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“Once Upon A Time” recap (4.18): Moral Ambiguity

Previously on Once Upon a Time, Snow White and Prince Charming went on a bad-decision rampage which lead to Mary Margaret and David to going on a bad decision rampage which resulted in the loss of Maleficent’s child and of Emma’s trust, respectively. Also, Regina got kidnapped and the Author got untrapped, though hardly any of this matters in this ridiculous episode.

Emma is running through Storybrooke’s forest, trying to track the Author without the town’s best tracker (Ruuuuuubyyyyy!) so she loses him. Mary Margaret and David catch up to her and explain that they met him before and he put them on the path to treachery. Emma says they still made their own decisions and made her the Savior at the expense of someone else. They try to say it was a different time, they were different people, but Emma isn’t hearing it.

Meanwhile the Author whittles a stick to a point. Gold appears and tells the Author that the trees in Maine aren’t enchanted, so he will be unable to make a magic quill. The Author says Gold is the biggest pain in the ass he’s ever written about, and he and I have that sentiment in common. Gold offers him a real enchanted quill and says in exchange he wants a whole bunch of new happy endings. The Author agrees and the two poof away.

Regina wakes up in her vault, chained and bound. When she was out, Gold found Robin Hood’s number in her pocket, and he thinks that’s hilarious. Regina knows this means something’s up, so she demands to know what he knows. He tells her to find out for herself, unchains her and hands her the phone and the number.

Then we zip back to nine weeks ago, only one of the two different types of time jumps we will experience in this episode, because the timeline wasn’t confusing enough already.

After Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and their little merry man crossed the town line, they somehow managed to make it to New York City. They’re off to find Baelfire’s apartment to live, thanks to Regina. In order to pick up Roland, Marian carelessly puts her bag on the sidewalk, and a thief grabs it and runs. Robin steals a horse and catches up to him, scolding him for his poor honor. The thief looks at him like he’s a looney toon and runs away.

Many years ago, in Nottingham, Robin and Marian are working in a tavern.

The sheriff shows up and tells Robin his taxes are overdue, and that he can’t wait to throw him in jail so he can have Marian all to himself. Robin asks for more time to pay, and the sheriff gives him two days to come up with the money.

Nine-weeks-ago Robin and his family are settling into Neal’s apartment when Gold strolls through the door, each equally confused to see the other party. They start to fight about who will stay in the apartment, and Gold ends up having a heart attack.

Long-time-ago Robin is visited by Rumpelstiltskin, who offers him straw that has been spun into gold if Robin goes to Oz and steals the Elixir of the Wounded Heart for him, a potion that can heal hearts both physically and emotionally.

Present day Robin is with Gold in the hospital, and though the doctors think it was a regular ol’ heart attack, Gold thinks his dark deeds are manifesting themselves and rotting his heart. He says he knows of some Elixir in New York City that Robin will definitely steal for him, because Robin’s moral code is too strong to not save the most evil man in several realms, even though it’s not quite strong enough to not cheat on his frozen wife right in front of her.

When long-time-ago Robin got to Oz, he landed on a guard, which worked to a tied-up Will Scarlet’s advantage. Robin tells him his mission and Scarlet asks for a bit of that potion he’s stealing while he’s at it. In return, Scarlet will make sure the guard is too far away to tell anyone what he’s up to.

Nine-weeks-ago Robin goes to a place not-so-cleverly called the Wizard of Oak, breaks in, and steals some of the Elixir. When he gets home, Marian says he was foolish to risk his life for Gold, and that maybe it would be better for everyone if he just let’s Gold die.

But Robin says this is a ridiculous and very un-Marian-like thing to say.

Long-time-ago Robin dresses like an Emerald City guard and sneaks into Zelena’s throne room, stealing a necklace a vial of the potion. He starts to fill up a second vial when Zelena appears, startling him into dropping it. She immediately knows he’s not one of her guards because he didn’t start his sentence with, “Oh ee oh” so he grabs a nearby bow and arrow and threatens her with it. In response, she triples herself.

Zelena says there’s only one person bold enough to try to steal from her, therefore she knows this man is here by request of Rumpelstiltskin. She throws a fireball but he looses his arrow and hits a column of green stuff that spews out enough smoke to give him the cover he needs to escape, much to Zelena’s chagrin.

When he finds Will Scarlet on the yellow brick road, he lies to him and says he was busted before he could get even a single drop of the Elixir.

Nine-weeks-ago Robin gives Gold the potion and in exchange all he asks is for the apartment and for a promise to leave him and his family alone. Gold agrees and takes the potion as soon as Robin leaves, but it doesn’t appear to be working. And that’s because Marian just so happened to have another heart-shaped bottle and swapped out the Elixir for some cold meds. But don’t worry, it was non-drowsy.

Gold can’t figure out why on earth this woman would do this to him, but it all becomes clear when Marian twists her necklace and returns to her true form: Zelena. Zelena didn’t die in jail, her life force went back in time with Emma, killed the real Marian, and she took her place. All to ruin her sister’s life.

So Zelena has been Marian all this time. Which I hope they’re not going to try to use to make up for the fact that Robin cheated on his dying wife, because he didn’t know that, so it’s still very not okay. Anyway, the stress of this reveal makes Gold flatline and Zelena can barely contain her glee. She knocks on his chest and giggles until the doc comes, at which time she pretends to be worried about Gold. But only for a moment because her manic joy can’t keep itself off her face.

She’s glad when he’s awake again, but intubated, because now she can finish her exposition without him interrupting. She, too, wants her happy ending from the Author, and offers Gold the real potion in exchange for being included on his plan to change fate. He agrees, ruefully, to help the insane(ly beautiful) Wicked Witch of the West.

In Oz, Robin and Scarlet are saying goodbye when Scarlet tells him he’s a good man for trying to steal the Elixir from a witch to give to the Dark One, and gives him a sob story about his sister falling into the ice when they were small. (Which could be true; I didn’t get very far into Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.) And when they hug goodbye, Robin slips the Elixir into his fellow thief’s pocket.

Inspired, when Robin gets back to Nottingham, the sheriff starts to arrest him, but his Merry Men come to his rescue, and steal from the rich to give to the poor. Marian calls him a hoodlum (playfully) and Robin decides he shall henceforth be known as Robin Hood. Marian asks what he’s going to do about Rumple, but Robin stole the magic six leaf clover necklace from Zelena, meaning he can change shape whenever he wants. (Side question: How did Zelena end up having this again after she was “killed”?)

Nine-weeks-ago Robin is confronted by Marian, who found Regina’s number on his phone. He admits that he had been thinking about her, so Marian tells him that he needs to make a choice once and for all. He tells Marian that he picks her, because he loves her. He asks if she remembers what she said to him in the forest, and she pulls the shady, “I do but I want you to say it,” which is Warning Sign #1 in the Emma Pillsbury pamphlet entitled “How do I know if my loved one been bodysnatched?” He tells her that he thought she was dead but then she wasn’t and that feels like a miracle and that he would be a fool to walk away from it.

They make out and Zelena watches herself in the mirror.

Nine weeks later, in present-day Storybrooke, Regina calls Robin’s phone and Marian answers. Except, of course, it’s actually Zelena. Regina doesn’t understand, and Zelena relishes in her shock and dismay. Zelena teases her sister about what a lovely home she’s building with Robin, and in fact, she has dinner in the oven now, she has to go, ta-ta!

When Regina hangs up she sends eyeball-daggers at Gold because she knows that he knew this the whole time.

Gold tries to use this as leverage to get Regina to help him turn Emma evil, but Regina’s not on board. She says, literally, “You made me a monster, but I won’t let you do the same for Emma.” Which gave me damn chills. Gold reminds her that one word from him, and Zelena can kill Robin in his sleep. He asks her again, are you sure you want to choose Emma over Robin Hood?

What did you think of “Heart of Gold”? Were you excited to see Zelena again?

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

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