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“Once Upon A Time” recap (4.11): Their Best Worst Selves

Previously on Once Upon A Time, Ingrid and her sisters had special yellow ribbons to bond them but then Ingrid committed accidental sestracide with her ice powers and her other sister put her in an urn for punishment and erased all of Arendelle’s memories of her. This turned her into a cleavage-happy sociopath who owned one dress and cast the Spell of Shattered Sight on Storybrooke.

We begin in Boston, 1982, where Ingrid had been plopped by the Sorcerer in her quest for new sisters. She spots a psychic and pops in for further instructions, paying with her giant snow crystal necklace.

She quickly realizes the “psychic” is a fraud and storms out. Ingrid tries to use her magic but finds she can’t throw icicles from her fingers, and the psych-out psychic has a bat, so she just leaves without the information she sought about Emma Unborn.

Flash forward to the present-day Snow Queen, who is still wearing the same dress, and must rack up a hell of a dry cleaning bill. She is reveling in the glory of her spell, pleased with herself and sure it will send her “sisters” running into her arms.

In the sheriff’s office, Mary Margaret and David are sassing each other about all the things that bother us about them, and they probably could have gone on infinitely, but Kristoff grumps about it and tells them to cut it out. Anna tries to tell him that he doesn’t mean what he’s saying, but when he keeps throwing word-daggers, she decides to leave him handcuffed and go talk to her fellow immune friends.

Elsa is telling Emma that this is exactly what happened when Anna put her in the urn, and they came out the other side of it okay, though that doesn’t make this feel less awful.

Emma tells them that they shouldn’t worry, she’s the Savior, she’ll fix it, but Anna looks a little wary. Just in case, she comes up with an idea of her own; in the legend, the Spell of Shattered Sight is defeated when the person who cast it is killed. This makes Elsa uncomfortable, because she doesn’t really want to murder anyone, but Emma does what Regina taught her and makes the hard choice; if it comes down to Storybrooke or Ingrid, Ingrid’s gotta go. Anna, being the one without magic, gets put on babysitting duty while Emma and Elsa head out. Anna asks Elsa if she trusts Emma, and she says she does, so much that she almost wants to kiss her sometimes.

Across town, Regina finds herself trapped in her own vault and immediately thinks of “the Savior” since everyone under this spell thinks of the person they care about most first. (Well, the person they care about most and have no resentment toward…I don’t even think Evil Queen Regina would have killed Henry.) Regina catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and asks what the hell she’s wearing when she sees her power suit. She poofs herself into Evil Queen garb and oh what a glorious thing it is.

Hook goes to Gold and asks why he wasn’t put under the spell and Gold says that not having your heart in your chest has conveniently different rules and effects for every person in every situation. Gold tells him that he plans on leaving tomorrow with Belle and Henry, and that he is going to manipulate their memories so that he comes out the hero in the end, thus guaranteeing himself a happy ending. Which is flawed villain logic if I ever heard it.

Madame Scoops goes back to her ice cream shop and gets some purple stones she was hiding under some ice cream, but when she starts to leave she is confronted by Emma and Elsa. They try to use their powers on her, but the ribbons that bind them also keep them from doing harm to one another.

Ingrid smiles her insane smile and says that they will love her. Soon.

Flash back again to 1999, the scene of the video camera bullying we saw that Emma has no recollection of. Ingrid comes in and breaks it up, seemingly a very nice, capable foster mother. Emma tries to sneak off later that night, but Ingrid knew she would, so she was waiting up with hot cocoa. She tells Emma that she tried to run away when she was little, but the people she cared about wouldn’t let her, and that’s what she plans to do for Emma. She tells Emma that she’s free to go if she wants, but in doing so, tells Emma in no uncertain words that she will help her torment the bully kid if she stays. So I take back that whole “capable foster mother” thing. At any rate, it convinces Emma to stick around for a while.

In present-day Storybrooke, everyone is running amuk. Anna tries to convince Mary Margaret and David to calm down, tries to remind them that they’re Snow White and Prince Charming, but all that gets her is a new nickname (Swiss Miss) and a slew of information about Snow White that she probably could have gone her whole life without knowing.

Emma and Elsa go to Gold’s shop to try to cut off their ribbons with various magical objects and knives they have no idea how to work. They’re lucky they didn’t end up with extra hands or something. Alas, nothing happens at all, and they know they need another plan. Elsa takes Emma’s hand and talks about the love flowing through the ribbons and I was really hoping she was going to say, “Let’s overload it with love by making out.”

But at the mention of love, Emma’s thoughts immediately went to Regina. She tells Elsa they need hate to break the ribbons and Elsa says Emma can be prickly but not hateable, but Emma was referring to the Evil Queen and her bottled up hatred for her. They head to the vault to provoke her, and I’m pretty sure she could smell them coming.

Meanwhile, Ingrid is extracting memories from her purple stone and watching a few of them as she goes. One she watches is from a day she spent with young Emma at the park, using unintentional magic to win the claw game. Ingrid, bursting with pride, tells Emma that someday she will be important, that she will impress the world with her extraordinary gifts, and Emma looks at her like Ingrid is about to tell her she has cancer. Emma looks down and sees paperwork sticking out of Ingrid’s bag and assumes she’s being sent away, that this is why Ingrid’s suddenly being all emotional. But Ingrid assures her it’s just the opposite; she wants to adopt her, to be her forever family. She knows Emma will never look at her like a mother, she’s too old to hope for that, but she says she’ll be the best big sister ever and will probably never try to kill everyone she loves. Little Emma tells Ingrid she loves her and they hug.

Present-day Emma and Elsa arrive at Regina’s vault and Emma must be taking private lessons from Regina, because she identifies what kind of spell it is and knows just how to fix it. She makes her magic face while Elsa watches on, giving her encouragement to help it along, because apparently Emma does magic best when a beautiful woman is touching her.

When they come in, the Evil Queen is delighted to see Emma, though demands to know why Elsa is there. Elsa is there because a) we don’t have time to spare so she had to make sure no vault sexytimes delayed the mission and b) she ships SwanQueen so obviously she had to see this go down. Emma dives right into why she’s here and starts throwing digs Regina’s way. She starts with the outfit, because she literally couldn’t not mention it, then tells her that she wanted to break Regina’s heart, that she tried to make her jealous. All of Regina’s suppressed sexual tension comes to a head just then, in the form of a fireball that she throws at the blondes. Emma and Elsa hold up their wrists and the ribbons suck up the fireball of anger, miraculously sparing them so much as a singe, and disappear. Emma and Elsa, having gotten what they came for, run for their lives, with Regina yelling after them, “SWAAAAAN!”

Flashback Emma is puddle dancing with Ingrid and says she wishes she could just poof home like Harry Potter. Ingrid tries to explain that she kind of does have magic, “Remember that claw game that you won even though no one ever wins those things? Remember how that snake Harry Potter was talking to suddenly didn’t have any glass in its cage? Are you picking up what I’m putting down?” When Emma doesn’t follow her foster mom’s erratic clues, Ingrid decides to try to trigger her powers into working by throwing her in front of a moving vehicle. It not only doesn’t work, but backfires greatly, because Emma runs away for good, leaving Ingrid impossible sad.

The Evil Queen heads to the sheriff’s office looking for Emma, but finds the two idiots instead. When Anna sweetly tries to reason with her, Regina poofs Anna and Kristoff back “to where they came from” and I damn near shed a tear because we spent this whole gosh darn season getting them here. Mary Margaret, with Snow White’s fire in her eyes, challenges the Evil Queen, who magics some swords into their hands. She cradles her sword and tells Mary Margaret she wants to watch her bleed.

Flash back to Maine 2001. Ingrid, in a cute little hat, uses the scroll to find Storybrooke, and apparently strolls right in? Smack dab in the middle of the Original Curse? I don’t know. I was under the impression no one could come or go except Emma in those years, but we’ve had so many curses since then, the details are fuzzy.

Present-day Emma and Elsa go to Ingrid, who is disappointed to see that their ribbons are gone, but not too worried about it, since she knows they will love her again when they have their memories left. Magic can’t create love, but it can remind you of a love that once existed. Ingrid knows that even now, even before she gives them back their memories of happy times they spent with Ingrid, that Emma and Elsa feel some of that love, because otherwise she’d be dead by now. I’d argue that it’s also possible they’re just nice people who aren’t quick to murder, but whatever keeps her from starting the next ice age.

Flash back again to 2011, somewhere in that period of time in Season 1 between when Emma found out Henry was her son and when she believed in magic. Emma strolls into the ice cream shop and stops dead in her tracks when she sees Ingrid, who doesn’t look like she’s aged a day in the past ten years. (Which, neither does Elizabeth Mitchell, but.) Ingrid starts to ramble about magic but Emma remembers that’s just what she sounded like before she threw her into traffic, so she pulls out her phone to call the sheriff. Since her reunion didn’t quite go as planned, Ingrid swipes her memories and plays it off like nothing out of the ordinary was going on. She gives Emma some of her patented Rocky Road and says that it was made with patience, love, and just a dash of insanity, for flavor.

In present day Storybrooke, Snow White and Evil Queen Regina swordfight all over the sheriff’s office and it is downright delightful. They shout things at each other like they do on some of my favorite episodes of Friends, or like that one sleepover scene in One Tree Hill. Just hurtful truth after hurtful truth–or at least hurtful words disguised as truth. Those thoughts that snuck into your mind at the darkest of times, the thoughts you see out of the corner of your eye but won’t let yourself truly think, or truly believe.

Anna and Kristoff were thankfully not poofed all the way back to Arendelle, just to the trunk that brought them here. Kristoff is ranting those aforementioned dark almost-truths when Anna finds a bottle and uses it to smash Kristoff unconscious. When the bottle breaks, a letter falls out, and when she sees it’s the letter her mother wrote to her and Elsa, she runs to her sister as fast as she can, apologizing to her sleeping fiance.

Elsa and Emma are still in Ingrid’s cave when Anna finds them, and stops Emma from blowing Ingrid to smithereens. Anna reads the letter, in which Gerda called her sisters beautiful and kind. Ingrid interrupts and says she knows this is a joke, because her sister hated her, called her a monster. Anna ignores the outburst and keeps reading; Gerda regrets telling Elsa to hide her powers, and wanted Anna and Elsa to make it right, to restore Arendelle’s memories of her sisters, and to release Ingrid from the urn. Gerda wanted Anna and Elsa to tell Ingrid that she was sorry, that she loves her, and that she’d give anything to take it all back. Anna is quite pleased with herself and with the letter and thinks she’s saved the day.

But Ingrid still doesn’t believe her and starts to magic-choke her. Anna doesn’t back down though, she tells Ingrid that she’s part of the family, and no matter what, family never gives up on each other. Just like she didn’t give up on Elsa when she created an ice fortress in the middle of an eternal winter, she’s not going to give up on her psycho aunt either. Ingrid still thinks she’s lying, but when she touches the tiny purple stone attached to Gerda’s letter, she sees that it’s true, that all the memories are there, all the happy times she spent with her sisters.

A sort of resolve comes over Ingrid. She says that she realizes now that she is a monster. Not because of the inherent nature of her powers, but because of what she did with them, how she pushed everyone away who tried to help, and is now torturing an entire town of strangers. She knows what has to happen now, she know she has to make the ultimate sacrifice to stop what she started. She gives Emma and Elsa back their memories of her, so that they could remember her to the best of their ability just before they lost her for good.

Ingrid tells Elsa, Anna, and Emma that they’re special. She says that all she ever wanted was her sisters’ love, and now that she knows she had it all along, she can rest in peace, and be with them in death. Elsa and Anna know what they have to do for her aunt…they have to bring the memories of their family’s past back to Arendelle.

The chaos in Storybrooke settles down and everyone starts apologizing for the fights they were having. Regina sees herself and asks once again what the hell she’s wearing. Then, like a rainbow after a thunderstorm, Regina starts to laugh. This makes Mary Margaret laugh and suddenly everyone is laughing. Big, hearty laughs.

Just like they do after every big bad they defeat, all of Storybrooke meets in the middle of Main Street to hug. The glass that had been infecting the air turns to snow (or maybe it’s Ingrid’s snowy ashes?) and everyone is happy again.

Hook smugly tells Gold that he failed, and Gold tells him not to get his britches in a bunch. He says that he really couldn’t have cared less about the Spell of Shattered Sight, or if Emma lives or dies, all he cares about is getting as far away from Storybrooke as possible with Belle and Henry in tow. Probably literally towing them with rope. It’s also possible he wants to destroy the world? I’m kind of unclear on what his endgame is, all I know is that I can’t wait for Belle to find out what a two-timing, back-stabbing, slithering serpent her husband is and go all Lacey on his ass.

What did you think of “Shattered Sight”?

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

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