Once Upon a Time – Awake

By: Kelly Kearney

This week’s episode of “Once Upon a Time,” begins with Hook (Colin O’Donoghue), whose been cornered by the vengeful Lost Boys in Neverland. Before the group of murderous young men can follow through with their threats of payback for Hook’s role in their leader, Pan’s (Robbie Kay), misfortune the pirate’s life is saved by Tiger Lily (Sara Tomko) who seems familiar with Hook. She tells him she’s not there for a rescue and plunges an arrow into the grateful pirate’s neck, knocking him out.

While Hook’s taking a forced nap in Neverland, Emma (Jennifer Morrison) is back in Storybrooke learning about her part in the final battle. On top of the news her fate wasn’t so easily changed, Emma’s got her hand tremors back and Snow (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Charming (Josh Dallas) are still under the Queen’s sleeping curse with no chance of helping their daughter defeat The Black Fairy (Jaime Murray). Emotions are running high and David wants Regina (Lana Parrilla) to find a cure so both of Emma’s parents can be by her side. In his desperate hope for answers, David flashes back to a time when Storybrooke was under the dark curse and David Nolan was a coma patient at Storybrooke hospital. Much like Season One, the Mayor and Mary Margaret are at each other’s throats and the pastel clad teacher finds a pink flower growing out of the sidewalk. A flower bursting through cracked stone is a symbol of hope and nobody does hope better than Snow White, even if she doesn’t know she is Snow White. Later, Mary Margaret takes the flower to the comatose man and, miraculously, David wakes up. In a land without magic, how did David magically come to? The dust from the petals are magic and it not only wakes David but Mary Margaret wakes from her curse too.

Flashforward to Storybrooke and Zelena (Rebecca Mader) and Regina are putting their witchy moves on Snow and Charming, in hopes they can reverse the Evil Queen’s curse. They remove their hearts to do a spell at first, it seems to work when David wakes to see a smiling Snow, but in an instant Snow falls back asleep leaving David and the witches more confused than ever. Apparently, The Queen put a failsafe on her curse and instead of reversing the spell, it does the opposite. By nightfall, both Charmings are doomed to fall asleep…forever.  It looks like it’s back to the magical curse reversal drawing board, for Regina and Zelena.

Evil Is in Storybrooke

The news about the final battle was bad enough, but when Emma and David find Pixie Petals littered around Snow’s sleeping form, petals that have the power to wake them both up, the news is not good. Sure, breaking the sleeping curse is great but those Pixie Petals only show themselves in the presence of pure evil. If the petals are there then so is The Black Fairy and you don’t get more evil than her.

Speaking of the personification of evil, she pops in to her son’s pawn shop, with Gideon (Giles Matthey) in tow, for a little family pow wow. Now that she’s in town and all three generations of darkness are together, she’s hoping Rumple (Robert Carlyle) will join her on the dark side. Rumple doesn’t seem too keen on joining dear old Mom, even with her vague threats of an evil coming to town and her promise that the Dark One couldn’t resist it. From the backroom, Belle (Emilie de Ravin) sees her son, his father and the worst Mother-in- law on the planet discussing evil plans and the poor librarian must be thinking about how apples very rarely fall far from the tree.

Back to the dark cursed days, David is awake and he totally knows who he is, but more importantly who Mary Margaret and Emma are. The last time the two saw their daughter they were sticking her in a wardrobe for her best chance and now he wants to find her. David takes off to talk with Mr. Gold in hopes he has some answers, but Gold doesn’t seem to have a clue about Mr. Nolan’s ramblings until David mentions Emma’s name. At hearing her name, Gold wakes from the curse and decides to help David. He hands him Pixie Flower dust with the power to reunite loved ones, even parents and their long-lost children, something The Dark One is all too familiar with.

The Enemy of my enemy is my friend

Back in Neverland, Hook is Tiger Lily’s prisoner she tells the pirate she saved him so he could deliver a weapon to another realm. This weapon can stop the ultimate evil and Hook starts to realize Tiger Lily is evil and the evil looking to kill his beloved Emma are one in the same. Now that the two are in the same page, helping the savior win the final battle, Hook is going to have to find a way home only he’s stuck on the island with no idea how to get off. Tiger Lily tells him that Pan might have the magic to send him home, but they’d have to fight through the Lost Boys to get it. Hook doesn’t have much to lose so together the two search for Pan and a way back to Emma.

As Hook is about to tangle with his unfriendly past, Mayor Regina is testing Snow during the dark curse. In a flashback, we see Regina pushing Snow to reveal her identity. Since the Dark Curse broke, the Mayor is all too aware of who the woman is and while she and Snow are searching the woods for the missing coma patient the two enemies find themselves at the mines. Archie (Raphael Sbarge) went below to look for any signs of David and knowing that Snow could never allow anyone to harm her friend, Regina threatens to demolish the mines in one push of a detonator button. Snow, not being nearly as weak and unsuspecting as she pretends, predicted the Mayor might do something evil so she brought along a weapon but neither woman gets to use them when the local townspeople interrupt their tete-e-tete.

Where Evil Roams, Flowers Grow

While searching for Pixie Flowers, Emma and Snow stumble upon a whole field of the pink magical beauties and that’s when The Black Fairy makes her presence known. With Gideon beside her the evil woman introduces herself and, in a flash, Gideon poofs the flowers gone. Without the flowers, the true loves are doomed to an eternal slumber, leaving Emma more vulnerable than ever.

Back in Neverland, Hook has gotten some insight into Tiger Lily and her revenge on the Black Fairy. In the past, Tiger Lily was a fairy but denounced her wings when she couldn’t defeat the Black Fairy and put a stop to her kidnapping, evil ways. This might be her last chance, only she and Hook get caught by the Lost Boys as they’re trying to steal their way home. Of course, the Lost Boys are always looking to spill blood so when they take Hook and Tiger Lily captive, they only have one thing in mind…murder.

Flashback to the dark curse, David and Snow are ready to find Emma and bring her home. Thanks to Rumple and his Pixie Flower dust, they have the means to do it. There’s just one problem, Emma was fated to break the dark curse at age twenty-eight and her parents woke up, eighteen years too early. If they find Emma and bring her home now, at age ten, the curse will remain and the town and its people will be forever trapped. Rumple gives the two desperate parents an out, a memory erasing potion that will keep them under the curse’s spell until an adult Emma can wake them up. With a magical door into their 10-year-old daughter’s life, the distraught parents decide to leave it up to hope and down the memory potion, knowing their daughter will be the savior the town needs. Of course, knowing then what Snow knows now and the fight Emma is facing, she’s feeling the guilt of that decision and wonders if it was the right choice.

Right choice or not, Emma and Snow are about to give up on their search for Pixie Flowers, thanks to Gideon, when the savior finds one lonely flower growing from between rocks. Like Mother like daughter, the flower remained because they needed it to. Hope wins again and, boy, Snow will have a litany of speeches to drive Regina crazy after this big find! With the dust from the petals in hand, David and Snow are about get their curse reversed when Hook’s shadow flies through the apartment window and hands Emma her pirate’s hook! A hook that was cursed to kill magical beings, could this be a message from her fiancé who is stuck in parts unknown?  Emma is crushed, regardless of the gesture, and seems more distracted by her lost love than her son’s possessed writing episodes or her parents sleeping plight. It consumes the woman and mostly keeps her distracted from the final battle or as Isaac (Patrick Fischler) put it, the end of their stories. Seeing her daughter distraught and about to lose hope, Snow hands Emma the magic petal dust and tells her to use it to find Hook. The dust brings loved ones together and even though the Charmings will sleep for an eternity, they have hope Emma will find a way to wake them. Emma takes the dust, like she didn’t just doom her parents to a curse nobody knows how to break, and opens a portal to Hook who is two seconds from the pointy end of a Lost Boy’s (Matthew Bittroff) spear. The savior saves Hook and Tiger Lily, bringing her pirate home for good. Fiancé? Yes, it appears absence does more than make the heart grow fonder as it completely erases relationship problems over lies and murdered grandparents. Hook wastes no time and gets on one knee giving Emma a proper proposal, to which she says enthusiastically yes!

Now that Emma’s life is all peachy, minus that annoying fight to the death, Regina and the town decide to try and bring the Charmings out of their long magical nap. The Mayor calls a town meeting in her office where Snow and Charmings bodies are sprawled out on her desk. Regina thinks that if everyone, herself included, takes the sleeping curse it might dilute the power of the Charmings curse. One by one the townspeople drink and they all fall asleep boosting David and Snow awake! Within minutes, the town is awake to see that their plan worked and the Charmings are finally awake. Much like his daughter, David must have missed his BFF too much to care about Hook killing his father because the two make up and all is right in Charming’s world.

All might be right with the Charmings, but for Rumple and his son the hell might just be beginning. The episode ends with the Black Fairy reminding Rumple to join her and goes even further by saying she holds his son’s heart. Rumple promises he will fight for Gideon’s freedom and from the looks of things, this might be the war to end all wars… or at least Storybrooke as we know it.