rumple can turn her onto his side or use her powers to get his plan into motion. I can’t imagine she’ll help willingly in any case, so he must have some other tricks up his sleeve to turn her.

His team of queens is still continuing to cause a lot of trouble even without Ursula. Naturally Regina’s undercover stint came to an end when the others finally figured her out, which was bound to happen. As fun as it was, I’m glad it wasn’t dragged out for another few weeks. With her stuck in captivity it’ll be fun to see how the others are able to keep her imprisoned. Here’s hoping for a great Regina vs Maleficent showdown at some point before the end of the season.

Plus

Now we know that Ursula and Cruella ended up in the real world thanks to the sorcerer’s apprentice and his spell to save baby Emma from turning dark.

Where is Maleficent’s daughter now? Are this Lily and Emma’s old friend one and the same? Answer: of course they are.

The Author is free! Kind of guessed that the wanderer would be the author (his appearance was a little too random).

Now that the whole town has been placed under a sleeping curse, nobody can ever be placed under one again. I hope the writers are happy with that commitment and don’t throw continuity out the window if they need it again.

Outside of the Snow and Charming issues, I actually really enjoyed this episode. The war between the two sides is firing on all cylinders and there’s a lot of excitement to go along with it. If you can take a page out of the Charmings’ book and accept that there was nothing they could have done in their situation, and try to understand that it doesn’t change everything we’ve seen until now, then ‘Best Laid Plans’ is a winner. Just don’t ask Ursula, Cruella or Lily to back them up on that.

3.5 out of 5 dragon eggs

Originally posted at PandaTV.

1 comment:

  1. My interpretation was that the whole dragon egg exchange was supposed to be out of character for Snow and David. When the Sorcerer's Apprentice trapped the Author in the book he said, "How dare you force me to do that to that child?" implying that none of them were exercising free will and that the Author made them do what they did.

    I have to hand it to this show. I was completely uninterested in Emma's flashback to her time with Lily, but now they've gone and made Lily relevant and intriguing. She didn't seem evil in the flashback, but maybe she just hadn't finished baking yet. Or maybe there isn't as much destiny as they thought.

    ReplyDelete

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