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“Once Upon A Time” recap (4.22 & 4.23): Unhappily Ever After

Previously on Once Upon A Time, Rumple’s heart started to die, Regina began Operation Mongoose, a mission to find her a happy ending, and Gold decided to flip the script…literally.

We begin in Isaac’s backstory which is as sad and pathetic as you would expect from his whiney present-day self. He’s a failing writer working at a TV store in the ’60s, but on a particularly bad day at work, he gets a letter from When You Wish Upon A Star Publishing signed with a mouseprint inviting him to their office immediately.

There, he finds The Apprentice, who invites him over to his desk and asks him to pick a writing instrument. Isaac is drawn to the quill and the quill chooses him back like a wand chooses a wizard. The Apprentice makes a door appear out of thin air, and since Isaac can see it, it means he believes in magic and is ready to be the next Author.

In present-day Storybrooke, Regina and the rest of Team Charming are having a hard time finding any helpful information in the blank books in the Sorcerer’s house.

They start musing about what kind of terrible fates Gold will write them when August busts in with a sketch of the man they need to find, the Apprentice. Hook recognizes him as the man he trapped in the starbox, so they get the box and the fairies and extract him using the fantasia broom. Too bad Hook never thought of trying to release the poor guy before they needed him, since apparently it wasn’t particularly difficult.

The Apprentice comes out swinging, ready to stop Isaac and put him back in the book where he belongs.

Isaac is in Gold’s shop, telling him to hang on while he finishes up his book. And I dunno, he’s been standing there writing for a long time, and hasn’t had a sip of alcohol, played a game of candy crush, nor had a bout of writer’s block that made him want to throw things, so I don’t know what kind of writer he thinks he is. Gold asks Isaac why he’s helping him, and Isaac says he’s always liked those Groundhog Day/Dopplegangland episodes of TV shows and wants to do one too. The last thing Isaac needs to work into the story is Baelfire; he can’t bring him back to life (praise Vanderjesus) but he can make Rumpelstiltskin forget. Rumple doesn’t want to forget his son entirely, just all the times he failed him. He wants to remember being the good father he never was.

Team Charming breaks up: Regina and Emma with the apprentice, everyone else to the Loft.

If only something exploded behind them while they walked.

But it’s too late, before they can find Isaac or the page or the key, Isaac writes “The End” and the world as we know it disappears.

Henry wakes up, unaffected by the spell, having been born in a land without magic, and finds Storybrooke a shell of a town. (I guess Storybrooke still exists since it, too, was born in a land without magic?) Unable to find anyone anywhere, not even baby Neal, or maybe he did and just left him alone, which he’s probably used to with two idiots for parents. Henry grabs a car and drives to a nearby diner, showing her pictures of his family and wondering if maybe they just went on a fun roadtrip without him. When she makes a phone call and he realizes it was probably the police, he heads out, but not before snatching a book off the book rack titled Heroes and Villains written by Isaac himself.

Isaac is at a reading of his book, getting praised by his adoring fans, giving autographs to people dressed as our favorite characters, including a woman who gives him a Long Live Regina pin.

She obviously doesn’t have Tumblr; I’ve seen way better fan art than this.

As he goes to sign his next book, Isaac looks down and sees the page with the door instead. Henry holds the key over it threateningly and demands information about his family. Isaac explains that his family is in his book, in an alternate reality, and that he couldn’t fix it if he wanted to because he used magic for personal gain and that’s strictly forboden.

This pisses Henry off, so he uses the key to jump into Heroes and Villains, which I’ll admit is pretty clever since it’s not as obvious as lock + key.

When Henry lands in the Enchanted Forest, he is admiring a sword when he gets thwacked upside the head by Isaac, who also got sucked into the book. He unwittingly tells Henry exactly how to save the day, as all villains do, and tells him he has til the bells toll at sunset. At least it’s not the clock striking midnight? An Ogre comes stomping through, right on time, and Isaac leaves Henry tied up and helpless. But a knight swoops in to save the day, the Ogre Slayer, the noble Rumpelstiltskin.

Henry, using the book as a guide, traipses through the forest, avoiding traps, when he hears a familiar voice telling him to turn around.

REGINA EVERDEEN

Regina is dressed like Snow White used to when she was awesome, and when Henry introduces himself as her son, she looks at him like he’s a lunatic wearing very strange clothes.

In Regina’s latest cave dwelling, Henry regales her incredulous self about this place called “Maine” and this person named “Emma”-who admittedly seems awesome but she definitely would have remembered meeting-and Henry tries to use trigger words like “Operation Mongoose.” Regina realizes Henry isn’t just a kid making up fantasies, that he truly believes what he’s selling, but it freaked out by his magic book of fortunes, so she throws it in the fire and stalks out.

Henry follows her and tries to explain that she needs to find Robin Hood and kiss him but Regina thinks that sounds gross because boys have cooties and “true love’s kiss” sounds like an Essie nail polish, not a real thing. Besides, she’s not sticking around these parts much longer, the queen wants her dead because she may or may not have accidentally ruined her life one time.

Isaac tries to find Henry but is caught in one of his own traps and hauled off by the seven dwarves when they find the Long Live Regina button in his things. The take the traitor right to the queen.

The queen, of course, is Snow White, with skin as white as snow, magic as dark as night, and …a fauxhawk

Not gonna lie, digging the hair.

Isaac pleads for his life, offering up information about Henry, but Snow calls Charming in using his heart as a speaker and orders him to behead Isaac. But Henry uses his intimate knowledge of her made-up backstory to convince her that he can help her find Regina. All he asks for in return is that she kill Henry after she’s finished with the sexy bandit. Snow thinks this is a swell arrangement.

Bandit!Regina tries to take a royal carriage, but having been tipped off, it’s not money but Snow White herself she finds inside.

I really thought this was going to be a Buffy/Faith forehead kiss moment at least.

Snow shoves her hand in Regina’s chest (that will never not sound wanky to me) but Charming reminds her about the boy running loose. Regina begs for the blood feud between them to end, which makes Snow White angry enough to make a fireball, but Robin Hood swoops in and saves her just in time.

He takes Regina to a bar, where he tends to her wounds as she insists she a) had that situation under control and b) can tend to her own surface scratch. He helps her anyway, because he’s Honorable, and they toast to new friends and old rivals.

Robin Hood tells her that he admires her skills and offers her the role of leader of the Merry Men. She can’t accept, because she’s not sticking around, and asks why the position is opening. He starts saying flowery things and for a heartbeat Regina wonders if Henry was right but then Robin mentions he’s getting married to a woman named Zelena.

He gets getting in the shots with lovely ladies. There aren’t enough blur tools in the world.

Zelena fangirls over Bandit!Regina a bit, and asks her to stay for the wedding. But Regina is being actively hunted by the evil queen and doesn’t have time to attend strangers’ nuptials. Regina thanks Robin Hood for saving her life and leaves. Henry finds her, and she says thanks a lot for the stupid useless hope because Robin Hood is marrying Zelena and he has a stupid face anyway. Henry knows the wedding bells are what signal the end of the story, so they have to stop the wedding at all costs. Regina says he should go off and bother this other mother he spoke of and he says he can’t find her in the book. But when he refers to her as the Savior, Regina’s eyes flicker with remembrance before denying she has any idea what he’s talking about.

What happens in Vegas…

He knows she’s bluffing so she tells him of a woman locked high up in a tower who calls herself the savior. And sure enough, that’s where Emma is, about one skipped meal away from going full Helena.

I DEMAND MANGOES.

Sir Rumple the Ogre Slayer goes home to Belle and her baby to find Isaac waiting there, warning him that their happiness is in danger. He ruins everything he built by speaking of constructed realities and Baelfire, and tells Rumple he has to kill Regina to keep the happiness he holds dear.

Henry finds Hook and asks him to take him on this here ship he captains to the Bottomless Sea, but Killian is just a deckhand (deckhook?) in this reality; Blackbeard is in charrrrge. (Sorry, had to.) Henry, desperate for this nightmare to end, knocks Blackbeard off and takes the Jolly Roger out to sea. When they get to the island, they use the fake-prisoner trick to knock out a guard and find Emma, hair and eyes wild.

Who. disturbs. my. slumber?

Henry starts to introduce herself but she knows who he is; she remembers, she’s still our Emma Swan. The Author decided to punish Emma in a special way, letting her keep the memory of what’s real but taking away her magic. They find hook and Emma says they have to boot scootin boogie because the knight they knocked out wasn’t just any ol’ guard, but it was Lily. And you wouldn’t like her when she’s angry.

Lily smash!

Lily turns into a dragon and comes after them, but they shoot her out of the sky with a cannonball, apparently not afraid of killing her in this world or the next.

After changing out of her ridiculous ball gown and into something a little more butc–er, comfortable, Emma teaches Hook to fight so that he at least won’t be dead weight.

Petition to bring this outfit back to Storybrooke? And to save that smirk for Regina?

Lily catches up to them with the Queen in tow. Emma saves Hook from Grumpy and tries to reason with Snow White and Charming, saying she’s their daughter, reminding them that they taught her to hope. Snow White does a great Mary Margaret impression and says that hope is a powerful thing, but breaks back into Evil Queen Snow White when she says she intends to snuff it out. Snow White spots the boy so Hook tells Emma to save the boy and takes on Charming by himself, flirting coming back to them like the muscle memory that’s helping him swing his sword. Hook’s cockiness gets the best of him eventually though, and Charming slides his sword into Hook (not a euphemism…probably) much to Emma’s chagrin.

Meanwhile, Belle is in her cottage, rocking her baby and wondering how she ended up with such boring storylines in both realms.

Where oh where has my storyline gone? Where oh where could it beeee?

Rumple comes in and warns her of a threat to the realm, but Belle’s sure the Light One (real original, Isaac) will do the right thing, even if it’s a difficult choice. She gives him a cup of tea to relax and he drops the cup and chips it, destined to be a pain in her ass in every realm, in every lifetime.

Henry catches up with Regina again and she’s really getting sick of this kid and his nonsense, but this time he brought reinforcements: Emma. Glad to meet this legendary beauty, Regina grants Emma’s wish to speak alone for a bit. Emma tells Regina that Henry was telling the truth, that she needs to find her happy ending, but Regina insists that her happy ending isn’t a man. Instead of kissing her on the spot, Emma says that no, of course, but love is part of happiness, and therefore she should go stop that wedding of the guy she just met. Emma convinces her that love is work the risk.

MY SINGLE TEAR AND I DARE YOU TO LOVE US.

Emma tells Regina that she just watched the man she loves die and never said the words out loud, and begs Regina not to make the same mistake. Regina decides that she’ll do it, for Emma, who she already likes more than this Robin fella who is supposed to be her “true love” or whatever.

Before she goes into the wedding, Regina asks Emma what SHE would want Regina to say to her if she were to profess her love right now totally hypothetically, and she tells Regina they don’t have time for talking, so just get with the kissing. Emma is beaming and Regina asks what’s wrong with her face and Emma says she’s just really glad she finally gets to see Regina get her happy ending.

But Rumple appears, determined to keep his own happy ending, even at the expense of others, despite how un-heroic that is.

I WILL DEFEND HER HONOR.

Emma sends Regina in while she fights Rumpelstiltskin, and Regina just peeps her head in as though time is not of the essence.

Oh hai, don’t mind me, just here to ruin your wedding.

Emma swordfights like a boss right up until she gets knocked out and Henry takes over the fighting. Mid-vows, Robin sees Regina at the door and pauses, but Regina also sees Henry in danger, so she’s caught in an Elsa-like predicament. Because she’s a normal human with a soul, she jumps in front of Henry and takes a fatal blow for him. Emma and Henry run to Regina’s side, and Regina says she couldn’t let Henry die.

Robin runs out and sees Regina dying, and Zelena follows, but she’s more concerned about the blood on her dress. When Robin doesn’t seem properly concerned about her fashion catastrophe, she starts to turn green and runs away. Regina and Robin start performing A Little Fall of Rain from Les Mis when Emma throttles Isaac, trying to force him to bring Hook back to life and save Regina, not necessarily in that order.

Henry takes matters into his own hands, and by matters I mean the magic quill. It glows and decides he’s the next author, and Emma is all ready to slice her hand off for the greater good, but that won’t work. In the real world they needed a good girl gone bad, but here they need just the opposite. Henry dips the quill into his dying mother’s flesh wound and writes “ctrl + z” on a piece of paper, erasing all the work Isaac did.

Regina wakes up on the streets of Storybrooke, back to her old self.

And probably pissed she’s on the GROUND.

Robin Hood the Honorable runs RIGHT PAST Emma, who is still on the ground, to hug Regina, who is already standing up and looking just fine. Emma hugs Henry but for some reason does not hug Regina before running off to find out if Hook’s death stuck.

Of course, it didn’t, and she finds him in the loft, sassy as ever, his swagger returned. She starts to tell him that she loves him but can’t quite get the words out…

“I…like your eyeliner?”

Instead she thanks him for his sacrifice in the alternate reality.

Gold wakes up in the shop, back to square dying, and Isaac grabs some keys and runs, done helping the Dark One. Belle comes to the shop and finds him, saying she’s just here to make sure he didn’t pull this stunt again, but when he collapses she stops yelling.

Isaac tries to leave Storybrooke but is arrested by Mary Margaret and David.

Henry is trying to fight off the temptation of the quill’s powers. He tells the Apprentice he wants to bring Neal back, but the Apprentice says he’s literally the only one who wants that so he’s not allowed. Henry decides to break the quill in half, because no one should have that much power, which I feel like maybe will have consequences eventually.

Gold tells Belle that his heart is dying, and Belle says if he had just BEEN good, instead of trying to write himself as good, then he wouldn’t have had to lose her. Hear that, showrunners? If you just MAKE everyone’s happiness not revolve around men, instead of having the characters SAY their happiness shouldn’t revolve around men, you wouldn’t lose viewers. Belle doesn’t want him to die alone, but Rumple tells Belle to leave before the Dark One takes over completely.

Regina and Henry are reading their new/old storybook at the Biannual The World Didn’t End party at Granny’s.

Wait does Granny orchestrate these evil plots to boost business?

Mary Margaret and David apologize to Hook and Emma and everyone hugs and is happy. During this group hug, Emma spots Lily sitting alone and goes to chat with her. Lily shows Emma her necklace, and says it’s a piece of the egg she was hatched from, and her only clue to who her father was, because What Happens in Dragon Form Stays in Dragon Form.

NEVER LEAVE US, LILYKINS.

She asks Emma if she can stay in Storybrooke a little longer until she can figure out who her father is, and Emma says she would love that very much. And I would, too.

Belle bursts into the diner saying Gold is almost dead and literally no one cares, but then Belle clarifies and says if he dies they’ll be in danger because of the whole Dark One thing and suddenly everyone’s ready to help.

They all go to Gold’s shop and the Apprentice tries to contain the Dark One’s darkness in the starbox.

Blackness that looks like the Nightmare from Little Nemo is sucked out of Rumple’s heart, taking with it his name from the dagger, and shoved into the box. The Apprentice shoves the white and empty heart back into Gold and says that his return to the man he used to be won’t be simple, so he puts a spell on him to help with the process. The starbox interrupts by shaking and screaming and spewing the darkness back out and into the Apprentice. Emma uses her white magic to knock it out of him and the darkness disappears out the front door.

The Apprentice, with his last breaths, tells the story of the darkness and its need to be tethered to a body and harnessed with a dagger. There is only one man who can truly destroy the darkness, and that man is Merlin. The Two Idiots had chased the darkness but quickly lost sight of it by the team the rest of the team joins them. But they find it soon enough, as the darkness soon surrounds them.

The darkness heads straight for Regina, her heart presumably seeming the easiest to turn, and Emma panics, not knowing what to do, but unwilling to stand around while it tries to snuff out her light. She knows they have to tether it to a person, so she grabs the knife and heads right for Regina. Regina yells out from the tornado of darkness, there has to be another way, but Emma knows how hard Regina worked to get clean of dark magic, she’s not going to let the darkness take her away again.

Emma looks at her family and begs them not to be useless, then sacrifices herself, for Regina.

#SwanQueen

Emma absorbs every last bit of darkness, and the dagger engraves the name of the new Dark One: Emma Swan.

What did you think of Operation Mongoose?

I’ll be honest: I was all ready to write a big, long goodbye speech to Once Upon A Time at the end of this finale recap. But then Emma had to go and sacrifice herself for Regina and it looks like I’m in it for the long haul. Are you in, too? Or has the show gone too far for you?

Here are some of our favorite #queerytales tweets for the Season 4 finale double feature:

Thanks so much for tweeting along with me this season, guys. You truly were the best part of the show every damn week. Have a great summer and remember: Magic always comes with a price and only heroes get happy endings.

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

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