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“Once Upon a Time” recap (3.14): Witches and towers and fears, oh my!

Previously on Once Upon A Time, everyone in Storybrooke had the last year of their lives in the Enchanted Forest obliviated, and Henry has had his whole life-with the exception of the past year in Manhattan-obliviated, all presumably by the Wicked Witch of the West. Na-nana-nananaaa.

We open on Prince Charming, entering Emma’s old nursery, as shiny and new as the day she was born. He looks around, fairly certain that this isn’t right, but unable to put his finger on why. (Spoiler: It’s because they blew their CGI budget on flying monkeys.) Then Emma walks in, wearing the sparkliest gown in the palest of blue, and he’s SURE this isn’t right. Princess Emma starts talking about a ball, all smiles, and the two of them begin to waltz. The smile still plastered on her face, Emma tells her father that her failed her. The room goes all Rosewood Doll Shop and Emma gets sucked into the wardrobe that sent her off to the Real World all those years ago. Before she disappeared, she tells Charming not to screw up the next kid.

Charming wakes with a start, and goes to see his visibly pregnant wife, who then tells him that she’s pregnant as though she is not visibly pregnant. He tries to look excited but mostly he looks like he wants to throw up.

In Storybrooke, present day, Team Charming is trying to decide what the next steps in finding the Wicked Witch should be. Regina had already tried to find her via magic to no avail, so they decide to do some good old-fashioned sleuthing. Regina doesn’t want to have to watch Hook hit on both David AND Emma, so she volunteers to watch out for Henry. Emma reminds her that he thinks they’re in Maine because Emma is working a case, a lie that impresses Regina, and then Emma carefully reminds her in the quietest of voices that Henry only thinks she’s the mayor. But she knows. Oh, how she knows. Somewhere across town, Zelena goes to see Rumpelstiltskin in his cage, spinning straw into gold. She unlocks his cage and starts soliloquizing, a villain’s favorite pastime. She has the Dark One’s dagger, so she controls ol’ Rumple. She very creepily starts to shave him with it, something she had to do for her hot mess of a father when she was young, because he always told her that no matter how you feel, you always put on your best face. Unfortunately for her, she was green. She couldn’t hide her flaws behind a pretty face. And she knows Rumplestiltskin couldn’t either, with his shiny gold skin back in the Enchanted Forest. Here, though, things are different. Here, no can tell that she’s rotten to the core. Zelena plans to use this to her advantage to obtain this mysterious things she wants. Clues she gives us about said thing: It’s something that is against Rumple’s nature, something she can’t afford to wait for, and something she expects to have very soon. I can’t tell if this something will be literal (aka a baby, an army of flying monkeys, a girlfriend) or metaphorical (aka a fresh start, true love, unlimited powers) but surely this is not going to end in hugs and puppies.

Zelena goes to Mr. Gold’s shop and oh-so-cruelly asks Belle if she is Mrs. Gold. She then asks for Mr. Gold with such persistence, that Belle has to tell her that he died, and nearly bursts into tears doing so. It’s actually a really sick emotional manipulation. Zelena then turns on her brightest smile and tells Belle that she’s here to buy a present for Mary Margaret. Belle skips off to the back room, and Zelena uses a bit of blood she nicked from Rumple while shaving him to open a safe. She roots around until she finds…well, a root. She tucks it away and goes back to innocently smiling behind the counter.

In Regina’s office, David, Hook, and Emma are doing their best Scooby Doo-ing. David, while sadly not holding an over-sized magnifying glass, is the first to find a clue-a large, bright red smear in the very center of the black and white room. He sticks his finger right in it and sniffs it, identifying the now-tampered-with evidence as holly berries. He knows exactly where to find them, and tells them so, but says he has to take a break from playing because he has to meet the midwife his wife found at Granny’s.

Flash back to the Enchanted Forest, where Robin Hood catches Prince Charming sneaking a little hooch in the barn. Robin asks if he’s okay, and Charming admits that he’s been having trouble sleeping because he’s afraid. Instead of going the psychological route, or you know, even the friendship route, Robin tells him of something called Night Root that will help calm all your fears. Charming says, “Hey, that sounds great, I have a great track record with mysterious magical plants, so I’m going to leave immediately to go find some of this Night Root.” Robin shouts something after him about danger and haunted forests, but Charming is long gone.

Present day Storybrooke, in the Charming Loft, Mary Margaret is having some good old-fashioned girl talk with Zelena. David comes home and Zelena turns the charm on even brighter. Mary Margaret is like, “Isn’t this great and totally convenient that this totally sweet lady appeared with the exact skills we needed right when we needed them? And she’s such a good listener, I’ve already told her all of our deepest secrets.” David is rightly suspicious, and as soon as Zelena goes to make them tea, tells Mary Margaret so, loudly, in their open-plan apartment. Zelena puts a little something in his tea and brings it back to them, still smiling her sociopathic smile.

Flash back to Prince Charming digging around in a dark forest for some Night Root. He finds some and is about to get the hell up out of there, having had quite enough of forests in Neverland, but then he hears someone calling for help. He follows the voice and finds a tall tower, and his hero complex hardly gives him a second to reconsider before sending him scaling the ivy. When he gets so high that the ivy doesn’t grow anymore, there is a long, braided rope of…you guessed it, hair.

At the other end of the length of hair is a creature of beauty. Her name is Rapunzel, and she tells Charming that he’s the first person she’s seen in quite a long time, with about as much excitement as Fiona had upon learning her knight in shining armor was Shrek. Much like I do if I go without human contact for too long, she starts rambling about things that no one asked her about. She tells Charming that she came around here for the Night Root so that she could be brave enough to rule the kingdom after her brother died, but then got chased up into the tower by a hooded witch. David says he can save her, but Rapunzel says that she can’t leave. Every time she tries to leave, the witch blows out all of the candles and starts reenacting The Ring, walking around all glitchy and scaling walls like her limb joints don’t work like ours.

Zip forward in time to Storybrooke today, where Zelena is still holding her Charming therapy session. She tells David that Mary Margaret told her all about the whole sending-their-first-child-through-a-portal-into-a-world-of-automatic-weapons and says that the second child will be easier. She tricks them into drinking up and then excuses David, who she knows must have important things to do elsewhere.

As David is driving out to meet up with Emma and Hook, he sees a hooded figure traipsing about and decides to follow it. We recognize the cloak as the one from Rapunzel’s tower, but since David has no memories of the past year, he looks as dumbfounded as he did back then.

Over by the lake, where she was probably hoping to see a swan, Regina takes Henry for a stroll with some ice cream. Henry confides, in this supposed practical stranger, that he suspects that his mother took him here for reasons beyond work. Regina grills him about any ex Emma may or may not have had over the past year and Henry says he just wishes someday they could have a proper Thanksgiving involving more than two people. Regina assures him that someday his family tree will be more twisted than Sirius Black’s. Meanwhile, Emma and Hook are looking for berries. Hook once again speaks with my voice when he complains about being in yet another dark forest, after spending three eternities in Neverland. Hook takes this alone time to mock Emma for having been engaged to a flying monkey and she shrugs and says all men are animals anyway. She does admit that she was in love, and that her heart was broken, though she doesn’t necessarily say she’s still talking about Walsh. Hook gets in real close, makes really intense eye contact, and breathes that he’s glad her heart was broken, because “that means it still works.” She lets him think for half a second that she enjoys sharing his breathspace, then rolls her eyes and walks away.

In another part of the Storybrooke forest, somewhere near the Billy Goats Gruff Toll Bridge, David is chasing the hooded shadow. Just like in the past he can’t remember, the hooded creature doesn’t follow the standard rules of space and time and is flashing and flickering all over the place. Sword in one hand, he digs out his cell phone with the other, and leaves Emma a message to tell her where to find his body when he’s done taking on a magical creature on his own that he is pretty sure is the Wicked Witch, proven to be more powerful than the Evil Queen herself.

Back in time, Rapunzel is still feeling pretty hopeless about all this rescue business, but Charming’s hero complex won’t quit. He slashes his sword out the window, but he is no match for the cloaked creature. It swoops down from the roof and shoves him inside.

Storybrooke David is having a similar issue, and the figure is throwing him to the ground and breathing rattling Dementor breaths at him.

Across the way, Hook and Emma finally reach a clearing. Emma is amused to discover a farmhouse there, and they sneak up to the house quietly, in case Auntie Em is still inside. They find no old ladies, nor any pigtailed teenagers with puppies, just an empty house and a bike with a basket. They spot a storm cellar and head towards it. Hook, arguably the smartest of them all, doesn’t think it’s a good idea to face what could very well be the Wicked Witch as just a one-handed pirate who really likes eyeliner and a bail bondsperson who has actual magic she doesn’t know how to use and a “superpower” that is faulty at best. He’s barely through saying that they should call for backup when Emma picks up her phone to call Regina. Before Emma can press the 1 on her speed-dial, she notices she has a message from David telling her that he’s going to take on what HE thinks is the Wicked Witch.

Speaking of David, he’s doing his very best to fight the hooded creature all on his own, but when he stabs the figure right through the chest with his sword, the figure just lifts him up by his throat. In a moment that would make any Little Liar jealous, David successfully pulls down the hood of his attacker. In a moment that probably wouldn’t even be all that surprising to a Little Liar, he finds his own face looking back at him.

But before you have time to try to remember what happened to David’s twin in season one, we flash back to Rapunzel being attacked by a hooded figure, but this time the hooded figure is her. And so we learn that the hooded creature is Fear. They have to face their fear. Get it?

In case you didn’t get it, David shouts exactly that at Rapunzel over and over until she cuts her hair and sends her Fear plummeting to the ground.

In Storybrooke, David is losing his battle against his own Fear, but then he sees Emma’s yellow buggy. Inspired, he tells his Fear that he’s afraid that he won’t be a good father. But, in that moment, he decides it won’t stop him, and he shoves what’s left of his sword into his Fear, destroying it. Proud of himself, he goes to pick up the hilt of his sword, but it disappears. He shrugs it off and goes to join his family.

Back in the Enchanted Forest, Rapunzel confesses that her brother drowned while saving her life after she fell in a river they weren’t supposed to be playing in. She was having a hard time forgiving herself, and were SURE her parents wouldn’t forgive her, but when Charming takes her back to Snow White’s castle, they are just happy to see her, just like he said they would be. (Does this mean Rapunzel’s parents were in Storybrooke the first go-round? But Rapunzel wasn’t? Also why have we never heard of this missing person before? Wouldn’t Snow White have made it her life mission to find her? And is Rapunzel in New Storybrooke now? Will SHE get together with Ruby? I have a lot of questions.)

Prince Charming and Snow White bond over both being terrified of being parents, considering how poorly everything went last time, and how constantly their lives are in danger. But they have each other and they have True Love, so surely they’ll be fine. They leave the mass of cursed and confused (and kind of homeless?) people to go build a nursery for their unborn child, because they have their priorities in order.

When David tells Emma, Hook, and Regina what happened before they got there, Regina tells him that she’s glad he’s been doing his part to keep the Two Idiots title in check. Since the hilt of his sword disappeared after he defeated his Fear, that means the Wicked Witch took his courage (or at least, a token of it), making him the Cowardly Lion in this version of the story.

And sure enough, Zelena is now the proud owner of a broken sword dipped in hero complex.

Charming, Hook, Emma, and Regina head back to the storm cellar, but the lock has been busted open since they were there last. They go inside and find an empty cage. They try to figure out who on earth the Wicked Witch would keep in a cage, and they search and search for a hint in the five by five room they all barely fit in, until finally the spinning wheel surrounded in straw-shaped strands of gold clues them into the fact that it could possibly be Rumplestiltskin.

Regina looks weirdly pleased about this revelation. Next week, Neal comes back and hopefully gets turned into a flying monkey so Regina can rip the wings off his back with her bare hands.

What did you think of “The Tower”?

Here are some of our favorite #queerytales tweets from this week:

                         

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