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“Once Upon A Time” recap: Eat (or Rip) Your Heart Out (2.16)

Previously on Once Upon A Time: Cora traipsed through time and space, dispensing evil where’er she went; including but not limited to poisoning Snow White’s mother and then offering Young Snow the chance to trade someone else’s life for her mother’s, all because she wanted her daughter to someday be queen. And you thought Dance Moms were intense.

We open on Paige Matthews looking bedraggled and dirty – wait, am I watching Charmed? Oh, no, OK. That’s not Paige. It’s Young Cora, pushing a cart and yelling to awaken her drunk father, who is sleeping on the sacks of flour that were supposed to be delivered to the castle. She takes this task upon herself instead, but while she’s making the delivery, a pretty little princess dressed all in pink trips her and white powder goes everywhere. Young Cora hisses out some insults at her, and when the King asks what was happening, the princess denied having any part in the peasant falling. When Young Cora tries to stand up for herself, the King cuts her off and humiliates her, forcing her to kneel in the mess she made, to kneel down to Princess Ava. It seems we now know where Young Snow’s inner brat came from. In modern times, the USS Invisible is making its speedy voyage from Manhattan to Maine. Emma so adorably asks Gold directly if Cora could use his body to kill them all if she has his dagger. He assures her that he is useless in his current state and points out how easy it would be to let him die. Emma says she’s going to save him because he’s family now, but I don’t blame him for not being reassured, because she sounded resentful and not too excited about her new father-in-law. Meanwhile in her office, Regina is Big Brothering the Two Idiots, when Cora smacks the wire-tapping machine off the desk. She said, and I quote, “I don’t like what that enchanted box was saying, I’m not…I’m not wicked.” She notices that Rumpelstiltskin’s name is fading off the knife, meaning that Gold is near death…but if he dies before the powers are transferred, they cease to exist. Therefore, conveniently enough, Cora simply MUST become the Dark One…you know, for family…and…stuff.

Regina’s not entirely sure what she’s gotten herself into, but she’s still pretty blinded by a White-hot rage, a desperate need to be loved by her mother and, of course, Henry. Before it ended up in Wonderland or Rosewood, A’s Queen of Hearts masquerade outfit was in the Enchanted Forest, being worn by a Young Cora at a ball that would determine the prince’s future wife. The King isn’t fooled by her disguise, however, and the peasant girl is insulted for her status for the second time that day. She spins a lie about being able to turn straw into gold and he decides to embarrass her yet again. He tells her that they’re locking her up in a cell full of straw and if it’s gold by morning, she gets to marry the prince. If it’s not…she gets to lose her head.

While contemplating making a jump for it, Young Cora is visited by Rumpelstiltskin, who offers to turn the straw into gold in exchange for her firstborn child. She considers it for a moment, but then, in a twist from the classic tale, the miller’s daughter doesn’t accept the offer as is. She believes in the old “teach a man to fish” adage and doesn’t want this shiny man to do anything for her, she wants to learn how to do it herself.

Present day: The Good Ship Lollipop pulls into Storybrooke and the Charmings meet their wayward family at the dock. Including their precious puppydog Ruby. (Hi, Ruby!! I’ve missed you!) Henry, the lucky duck, gets to go with Li’l Red while the rest of them try to figure out what to do next. Snow’s still hell bent on killing Cora but David’s like “but who will save my ass all the time if she kills you or if your heart turns to stone?!” He tries to remind her of that inherent goodness that keeps her skin as pure as snow, but she’s in full-blown vengeance-mode.

When they get back to the antique shop, Gold gives Emma some magic (invisible) chalk to draw a magic barrier at the doorway. The slowly dying Mr. Gold gives Mary Margaret the same Death Candle that Cora-as-the-Blue-Fairy offered her in the woods many moons ago. Her first instinct is to refuse – she didn’t even save her own mother with it, why would she save him? He tries to use the “For Henry” card that seems to be working for everyone else, but killing Henry’s grandpa or killing his grandma – pretty sure Snow comes out with the short end of the stick either way.

Gold needs Emma to cast a protection spell to activate the chalk line, but she still hasn’t quite gathered that she’s supposed to be the Chosen One and is sure she can’t do it. Gold helps her to shut off her brain and reach into herself and stop making faces for like one second (but please never stop making faces) and then she can cast the spell. Back in Young Cora’s cell, Rumpelstiltskin is teaching a Master Class in Being Creepy. He tells her to channel her angriest moment and use it to control magic. On the surface, it almost seems like pillow talk, with shoulder nuzzling and the fire flickering, giving their faces a warm glow. But then you realize they’re talking about throats being ripped out and kneecaps being crushed and it’s extremely disturbing.

But it works, because the next day, Cora spins gold in front of the whole kingdom and the prince asks her for her hand in marriage. Regina and Cora are shaking things up in Storybrooke – literally. They’re outside of Gold’s shop, throwing fireballs and being deliciously evil. When the bust through the door, Emma’s first line of defense is to try to reason with Regina but (probably because she’s afraid it will work) Regina cuts her off. They all stare each other down while Snow shimmies out the back door.

There’s a tussle a bit and, as usual, David is rendered useless almost immediately. Regina pins Emma to the wall, but Emma eventually gets Regina into a…compromising situation. Cora hardly blinks before choosing to go after the Dark One’s knife over saving her daughter, I imagine because she knew Emma will never hurt her.Or because she’s evil and power-hungry. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Flash back to Young Cora and Rumplestiltskin, somewhere in the King’s Castle, making out like a couple of teenagers. The little witch decides that she would rather just kill the king and run off with her shiny new toy than to be fifth in line for a throne that would never be hers. Young Cora and her cleavage have a proposition to amend the contract – the child Rumpelstiltskin gets to keep will be his own. Young Cora marches into the King’s counting room and tells him that she doesn’t love his son. The Golden King is not surprised, and tells her that love is weakness and power is everything. She runs off to meet Rumple in the woods and tells him she chose not to kill the king, that she is going to marry the prince after all. She reveals that the heart in the box that she’s holding is her own, that she took it out so that nothing would cloud her judgment ever again.

In Storybrooke, Snow is in the Chamber of Heartbeats and finds Cora’s glowing orb. She lights the Death Candle and whispers “Beetlejuice” I mean, “Cora” into it three times. While this is going on, Gold calls Belle from his deathbed. She apologizes again for not remembering who he is, or who she is even, and he says that’s okay because he knows who she is. He knows that she’s a hero who helped her people, a beautiful person inside and out, and that she made him the best version of himself and to never forget that. I kind of wished he had thrown in a “You belong with Ruby anyway” in there, but it’s his final goodbye, so he can do what he wants with it. Regina finds and confronts Mary Margaret, who tells her that the only way to get Cora to love her is to put her (cursed) heart back into her mother. Luckily, Snow is a better liar than her daughter, so Regina is actually considering this option.

David finds Mary Margaret with her head in her hands, rocking back and forth, in the middle of the cemetery, mumbling to herself. She hasn’t even succeeded in killing Cora yet and she’s already having mental breakdowns about it. She realizes that she made a horrible mistake.

Sure that she’s going to finish him off, Rumpelstiltskin has one final question for the Queen of Hearts – “Did you ever love me?” She answers, “Why do you think I had to rip my own heart out?” And I think we can all relate to that on some level, amiright?

Regina surprises Cora by shoving her heart back in her body, and the smile Cora donned was so warm and full of love that it brought tears to Regina’s eyes. But as quickly as it came, it went, for Cora now bears the wound that was just Gold’s. She collapses to the ground, and looks up into her daughter’s confused and panicked face. It was thanks to little infant Regina that the people she loathed eventually bowed to her, Regina’s existence gave her the power she always wanted, and eventually the crown. This is why, with her dying breath, she utters simply, “You would have been enough.”

And if seriously all they had to do was shove Cora’s heart back in her body all this time to make her a halfway decent human being, I’m a little upset no one thought of it sooner.

Regina holds her mother’s body in her arms and weeps, spitting blame at Rumpelstiltskin, who denies his involvement. Then, in true Idiot style, Mary Margaret storms in two seconds too late, not only unable to stop things, but also revealing that she knew what she had done, immediately putting a target square on that snow white forehead of hers. You can practically see Regina’s eyes flare red as she realizes who is responsible for her mother’s death. Are you excited to see a Regina/Snow showdown once and for all? What did you think of “The Miller’s Daughter”?

Here are some of our favorite #SwanQueen tweets from this week. Don’t forget to live-tweet with me (@PunkyStarshine) every week! Things are getting intense and I’m going to need people to hash(tag) out my feelings with!

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