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(mother gave it to her as they fled; father made it using a beam from their house before the Villain crushed it; she made it out of a stone given to her by her first and only friend before he was sucked into a vortex of evil; the stone reminds her to be brave, to love deeply and that kindness matter. Or you know…something equally sappy)
(Then it’ll turn out that the wood from which the house was made came from the World Tree, also knowns as the Magical Tree That Solves All Magical Problems By Unknown Ways. This, of course, will come in very handy when the unstoppable PLOT meets the unmovable PLOT HOLE).
[adrotate group="5"]This would also help explain why Nimue can’t kill Merlin and instead turns him into a tree.
Actually, that makes a lot of sense to me. If they keep with Arthurian legend at all (which we really have no reason to believe they will, but whatever), Vortigan and Merlin go way back, to when Merlin was a boy. Vortigan was originally told to sacrifice Merlin (well, not Merlin as such, but a boy with Merlin’s particular parentage) in order to keep the castle he was trying to build from collapsing. Since they like to merge different legends together, maybe castle = Camelot, and V was the claimant to the throne to Camelot before Arthur. Or something.
While don’t know exactly what Merlin’s agenda is, I think he can be trusted. If he said not to pull out the sword or else bad things would happen, then Emma probably would’ve been better off leaving it alone.
I agree with you that he can be trusted in principle, but I think Merlin is more of a “big picture” kind of guy. Bad things can happen, yes, but since he is someone who presumably can see the future, one could speculate that he can see the chain of events that will lead to a particular result — the morality and/or nature of the concrete steps that lead there would be less relevant to him than the bottom line. Doesn’t his dialogue say something like “when you do something you’re not supposed to do, even for the right reasons, bad things happen”? In context, it seems to be about the sword. But it tells us nothing about what the sword is, or why it leads to bad consequences.
I am assuming the bad consequence is that it’ll somehow release all previous Dark Ones and other assorted baddies into SB — it’ll literally bust open the gates of hell. Considering SB these days, I’m not sure that the villains’ new place of residence will be that much of an improvement. How the show will tie this back to Camelot, I have zero clue.
Nimue is lovely, and does look a bit like Violet. But then again, Arthur looks a bit like Hook. Her dress has a rose floral pattern. More RODs (roses of doom) — this definitely doesn’t spell anything good for Merlue (Nimlin?)
She seems to be wearing some pendant cleverly concealed by her hair. I wonder if that’s going to be significant in some way?
Masked Dark One appears to have a rather strong chin, so I doubt it’s Nimue. I wonder what the significance of the mask’s design is, if any.
Do we actually know that Excalibur is what we think it is/does what we think it does? Mostly the information is from Merlin, Arthur, Emma, and Clippit!Rumple. None of these are reliable narrators — even Merlin, who so far appears to be a good guy, clearly has his own agenda, and isn’t sharing it.
As @Gaultheria says, we actually don’t know for sure what the pre-conditions of pulling the sword out of the stone are. For all we know, it has to be a white dude under 5’11 with great potential for total self-loathing. Sir Kay was clearly too confident.
Meanwhile, Rumple was hauling *** the hell out of town which was easily the most brilliant heroic thing he’s ever done. Yes, get Belle out of that hell hole to a town that appreciates her and makes use of its librarians! But Belle was like, “There are people I care about back in that town how can you be so cowardly as to leave them?” to which I make the reply: WHO ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!?!
Oh Jesus, THIS! Actually, the whole review is brilliant, thanks @RG for posting. I too thought that hauling their tush out of that godforesaken town was the best thing they could’ve done. Not very brave? Pfah. As Emma said, there’s plenty of “heroes” running around town, not that this made anyone’s life better. Seriously, move to NYC! Don’t like NYC? Move to Vermont and open a hipster coffeeshop/antique store/book store and be done with it. I’ll miss them, but it’ll give me permission to stop watching this pile of crazy.
I used to think that the accusation that A&E are trolling their audience was a bit harsh. Not anymore. After this last masterchunk, I think OUAT really is trolling for lulz.
A pretty old classic, but I remember I loved it when I was a kid.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096446/
What about the Golden Compass? I don’t know about the movie adaptation, but the books were quite good.
The Golden Compass (2007) – IMDb
Oy, what a trainwreck. Now, I wish I could like this episode. And some aspects of it I did like, but overall, from a writing point of view, this makes some of the most slap dash, poorly edited fanfic out there look like it should win the Pulitzer. Seriously.
Liked:
The valiant effort by both RC and EdR to play their characters as if OUAT were still a character-driven show, while ignoring to the best of their acting abilities the ways in which Rumple and Belle have gotten retconned, and then re-retconned with every new season and episode. Seriously, the work they do with what they are given is really impressive, and that those characters still manage to have any semblance of continuity at all over the years is I think solely a testament to their acting talent. It sure as heck isn’t the result of the writing.
JMo as Dark Swan is appropriately chilling.
Rumple managed to pull the sword. Well, Ok then. I mean, good, fair enough. I am curious what the show writers will do with his new heroic status, if anything.
Zelena. I never thought I’d say this, but I actually liked Zelena in this episode. She really calls it like it is — and I sort of appreciate how she has her own agenda.
Merlin. The only part of the plot that’s even remotely interesting.
Mixed:
Chip 🙁
Merida in fact was the bear. Myeh. Very predictable. And really, I’m not sure why this was necessary.
Belle and Merida’s adventure. I don’t object to it per se, it was fine as an idea, but its execution really made no sense. Why kidnap Belle? That’s just silly. Also, I don’t buy for a second that a bunch of patriarchally-inclined clansmen would simply accept Merida’s bluster. No matter how good she is with the sword, there was vastly more of them. It was one of those cartoonified moments that early OUAT was so good at avoiding, and now seem to be all over the place, especially since the Frozen arc.
Disliked:
Pretty much everything else. Unless the “heroes” (by which I mean the Charmings, Hook, Regina etc) are secretly all munching on fly agaric — or maybe breathing in fly agaric smoke — while no one is looking, there really is no reasonable explanation for their suddenly found total lack of awareness of what’s going on around them. I mean Arthur couldn’t be shadier if he wore a vampire cape.
According to everyone in SB, if Rumple loses his life that’s an acceptable price because he’s had so many chances. But Emma we totally have to save! OMG: get this through your heads, you hypocrites. The darkness has been canonically established to be a sentient entity that can corrupt even a SAVIOR. What does that mean? It means that Rumple was just as much under the influence of that darkness as Blessed Emma Swan. So it means we try to save BOTH. Because they BOTH matter and are family! COME ON. Remember when he sacrificed himself for his love and his son? For the town? He is worth fighting for, just like Emma.
All this. Actually, everything @RG said.
The only way that that whole thing makes any sense to me is if we decide to interpret the current state of the SB plot line as Storybrooke High. This is about who’s in the popular clique, and who isn’t. Rumple isn’t, and never will be — and when it comes to who they are going to help and who they aren’t, I actually sincerely think they wouldn’t lift a finger for anyone who isn’t “in-crowd.” And I’m going to harp on this again — it’s yet another example of how OUAT can be read as inadvertently, subtly classist. Rumple and Belle, after all, are the only “nouveau riche” in that crowd, and that’s the only thing that differentiates them from anyone else. Regina, the ex-genocidal tyrant, and Hook, the former womanizing pirate, or Snow and Charming with their babynapping ways, have exactly zero right to a moral high ground.
What I can’t figure out is whether OUAT is trying to present some sort of subtle commentary on the non-heroicness of the heroes (much like with the Snowing and the Egg plotline), or whether it’s just devolved into high school politics elevated into “mythological” level. I want to think the writers are self aware enough, but I honestly have my doubts.
[quote=311388]well would not be by choice, they of course would show emma trying to take henry heart but not being able to do it bc of the protection spell, so she would go to the next person, Hook, again a second choice after Henry.[/quote]
*twitch* I so hope you’re wrong. But you know, this brings the question of whether a Dark Curse can be second rate. I mean, what if it’s like the cheap knock off version of the original Dark Curse? Only lasts for half a season and then falls apart on you, so you need to go and replace it.^-^
[quote=311346]hen whose heart did she sacrifice? Henry’s heart. There is no way that Emma loves Hook more than her son.[/quote]
Slurpeez, I’m with you on that one. There’s no way that she loves Hook more than Henry. In a sense, Emma’s relationship with her son is so central to the show — Hook is, yet again, a peripheral character. But clearly something’s afoot because Henry seems to be doing just fine. And my understanding is that if you crush someone’s heart, they essentially die. Unless… what if she took his heart, replaced it with someone else’s, and then crushed Henry’s? With the caveat that she’d somehow restore it/get it back — and obviously Henry isn’t dead. So, if that theory holds any water, whose heart would she transplant? I originally thought her own, but then it’d be tainted by the darkness. What if it’s Regina’s? IE what if Regina willingly gave her heart to Henry? Anyway, this is probably crazy talk…
