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“Once Upon A Time” recap: Shadows and Sardines and Shocks, Oh My (2.21)

Previously on Once Upon A Time, Stranger Greg and Tamara kept busy being the worst humans ever, Baelfire somehow only aged to approximately 28 in hundreds of years, and Ruby joined Mulan and Aurora in the Land of Missing Persons.

We open long ago in the Enchanted Forest when Rumpelstiltskin proved he really was the Dark One by tossing his son into a vortex all alone. Little Bae arrives on the other side of the vortex in London, in the time of horse-drawn carriages, where he lives on the streets for approximately six months.

One day, when trash pickings are particularly low, Bae seizes an opportunity to sneak in an open window and steal some bread that’s just lying around in a giant dining room. A little girl comes in tells the boy to leave until she realizes he’s not there to harm anyone, but is just hungry. She offers him the rest of the bread and intrudes herself as Wendy Darling.

In present-day Storybrooke, Gold and Lacey have Dr. Whale pinned to the ground presumably because he looked at Lacey the wrong way. Neal pulls his father off him before he can smash the doctor’s face in. Neal rails on Gold for searching the world for him only to disappear when he’s finally in town. Gold mistakes his presence in Storybrooke as lingering hope for their father/son relationship, but Neal (like Regina) uses The Henry Excuse for why he’s still here, when really everyone knows it’s because he still loves Emma.

Meanwhile, across town, Emma and David bust into Regina’s office — though they didn’t have to do much busting since the door was unlocked. Mary Margaret and Henry join them and they have a conversation that could easily have been plucked from an episode of Scooby Doo. Eventually they decide someone else broke into the room and stole the magic beans. Henry and Emma are afraid something bad has happened to Regina, but Emma swears to Henry — promises, even — that they will find her.

Over in the shady part of Storybrooke, Stranger Greg and Tamara have Regina tied to a table and are murmuring about contacting a “home office” while Hook chats with Regina, who is remarkably calm for someone strapped to a table, being held prisoner by lunatics.

She warns Hook that he’s on the wrong side of this, but all he cares about is killing Rumpelstiltskin. When Greg comes in and makes it clear he plans on using a little electro-shock therapy, he takes his leave. He wants no part in torturing the queen, but he also doesn’t do anything to save her.

Back in London, Wendy is keeping Bae in a crawlspace in her bedroom wall. In her Darling way, she says her parents haven’t noticed her stealing food for him because ‘they’re grownups, they can’t see anything that’s not right in front of them’. Sadly she is mistaken because her parents catch her bread-handed. Father is a little upset, but Mother Darling welcomes him into their home. Wendy tells Bae about a magic shadow that comes through the window sometimes and isn’t attached to a person, and can do wonderful things like fly and change shape. So far, it seems like our classic tale with an extra player. However, Bae is not as entranced by magic as the Darling children and warns them that magic can ruin everything if they let it. However, Wendy doesn’t listen and later that night is carried off by a creepy-ass shadow-thing with scary, glowing eyes that is most definitely NOT the Peter Pan I remember.

In Storybrooke, Gold and Lacey are day-drinking in the shop. Gold doesn’t much care that Regina is missing and in danger, but Charming reminds him that he is owed a favor. Conveniently enough, Rumple has one of Regina’s tears on hand and all he needs is one more. Snow just has to think of a lost puppy and she’s practically wailing, so the spell is complete. Once they drop the mixture into Mary Margaret’s eyes, she will feel and see what Regina feels and sees. And smells, apparently. Because she feels Regina’s pain and smells sardines.

Emma goes to Neal and tells him that she still doesn’t trust Tamara and they go out searching for her on the supposed “run” she went on. Unfortunately, Tamara isn’t so bad at this whole secret-agent thing and shows up just in time to convince them she was, in fact, on a run. Emma apologizes to Neal for not believing him, and Neal apologizes for letting Emma go to jail because Pinocchio told him to.

Not too far from where they stood, Stranger Greg is still shocking Regina, but she’s still insulting them because she’s badass. She laughs at them for thinking they can steal magic — but Tamara clarifies, they don’t mean to steal it. They intend to destroy it. They believe magic is unholy (her word) and that they need to cleanse this earth of it. They are literally the destroyers of childhood dreams.

Emma, still near the docks, realizes (based on Mary Margaret’s clues) that they must be keeping Regina in the canning factory and RUNS to the building. Actually sprints. To find Regina. To save her.

The next morning in Londontown, Wendy returns from Neverland. She is not wearing the expression of a little girl who just got to swim with mermaids, however. Apparently, the Shadow won’t let the Lost Boys leave Neverland, even though at night they cry at night. He let Wendy go because he wants one of her brothers instead. Here is where I decide the Shadow is definitely not Peter Pan because I refuse to let this show destroy one of my favorite fairytales.

Anyway. Back in Storybrooke, Lacey comes out of the back room and tells Gold she saw the magic and is very turned on by it. She wants to be immortal. Gold says, “valar morghulis” and rambles a bit about the Seer’s prophecy.

Emma and Neal go into the canning factory, but Neal is being snarky because he is still not convinced that Tamara is behind this. Speak of the she-devil, Tamara sees the two of them creeping around and tells Stranger Greg they have to go. Greg wants to know where his dad is and doesn’t care if Emma and Neal have found them.

Regina gets a hopeful gleam in her eye upon hearing Emma’s name, as though it relit the fire in her. With her renewed energy, she tells Greg she killed his father. She says she buried him at their campsite and that Stranger Greg can go ahead and kill her now. She knows Emma loves her, because she found her. She can die in peace now.

And die she might.

In London, the Darling children set a trap for the Shadow, but he bursts right through the locked window. The kids scramble for the crawl space, but little Michael is transfixed by the glowy-eyed monster and starts to go with him. Bae intervenes and volunteers as tribute, telling Wendy he won’t let magic ruin her family like it did his.

While being pulled through the skies of London, Bae pulls a match out of his pocket and strikes it. I don’t know where his logic came from, because I’ve never heard of a shadow who was afraid of fire, but it worked because Shadowman dropped Bae in the middle of the ocean. A ship ropes him in and he is greeted by Captain Hook and Smee.

In the Storybrooke cannery, Stranger Greg is about to fulfill Regina’s wish and crank the electricity up to a bajillion, but David arrives just in time and scares him away. He’s about to run after him, but Mary Margaret insists that saving Regina is more important.

Out in the hallway, Emma hears on her walkie that it was Stranger Greg that had Regina. Neal starts to boast about how right he was, that it wasn’t Tamara, when Tamara HITS EMMA OVER THE HEAD. She takes the sheriff’s gun and shoots the poor guy in the gut.

In true Bad Guy fashion, Tamara tells Neal that their whole relationship was a lie, but before she can finish revealing her evil plan and/or shoot Neal in the face, Emma comes to and body-slams her all over the place.

To escape this sticky situation, Tamara uses some “unholy” magic to open a portal and run away. Neal, still shot and on the floor, starts to fall through, but Emma grabs him like Simba grabbed Scar to keep him from falling.

Emma looks down at Neal and tells him she needs him. Now, she was short on time, so that’s all she could say, but what she really meant is, “I need you, I can’t raise Henry on my own, the little nitwit needs at least three parents and three grandparents so none of us get so sick of him we ship him off with Shadowman to Neverland ourselves.”

They exchange “I love you”s but I’m confident it’s only because it’s the polite thing to do when someone you had a relationship with once is falling to their doom. And since it’s never fun watching someone disappear forever, sad Emma is sad.

The Charmings must have taken the back way out of the cannery, because they’re already at the Loft, having the Blue Fairy heal Regina. Emma staggers in, looking bedraggled. She tells them Tamara killed Neal, but before they can really get into that, Regina stirs as the sound of Emma’s voice. When Regina opens her eyes, she sees Snow White carefully toweling off her head, much like she had done for Regina when she was disguised as a peasant.

After getting over the initial shock that her extended family actually saved her life, she tells them they have more pressing matters than Neal getting sucked into a vortex — the evil duo still has the self-destruct crystal.

As we pan to the forest of Storybrooke, we find out that not only do they HAVE the crystal, but the Home Office somehow knew exactly what it was and has instructed Tamara and Stranger Greg to use it.

Next week is the finale, and the preview is a doozy. Stranger Greg and Tamara are on a suicide mission, and it looks like Regina might be able to save everyone…except maybe herself.

What did you think of “Second Star to the Right…”?

Here are some of our favorite #SwanQueen tweets this week:

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