Once Upon A Time – A Bitter Draught

By: Kelly Kearney

If you’re a fan of The Evil Queen, Regina Mills or just Lana Parrilla in general, Sunday’s show was undoubtedly added to your list of favorite episodes. This week on “Once Upon a Time” we met The Count of Monte Cristo who’s been stalking Snow (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Charming (Josh Dallas) across the realms under orders of the Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla) herself. It’s a murder plot that began 30 plus years ago and it’s about to catch up with the Charmings now that the Queen herself is back in Storybrooke.

Broken Seals and Deathly Schemes

That’s right dearies, the Queen is back and thanks to her sister Zelena (Rebecca Mader) she’s got just the ammo she needs to take down Snow White and her beloved Prance Charming. Last week, Regina sealed her vault with blood magic, preventing anyone not related to her from entering and taking any of its magical contents. After convincing Zelena to help her, The Queen steals a heart from the vault. Whose heart is this and what does the Queen have planned?

At Granny’s, Regina is delivering a speech to not only the townspeople of Storybrooke but also their new visitors from The Land of Untold Stories. The visitors are afraid that their stories they indefinitely paused will un-pause leading them all to an end they were hoping to avoid. Regina sympathizes with them and says she’s not too keen on her past coming back to haunt her either and as the Mayor she not only understands their fears but also shares them. She promises to keep them and the town safe. Unfortunately, she has no idea she will have to protect them against her evil half.

After the Mayor’s speech, Henry (Jared Gilmore) meets a young slightly disheveled man and offers to help him find his story. The man disappears though before Henry can catch his name. The man does however, leave behind a letter sealed in wax. While Henry lets his mind wander as to who this mystery man is, Charming opens the envelope and we learn the man is The Count of Monte Cristo (Craig Horner). Regina warns the Charmings that the Count is there to probably kill them and she knows this because when she was Evil she hired the Count to kill them.

If that’s not awkward enough, Belle (Emilie de Ravin) shows up looking for a place to stay now that she’s left Rumple (Robert Carlyle) and Hook (Colin O’Donoghue) offers her the Jolly Roger. Hook feels guilty for all the times he tried to kill and threaten her so he figured offering her a fish smelling hammock on a heatless ship in winter was penance for his misdeeds.

Vengeance Worth Killing For

Flashback to a swanky ball thrown by the Count (a/k/a Edmond Dantes) that ends in Edmond killing his arch nemesis Baron Danglars (Andrew Kavadas). The ball appeared to be a set up to get the Baron in sword spearing reach. Danglars is responsible for killing Edmond’s fiancé and imprisoning him and the Count wanted revenge on him and anyone else who helped Danglars tear his life apart. That’s when the Queen offers her assistance. If Edmond poisons Snow White and Prince Charming, she will provide him a list of all the people that helped the Baron. The Evil Queen would love to strangle the life out of the Charming’s herself, but in a flashback we’re reminded that thanks to Rumple she can’t harm them and she’s not waiting for the Dark One’s curse to enact her revenge.

Under the Queens orders, Edmond convinces the Charmings to give him a job as a servant at their castle and his plan would’ve gone off without a hitch until he met Snow’s handmaiden Charlotte (Andrea Brooks) who reminds him of his dead fiancé. With Charlotte at risk of drinking the poison too, Edmond can’t go through with it no matter how much he wants his vengeance against the men that wronged him. Unfortunately, Rumple does it for him. The Dark One couldn’t have his curse ruined by Edmond killing Snow and preventing Emma from being born so he gives Charlotte the poison and then gives Edmond an out; If the Count takes Charlotte to The Land of Untold Stories, the poison won’t kill her. Edmond and Charlotte’s story will pause unless he leaves that realm, then the poison will progress and kill the handmaiden. Of course, Edmond takes the Dark One’s offer but now that The Land of Untold Stories came crashing into Storybrooke Charlotte doesn’t have much time.

Blood Spells and Sword Fights

After Regina and Henry discover Charlotte’s body in the Storybrooke woods, the Evil Queen makes herself known to her better half. Regina immediately calls Emma (Jennifer Morrison) and tells her to keep Snow safe and seconds later the savior crashes her car into the town’s protection spell, a spell that’s exactly like the one Regina used when the town was created. It looks like someone broke Regina’s blood magic on her vault and helped themselves to her spells.

At the docks, Snow and Charming discover spells aren’t the only thing The Evil Queen took when Edmond tries to kill them thanks to the Queen controlling his heart. Edmond’s heart was what she stole from Regina’s vault and she wants him to finish what he started. Charming and the Count parry with their swords, but eventually Edmond gets the upper hand and our heroes are knocked out. Before he can get in the final deathblow, Regina shows up to save the day. She tries to stop him, but when she realizes it is an impossible task she hurls Charming’s sword through his back, killing him and darkening her now pure heart. That’s when her Evil half appears and lets them in on a little secret – she’s not going to destroy them. Their unfinished stories will do it for her it seems as she states, “We all have stories we don’t want told.” The Queen might be crazy as all get out, but she’s right about them not wanting to un-pause their unseemly stories from their past and maybe even their future if Emma’s vision she’s hiding are included. The Queen goes on to later taunt Charming with a key she stole from Rumple after propositioning him with some hot and evil sexy times. The coin belonged to David’s father who died in a drunken cart accident or did he? The Evil Queen plants a seed of doubt in Charming’s head in hopes it will lead him to his untold story.

The episode ends with Emma revealing to Archie (Raphael Sbarge) why she’s truly afraid to tell her family about her visions. It seems the cloaked figure that kills her, looks like Regina! Archie tries to clarify by asking if she’s sure it’s not the Evil Queen, but Emma can’t be positive. Now that Regina’s heart has been darkened, will that blackness flourish leading to the end of the savior? The Evil Queen seems to have all her little evil ducks in a row. Even her sister Zelena seems to be loyal to her thanks to Regina’s accusations that she’s working against her when in reality it was the Queen all along.

Will Regina be strong enough to defeat her other half or will Emma’s visions come true? Was the death of Charming’s father really an accident? Will Rumple give up on Belle and take the Queen up on her flirtatious offer? The answers to these questions and more on the next “Once Upon A Time.”