[Keb]

I am excited for more Oz lore. Terrified about what they’re going to do with it. Excited for more Zelena and very excited for more Hades. Not sure if I want them together or not…does Zelena just have a thing for all-powerful evil lawyer types?

I have a feeling the press release’s promise of some Rumbelle is going to be approximately 2 seconds setting up the cliffhanger for the week after which dangit I’m not going to be able to watch live. Dangit. But there’s going to be too much Oz stuff to weave in all the dangling threads elegantly.

[Keb]

This episode felt like filler and it really shouldn’t have…but I’m stuck on the baby-contract cliffhanger and that storyline was entirely dropped for this episode.

Liked:
–I laughed so hard at Snowing’s discussion about James.
–Equally hard when Cruella revealed she’d known it was David the whole time. Brilliantly done. I love Cruella impossibly in this incarnation (as a villain, darlings…)
–Henry’s frustration coming out. And his honesty.
–Grandpa Charming is second only to anything involving Rumple/Belle in my list of favorite things about Once.
–Liam getting to rescue almost everyone that he once doomed…and the shift to the water was pretty cool. That part was rather satisfying.
–An explanation for how the Jones brothers would have risen so quickly in the ranks…you pay enough to the right people, and bam, you’re an officer.
–The storybook being important again. I swear I teared up when they pulled it out of the box.
–The sorcerer’s mansion being a reliquary for light magic in the Underworld. It just fit nicely. (Of course, Merlin never got to USE said mansion, so…its existence is still strange.)
–Hades really seems to be enjoying his role.
–Hades being the pre-Rumple dealmaker.

Disliked:
–No Belle.
–No Rumple.
–Not so sure about Zelena + Hades…but more Oz makes me happy, so this is a tossup.
–Hades is so worried about losing souls but willing to just toss the evil captain into the flames?
–Liam’s dark side didn’t seem as necessary as it should have been…I think the stakes just weren’t high enough. I dunno, it just didn’t work for me.
–The heroes, who left infants upstairs, still seem very unconcerned about getting back to their children.
–If moving on is awesome for Liam and Herc and all the rest…why is it so important that Hook have more chances to mess up? Maybe moving on would actually be better for him. I actually love the character but I’m not buying the essentiality of risking everyone else’s lives to save Emma’s boyfriend, when it wasn’t necessary for her last three, one of whom was her son’s father and one of whom she was considering marrying.
–The pacing of this episode…was not as good as some. I dunno. I was easily distracted during it, and that doesn’t happen usually.
–You know what was really missing? Pan. Having him present would have helped link this back to previous events and made it possibly more compelling. Pan’s the one character besides Hook who knew Liam that we also know.
–I was also hoping that we’d address Papa Jones and/or Liam II, and they were completely ignored. I suspect it’s unlikely we’ll get to hear more now that Liam’s in a better place, and that makes me sad.
–Also, Liam must know that Killian killed their papa. They know everything down there. Yet he still hero-worships his baby brother…knowing the evil things he’s done.
–And we didn’t get to see Milah & Liam meet, which I would also have liked to see. I get that guest stars are money and complex side stories don’t always serve the plot…but more missed opportunities.

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[Keb]

BTW, it wasn’t 300 years since either part of the deal. Baelfire was probably born less than 200 years ago, and Regina’s life has only been expanded by 28 years from a natural life-span…and while that could be anywhere from mid-30s to early 50s depending on how you estimate her biological age, Rumple’s murder of Fendrake happened concurrently with his relationship with Cora…which had to be within about 2 years preceding Regina’s birth (and at least 9 months before). So we’re looking at a deal that was, I guess in Rumple’s mind, resolved rather than broken, probably 70ish years ago.

Actual date I’ve established on my timeline at present: 1/30/1936.

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[Keb]

It’s not the Dark One that Belle objects to, though she certainly would have objected to his nullifying Hook’s sacrifice in the way he did. She fell in love with Rumple as the Dark One and married him as the Dark One. His being the Dark One was not why she left him (though it did influence the behavior that caused her to leave).

Mainly she objected to not being chosen over power and being lied to. Very reasonable. So yes, she probably would not have slept with him immediately given full disclosure in this case.

I think that they may yet make it work IF Rumple comes clean to her (and we don’t know everything he told her before leaving yet–there could be more), and IF she realizes that he wasn’t choosing power over her because she was no longer in the picture at that moment. She knows better than anyone what kind of man he is and what weaknesses he has, though she’s naive enough to believe he can overcome them through willpower alone. She may not understand how the darkness controls a person’s outlook, but she has wrestled with her own demons of insecurity. That’s part of why it hurt so much when she realized he was lying to her about the dagger–she needed him to trust her as much as she was trusting him, and both sides of the equation were completely violated.

Meh. I agree that it was not fully-informed consent, but I think it was consent nonetheless. And that doesn’t make the baby less precious or important. Nor does it make the story less interesting, though it does fit into a trend of A&E presenting serious consent issues without really addressing what’s going on, starting with Graham in S1.

I’m still looking forward to seeing how this plays out, however. I’ve said since the beginning that the Rumbelle relationship (and, actually, most of the core relationships on the show) is no model for a real one. Marrying a man who murdered his first wife…or falling for a woman who killed/tried to kill both her parents…or a man who keeps trophies of his kills…all REALLY REALLY bad ideas in real life. Our core villains/anti-heroes are NOT GOOD PEOPLE TO DATE.

But they also have magic and exist in a magical storybook. They are characters with extreme flaws. At least Rumple and Killian have both been shown to care about a woman’s consent to some degree. In shipping these characters, we have to treat their myriad crimes as…I guess more allegorical. Otherwise even Snowing would be problematic.

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[Keb]

Did a quick check for timeline purposes of the outfits Rumple wore when murdering the healer and the ones he wore in 216 with Cora. He’s wearing a different one from either the one he wears when he alters the contract with her to be his child or the one he’s wearing later that night/the next morning when they’re to run away together (which are two separate outfits despite the closeness of the events in the same episode).

So my headcanon that he went to kill the healer when she went to kill the king isn’t confirmed by wardrobe evidence…though that tends to be the weakest timeline evidence in this show sometimes, as much care as they take with the outfits in general. (See 511 flashbacks…what a headache.)

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[Keb]

Yeah, I think that Daniel was stuck in a kind of limbo until Regina released him in The Doctor. Possibly because of whatever magic she was using to preserve his body in hopes that magic could bring him back? With the unfinished business being that so long as she clung to him as her only hope for happiness, he couldn’t move on…once she let him go, he was free, as was she to find new love.

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[Keb]

I’m excited about it because, if nothing else, it means that they have to tell some of Belle’s story as well.

I agree that it sucks that Rumple wasn’t fully honest with his wife, but it was a sin of omission about something that he did when he thought she was out of the picture. Bad, but not “she didn’t consent” bad. On the contrary, she enthusiastically embraced her husband under terms that were technically quite correct–when he’d sent her away, he WAS putting her first, protecting her, and being selfless about it. He hadn’t even thought yet of taking back the DO powers.

The baby’s conception was no crime. Rumple’s secrets are going to come out; I’d like to believe he’ll be brave enough to reveal at least some of them to Belle before Hades/the heroes get around to it, but I have my doubts. Still, that hope is part of the tension that this situation sets up.

It’s dramatic, and it makes for an interesting story, even if parts of it have been rehashed a LOT.

I gotta say I loved Hades out-Rumpling Rumple and the twist of Rumple’s child being contracted away. (And the way it was phrased, it was just Rumple’s child–nothing in the show suggests that it had to be Milah’s as well, except for her assumption that it would have to be because they were married.) That part felt like classic first-season caliber Once. I’m looking forward to the fallout…but still hoping for my eventual happy Rumbelle family (and missing Baelfire already).

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[Keb]

Yeah, I’m going…wha…?

Also, as a guess, they usually send out the press releases on Mondays, right? But this weekend is Easter and probably people are going on holiday…some through Monday, no doubt.

It’s already Maundy Thursday.

So…that’s probably why it’s so early?

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[Keb]

Emma so pretty. I think she’s gotten prettier as the show’s aged.

I’m excited for the Apprentice! And Liam. Wonder if we ever get to learn Liam II’s fate.

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[Keb]

Enjoyed this ep–either my fave or 2nd fave of the season so far.

I’ll get more specific after work…but anyway, yes, this was a delicious episode.

I’m currently slating the flashbacks about 6 months before Milah leaves with Killian. Anyone know how old the two boys who play very young Baelfire were at the time of shooting? Might help me adjust my timeline slightly.

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[Author]

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