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“Once Upon A Time” recap (4.16): Fathoms Below

Previously on Once Upon A Time, Regina went undercover with the Queens of Darkness and found out that the villains think the only way to get their own happy endings is to destroy the heroes’ happy endings, Gold turned Pinocchio from a real boy into a real man, and Emma found out that Hook did something worse to Ursula than simply breaking her heart.

We begin on the open sea; on the Jolly Roger to be specific. Hook hears a magical voice singing an all-too-familiar song, and he and his crew are transfixed by the siren’s song. A break in the song causes Hook to snap out of the spell just in time to keep the Jolly Roger from sailing right into a rock.

Under the sea, a beautiful mermaid is revealed as the owner of the magical voice. Her name, we have learned, is Ursula.

Long before she was the Sea Witch.

Poseidon, king of the sea, scolds his daughter for sparing the pirates, but she’s tired of murdering people, she wants to use her voice to make people happy instead. He tells her that murdering pirates is her duty, for they must avenge her mother’s death.

In present-day Storybrooke, the villain squad is torturing August to no avail. Regina decides to take matters into her own hands, and by matters I mean a fireball. This seems to incentivize August and he tells them that, in his travels, he met a mystic called The Dragon, and when The Dragon died, August swiped his research. Gold doesn’t know if he can trust the pathological puppet, but says he’s going to check his trailer anyway.

The Queens of Darkness mention the “rest of the plan” and Regina is pissed that she’s not entirely in the loop. She goes to the fire and pretends to brood but really sends up a smoke signal.

And chim-chimineys her consciousness right with it.

Team Charming is trying to track Regina without their resident werewolf, and Emma is feeling guilty for letting Pinocchio out of her sight. But just when they run out of trail, a cloud of purple smoke shoots into Mary Margaret. Her family looks at her curiously and ask if she’s OK. And when she responds with Regina’s voice, they take an in-sync backwards step worthy of a Liar.

The first thing Regina-in-Mary-Margaret’s-body does is turn to Emma and tell her that Pinocchio is fine, knowing that it’s what her lady would be worried about. She tells the whole team that Gold is back and she doesn’t know their whole plan but it’s not going to be pleasant for anyone. Team Charming knows who they have to ask for help so they head to Gold’s Shop and ask Belle for the dagger. Belle, despite how clear “Hook” was about the whole “DO NOT MENTION THIS TO ANYONE ESPECIALLY NOT ME” thing, immediately is like, “I gave it to Captain Guyliner over here just last night.”

Hook says he thinks he would have remembered holding the Dark One’s dagger and Emma immediately realizes that Belle was duped. Which means not only is Gold back, but his powers are, too.

“I’m sad because they destroyed my character.”

So the plan now is that the Charmings are going to go save August and Hook is going to try to get at least one of the Queens of Darkness dethroned by giving her what he took: her happy ending.

In Gold’s cabin, Regina shows August the page of her and Robin Hood and August knows exactly who it is, because he remembers being a boy. She asks him how it’s possible that the page exists if it depicts something that never happened.

Ursula looks up suddenly like a dog that heard a whistle only she could hear and excuses herself to find Hook blowing into a conch shell. He offers her a deal, if she tells him Gold’s plans, he’ll return the happy ending he stole.

Flashback to young Ursula singing in a tavern, dressed more like Snow White than Snow White ever did.

And being just generally beautiful.

Hook recognizes her voice and offers to buy her a drink for only almost killing him and his entire crew instead of actually killing them. She explains to him that her father didn’t used to be the type of guy who would strong-arm his daughter into murdering people, but her mother was killed by a pirate and he’s driven by his quest for vengeance. Ursula says she’s only allowed to sing when it’s to drive men to their destruction, but she likes to think of her voice as a way to keep her mother’s spirit alive, not as a weapon of mass destruction. Hook tells her that her voice is a gift, that he’s been obsessed with finding the man who took his love from him, but while she was singing, she calmed him. She took away his pain, if only for a moment.

That’s all Ursula ever wanted, to make people happy. Hook asks why she’s wasting her time singing in a tavern and she says she’s saving up to go to a place her mother once spoke of, but Hook says he can take her on his ship if she meets him at the docks in the morning.

Present-day Hook tells Ursula that what she wants is aboard the Jolly Roger, but the Jolly Roger is MIA. He gives her a piece of the rigging and asks her to open a portal to get it, so she dips a tentacle in the waters she was banished from long ago. At first Hook thinks her magic didn’t work, but Ursula says it did and points to the Jolly Roger, which has emerged as a tiny ship in a bottle.

hehehe tiny ship. Get it?

Flashback to a Long Long Time Ago, where Hook is kidnapped and taken onto his own ship to meet with Poseidon. He heard a rumor floating around that his daughter was going to leave with Hook, and that’s just not acceptable. He offers Hook a deal, if he uses a magic seashell to steal Ursula’s voice, Poseidon will give Hook squid ink that he can use to destroy the Dark One. Hook, always down for a little personal gain, looks quite intrigued.

Ursula and Hook go to Gold’s shop and Belle asks if it’s the real Hook. He snaps at her for asking that question too little too late as if he hasn’t been making one bad decision after another since Day 1. Hook gives Belle the ship in the bottle and asks Will Scarlet if he has any Wonderland tricks he can use to fix it.

At Gold’s cabin, Regina has a nightmare that Robin Hood is kissing her. It turns into a dream when the SwanQueen fandom dressed up as the Evil Queen shows up and tells her to get away from him, throwing a fireball to prove her point. When she jolts awake, Maleficent and Cruella are watching Regina intently, and Mal says she has something that’s sure to help her sleep.

A threesome ought to properly wear you out.

Emma is worried that they haven’t heard from Hook and her parents ask if she thinks he relapsed into evildom. Emma jokes that she wouldn’t blame him, she’d shove a knife into the Dark One, too, and Twitchy Dee and Twitchy Dumb are like, “Tell me exactly what you mean by that, does your heart feel dark at all right now?” and she’s all “IT’S A FIGURE OF SPEECH LET’S GO, USELESS PARENTS.”

Gold returns to the cabin with a vial of blue liquid from the fairies (and I hope he stole it from them otherwise thanks a lot useless fairies) that turns August into wood. Gold is ready to make this puppet dance. He almost instantly turns back into a real man, much to the dismay of the onlooking villains, until Gold explains that even though he looks human again, it’s just because they’re already tight on their CGI budget, but don’t worry, the potion has some lingering side effects. Now, when August lies, his nose grows. Classic. Under this duress, August confesses that the author is trapped behind a door, a door Regina has seen among August’s papers. He describes the door but says he doesn’t know where it is, just that it’s in Storybrooke.

Regina offers to stay with August, but Gold says Cruella is going to be their guard-dog.

Should have taken the threesome offer while you could.

The rest of them are going off to find the door, starting at the Sorcerer’s house, since he’s the one who trapped the author in the first place.

Flashback Ursula is singing to Hook’s crew, happy as can be, when Hook comes and shows her the shell and tells her about Poseidon’s deal. He offers her a way out of it, saying if she can steal squid ink, they can both get what they want, which sounds just dandy to Ursula.

Present-day Ursula uses wonderland magic to turn the ship back to its regular size (sadly, it also magically escaped its bottle…). They go onto the ship and Hook opens a vault and hands over the shell. Ursula holds it out in her hand but her voice won’t get back in her throat. Hook demands she hold up her end of the bargain, but she’s not telling Hook anything because her voice is not working and she doesn’t have her happy ending yet. He tries to threaten her but she just laughs at him and points out that she has eight limbs and he has one. She then proceeds to throw him overboard.

Then, a little mermaid swims up and saves him. When he wakes up, she slaps him good for getting between her and her happily ever after. But then thanks him for releasing her from the plot hole she had been stuck in. Though she can hardly blame her, she asks him why Ursula threw him overboard and he says he took away her happy ending, but maybe no villains are supposed to get their happy endings. Ariel says that the trouble is, villains go about getting their happy endings the wrong way.

By stealing them, for example.

Flashback Ursula delivers the squid ink and Hook is about to take them both to their happy endings, but Poseidon shows up and is less than pleased. He doesn’t want to lose his daughter (p.s. where’s Triton? Shouldn’t he be worried about his sister?). Hook tries to fight Poseidon but he brought a sword to a trident-fight and is no match for the sea king. Needing a new tactic, Hook uses the shell to steal Ursula’s voice and says the least he can do is prevent more pirates from drowning.

Ursula feels betrayed, declares all humans evil, and dives into the water. Hook tells Poseidon that he’s keeping the shell and sends the deity away.

Present-day Cruella is in Gold’s cabin, flirting with August, when Emma busts in and Mary Margaret Rapunzels Cruella with a frying pan. Emma unties August with magic but their happy reunion is cut short when Ursula returns and tells Emma that Hook is shark bait (hoo ha ha) and grabs Mary Margaret as leverage to prevent Emma from attacking with her magic.

Long ago and under the sea again, Ursula throws a full blown teenage-mermaid tantrum and grabs Poseidon’s trident. She says she was named after someone strong and powerful and wants that for herself, so she slams the trident down and ends up with tentacles where her fin used to be. She then hisses at her father and says he should fear her, and then she swims off to begin a life of turning people into shrively bottom dwellers and command a small army of eels.

Present-day Hook shows up at Gold’s cabin and Ursula is pissed that she didn’t kill him dead enough. Hook says he figured out why Ursula couldn’t get the shell to work: Only Poseidon could do that. Then, on cue, Poseidon himself strolls in. He explains that Ariel swam to fetch him from the same plot hole she had been hiding in earlier, and he uses the shell to return Ursula’s voice.

She’s smiling because she never has to say “happy ending” again.

Finally happy again, she tells her father she missed him and hugs him, her villainous tendencies gone with a song. As Team Charming starts to head out, Emma asks Hook why he’s moping. He says he almost became the man he once was, and it is somehow only right this moment occurring to him that he might fall under the ‘villain’ category, putting his happy ending in jeopardy. He doesn’t want to lose his happy ending the way Regina did. Emma asks what his happy ending is, and he says it was the same as Regina’s: Emma. (Anyone else think it’s weird that everyone’s talking about their happy endings like it’s a fixed point in time? Instead of, like, a general state of being? I think they’d all be a lot happier if they stopped stressing about the ‘end’ of their story and just LIVED.)

Cruella finds Gold and tells them that the “heroes” took August and he’s like YOU HAD ONE JOB but she blames Ursula and says she has defected from the villain squad and has written herself out of their story.

Hook sees Ursula and Poseidon off, and Ursula says that it’s time to hold up her end of the bargain. She says that the author isn’t the one who can change their stories, Emma is. Gold’s plan doesn’t really involve the author at all, it involves filling Emma’s heart with darkness. Forever. She then leaves with her father, taking 95% of this show’s diversity with them.

Later that night, Regina sneaks into the Charming Loft and asks Emma to help her process her dreams.

SwanQueen: Dream Team

She explains her dream and Emma says it sounds a little like her subconscious is trying to tell her to stop chasing after the douche of a married man who kissed you right in front of his dying wife, but Regina says she was thinking more along the line of herself protecting Robin from herself. Regardless, Regina asks Emma if she could use her bailbondsperson skills to get her in contact with Robin Hood, and Emma agrees to help her without missing a beat.

EMMA *IS* YOUR HAPPY ENDING YOU BEAUTIFUL DORK

When August wakes up in the loft, she wonders why Emma and Regina are both there, and Regina explains that she’s undercover, supposedly here under the guise of stealing the page with the door on it. August explains that she probably shouldn’t bring that to the baddies, because the page isn’t just a depiction of the door, but it IS the door, and the author is trapped inside the book.

What did you think of “Poor Unfortunate Soul”?

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

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