“Our Decay” initial reactions – ONCE238

On our initial reaction of the episode “Our Decay”, we talked about Zelena and Hades’ secret, and Rumple and Belle’s very honest and scary conversation! Plus, a little bit about Baby Pistachio, Henry sleeping on the job, and all the feels from episode 5×16!

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Emma, Snow, David, Regina, Robin, Henry and Hook continue to search for a way to free everyone from the Underworld. At the mercy of Hades, Gold creates a portal to Storybrooke, which transports Belle, Zelena and Baby Hood to the Underworld. While Zelena and Regina get into a sibling squabble, Belle is reunited with Rumple only to learn some tremendously shocking news that will change her life forever. Meanwhile, Snow and David hopelessly attempt to send a message from the Underworld to their son, Neal. In flashbacks, Hades learns about Zelena’s very special spell and pays her a visit in Oz with the intention of striking an alliance, but finds himself with more than just a partner in crime.

These are our first thoughts about this Once Upon a Time episode. We’ll share more about “Our Decay” in our upcoming full discussion (usually live on Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m., USA Eastern Time).

Initial Reactions

Remember, these are only our initial reactions regarding tonight’s episode so please bear with us if we’re a bit all over the place. If you have your own thoughts, feedbacks, or theories regarding tonight’s episode, however, send them over to us and join our upcoming full discussion!

Watching Hades fall in love was kind of throw up inducing. We didn’t know whether to trust him. He’s Lord of the dead so  we’re not sure if he was a trustworthy guy. Written by Tze Chun and Dana Horgan, “Our Decay” had all kinds of beautiful great feels. The script was fantastic; the characters the script was applied to, not so fantastic.

Zelena: “Hey, i just met you, this is crazy”
Hades: ” so heres my number, give me baby”
—WWO

We do know then that the baby is definitely not Hades’ and that’s good to know, but what does he want with the baby? Does he want to do the time travel thing too, otherwise, why else would he want the baby? Why are people so opposed to having their baby used, the baby’s actually not being hurt, after all? Can we trust Hades and his reason for bringing Zelena down? At least we finally got an answer as to why the Underworld looked like Storybrooke, which sounds beautiful but again, can we trust Hades’ words? Did he really created the Underworld to looked like Storybrooke for Zelena?

Based on the production and where we left with this episode, perhaps we can trust what Hades was saying. If they’re showing certain things that we can’t trust, usually what they do is they tend to show us why we shouldn’t trust it by the end of the episode; we get to see the hidden story that no one else knows, and they didn’t show anything like that.

We also finally learn a bit about how Henry writes the book, which probably is the way the author is supposed to be doing it is where they’re not really aware of what they’re writing but are being the instrument to enable the pen to write the story, unconsciously writing the story. Plus, Henry apparently makes all of those arts as well.

The way magic works in the Underworld is that hope or love is what help reignites someone’s magic, which might be the reason why hope is forbidden. Zelena started to get her magic back while she was holding her child, so the motherly love, maybe with a little bit of hope, helps her magic to come back. But then also we saw that Regina was able to use her magic when she saw that horse that was a representation of the horse from her childhood and the relationship with Daniel. That gave her hope or reignited some feeling of love, and that helped her to use her magic again. Maybe that’s one of the reasons hope is forbidden in the Underworld? That, if people have hope, they can overthrow Hades? This is the story that Hades didn’t want to know, his weak spot. Perhaps, it’s not the whole Zelena thing be what can bring down Hades, but that hope and love can defeat him. Or does he simply not want people to know that he has a weakness, and that he loves someone? Unless he is telling the truth and just wants true love, because that’s his original reason for wanting to change the past. Does he still want to defeat his brother now that he wants to live a life of love with Zelena?

It was nice to see the Scarecrow in this episode, as well as an older Dorothy, who is basically a Snow White in the making. Plus, we also got to see munchkins and a lot more of Oz than we’ve seen in the other episodes with Oz. It was also surprising to find that the Scarecrow actually had a brain and speaking of the Scarecrow’s brain, that’s not what Zelena used for her spell; it was Rumplestiltskin’s. What happens to the Scarecrow’s brain? Why ditch the Scarecrow’s brain for Rumple’s? Did Dorothy come and stole it back from her? Does she still had those ingredients?

We really loved what Regina said about loving your enemies and making them your family. These last couple of episodes have had some great signs of maturity and great dialogue from Regina especially. We actually felt sorry for Zelena when she decides to give up her child. Yes, Zelena is wicked, but she was really smart, unlike Regina when she was the Evil Queen who was clumsy and wasn’t very thorough. Not Zelena, though, she was wicked and cunning. When Hades mentioned that he tortured Zelena’s birthday, April 15, out of a miller’s daughter—Cora, which was sad to hear that he tortured Cora—it reminded us that now that they are both in the Underworld, perhaps they could finally have a reunion. It could be interesting to see them meeting at last but we doubt it will still happen.

There were plenty of other feels with Rumplestiltskin and Belle tonight. In some way, it was nice to see this conversation happen; an honest Rumple looks much better than a dishonest one. But the way he’s telling Belle all this is scary. She has given him so many chances, and it’s nice that he’s finally coming to terms with not trying to hide anything from her anymore, but it’s also kind of scary the way he’s doing it. He didn’t even give her much of an option.

But what did you think about this episode? Did you feel all the feels as much as we did? Share them all with us, including your theories and other feedback and join us for our full discussion this coming Wednesday of “Our Decay.”

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