Once Upon A Time Season 7, Episode 20 Recap: Who You Gonna Call?

We begin this episode in the Heights where a storm is brewing –   a magical storm – and as Regina rushes out to the street to take a look she runs into a frantic Lucy who isn’t entirely sure why the curse didn’t break. Before Regina can form a hypothesis, Gothel appears and lets her know she hit the reset button on humanity and soon the Earth will be reborn. She is willing to extend clemency to Regina and her family, if Regina will rejoin the coven. Regina tells her to get stuffed, of course. And it turns out that the curse didn’t break because of Henry –  not Stupida Jacinda (as I was so sure it was). Henry has the heart of the truest believer, but he’s seen too much pain in his life and no longer believes.

We flash back now to Storybrooke and Henry beginning his senior year of high school. Regina gifts him with a car, reminding him that he’ll need it to drive across town to Storybrooke College next year.

Henry is less than enthused about the idea of staying in Storybrooke for the rest of his damn life and reminds her that he was born in the real world and can therefore access it’s higher education system. What kind of degrees do you think they have it Storybrooke College? Advanced Alchemy?  Memory loss 101? Ogre relations? Just wondering.

Ahead at Roni’s bar, Regina is working on a potion that can harvest some magic from the storm that Gothel unleashed  when Rumple arrives. He apologizes for screwing her over and offers his help in the form of a memory potion that he managed to distill from Nick’s blood.  Perhaps if Henry can remember who he is, he and Jacinda can finally break the curse.

Meanwhile, in the cavern under Hyperion Heights, what’s left of the coven is still standing in the circle muttering gibberish when one of the coven suddenly shakes and burst into light, transforming into a sapling. She has now ascended and taken her place in the sacred grove. Rogers isn’t about to let Tilly become a shrubbery.

He tries to knock her out of the circle. Alas, his cursed heart keeps him from it but before he rushes off he vows he will return and save her.

Flashback once again to Young Henry, who is being taught auto maintenance bye who I consider to be the biggest badass in the entire town of Storybrooke:  Granny. Regina arrives bearing a plethora of college brochures from the outside world. She realizes that she has to let Henry go no matter how hard it’s going to be.

A short while later we see Henry clutching several letters in his hands. Unlike normal high school students has been accepted to absolutely every University he applied to –  and they’re all on the same day! But that’s not good enough for Henry. In his admission essays he had to tell a story about a fake Henry Mills – after all he couldn’t really tell them about his life. So now Henry wonders if living in the outside world will allow him to be the authentic Henry Mills that he is.

Clearly facing an existential crisis, he asks his mom for guidance. Regina lets him know that he’s a grown up now and the only one who can decide his life is him.Italics necessary on that. You’ll find out why.

That moment takes us forward to Regina as she shows up at Henry’s apartment. she drops the memory potion into his coffee while he’s not looking and waits with bated breath as he takes a drink. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. Gothel was right – Henry is too much of a grown up now. Regina pleads with him to find his inner child and believe again but Henry is adamant that he only wants to be Henry the Swyft driver with the exceedingly stupid and whiny girlfriend now.

Across town at the station house, a very confused Rogers confronts Rumple and wants to know what the hell is going on.

Rumple tells him that it’s all true – magic, Gothel flinging a curse, poisoned hearts, fairy tales – all of it.  He asks Rogers to take a leap of faith. In a cute moment, Rogers asks who he was in this other realm and a cryptic Rumple cryptically responds: “The only thing you need to know is that you’re a survivor . . . Captain.”

Over at Jacinda’s, she’s busy packing for a weekend away with Henry when Sabine interrupts, concerned that Drew has gone missing. Lucy suggests that they look for him with Mr. Samdi, since a tarot card has mysteriously been left in Drew’s bag.  Jacinda and Sabine rush over there and find Samdi hovering over a pile of voodoo dolls. They also find Drew locked in a copier room – and then get themselves locked in as well.

Regina asks Lucy to meet her at the cemetery.  She’s got a theory: if they can get the original story book into Henry’s hands, perhaps it can make him believe again. Lucy points out that she hasn’t seen that book since Victoria Belfrey showed it to her, and Regina believes that’s exactly where it stayed – clutched in Victorious cold decomposing fingers.

So she’s going to blast open Victoria’s grave and grab the Elder Wand storybook while Lucy shepherds Henry down to Roni’s bar.

Once Henry arrives, Regina pulls out the dirt-crusted storybook and as she and Lucy beg and plead, Henry reaches out and touches it –  but again absolutely nothing happens. Lucy runs off and Regina goes to her back-up plan, showing Henry the picture of her with a young Henry in Storybrooke once again and pulling out copies of the original adoption papers from the agency in Boston. but still, Henry will not believe.

His cursed memories of losing his wife and child in a horrific fire are still eating him alive, and it finally dawns on Regina that this is a carry-over from the moments before the curse was enacted, when Henry was trying to save his family and failed. She reminds Henry that once he save them all and she believes he can do it again because his family is still around him.

Then she drops the bombshell – Gothel’s curse not only took away their memories it took them back in time and at this moment she and a younger version of Henry are still in Storybrooke (which also conveniently explains why none of the rest of the family has come to rescue him).

That’s right we’ve pulled a LOST and added in a simultaneous timeline because what the hell, right?  Oh, this is going to be all kinds of wonky. Anyway, Henry storms out into the slowest moving curse storm ever enacted by a magical person.

Back in Storybrooke, younger Henry and Regina have arrived home after his graduation party. He lets his mom know that he’s made his decision and even though it’s terrifying to leave the only home he’s ever known, he’s ready. But he’s not quite ready to tell Regina exactly where he’s going yet.

Rogers and Rumple recruit Margot to help win Tilly away from the coven. They arrive at the cavern, and Margot does her best to get Tilly’s attention. Tilly’s response is immediate and violent – she blasts them with a white light that shrinks them all.

Over at Jacinda’s house, Henry is trying to reason with Lucy, but she slams her door in his face and screams at him that she wishes he had never grown up. He reaches inside his satchel for his phone so that he can call Jacinda, but instead he finds the adoption papers, and on them is Regina Mills’ home phone number. He gives the number a call and is completely poleaxed when his teenage self answers the phone. Suddenly we are rushed through a memory montage as it all comes flooding back to Henry.

Big, big kudos to Andrew J. West for a superb bit of acting in this scene, as he gives his younger self the advice he so desperately needed:  home is not a place – it’s the people you love, and they never really leave you. He also tells his younger self not to forget the special gift that fell behind his dresser –  a magic bean courtesy of Tiny.

Then he runs out and shares the good news with Lucy before the two of them rush off to help Regina.

Over at the magical well, Gothel is lurking about when Regina rushes up behind her and tries to whack her with a baseball bat. Gothel waves a hand and poofs it into a stake for some bizarre, non-plot driven reason. Of course, without her magic Regina gets blasted backwards and appears to be near death when Henry joins the scene. He cradles Regina tenderly in his arms and tells her he loves her before he puts his lips to her forehead and Blammo!  

The curse breaks! Regina awakens, her magic returns, but she’s still no match for Gothel. Luckily for her, Hook, Rumple, Alice, and Robin have now arrived and are back to their old selves. Rumple is also very sure that Alice is more than a match for her mother.

Alice isn’t so sure, but Papa Hook claims he is now stronger and even though his heart is still poisoned, he pushes himself forward and grabs Alice’s hand in the show of support. With Robin on the other side, Alice realizes that she is surrounded by love and latches onto that power, vanquishing her mother and turning her into a blackened tree that sprouts hyacinths.

Across town, Dr Facilier is thrilled to see the curse broken. Tiana, Ella, and Drew break out of the store room – and Tiana’s ready to brain him with an ink cartridge –  but he poofs himself away.

You’ll have to excuse me a moment because I am giggling like a middle-schooler at that last sentence. Since I don’t have a working left hand due to my injury, I’m forced to use voice-to-text software when I write and it doesn’t always get everything, hence the occasional typo or weirdly spelled word in the blog. Anyway that sentence kept coming out as “ he poops himself away”  no matter how many times I backed it up, over-enunciated and tried to do it right. Quite the mental picture.

And now we set up for a beautiful montage with a terrific voice over by Jared Gilmore who really did this beautifully. I’m not going to describe it – I’ll just drop this here because it gave me all the feels.

Rumple hurries off to his basement evidence room where he opens a safe that apparently doesn’t need a combination to do so, and to his shock finds it empty. Why this should shock him is unknown. He heads over to Samdi Industries and there he finds the beloved scrapbook that Belle put together to chronicle their adventures. Dr. Facilier has planted it there to draw him out and as he and Rumple go head-to-head, it’s clear that Rumple doesn’t have the strength he once had. Taking a turn for the good has weakened him and just as we think Facilier is going to get the better of him, he stabbed by the Dark One dagger which is being wielded by . . .  The Dark One!

He’s come over from the wish realm and Rumple is now facing his giggling crocodile self as we fade to black.

I’m giving this one 4 out of 5 story books, for Andrew J West and Jared Gilmore, who did an outstanding job in this episode.

Gothel’s demise was anti-climactic in the extreme, and this simultaneous timeline makes my brain hurt. And why didn’t Gothel death or the breaking of the curse send them back to their real timeline? Is there yet another curse that still has to be broken?

My thoughts:

1. There’s also still the matter of Hook’s cursed heart – which isn’t as cursed as it used to be since he can hold his daughter’s hand with only minor chest pain now, but that’s still horribly inconvenient is it it?  Since Daddy can now get that close, why not have him kiss Alice on the forehead and blast the hell out of that curse?
2. Which Storybrooke are they going back to in the finale? Now, or years ago?
   
3. Clearly Dr. Facilier is not the Guardian, so there goes that theory. But I have a new theory which is actually an old theory. During my convalescence from my brain injury (I’m still on short term disability leave from the day job, so I’m home on the couch a lot when I’m not in physical therapy), I’ve been rewatching from season one. I’m up to season three now, wandering through Neverland. I was reminded of the prophecy that once terrified Rumpelstiltskin:  the boy will be his undoing. Undoing is exactly what Rumple wants and exactly what the guardian is supposed to do with the dagger. Now that we have Henry Mills returned to who he is, and I think it’s a good bet that Henry is the Guardian and he will be Rumpelstiltskin’s undoing.
4. I’m excited to see what happens between the Dark One and the newer, kinder Rumpelstiltskin.  After an entire season of all-too-brief or non-existent Rumple scenes, we’re finally going to have some fun again.

What did you think of the dueling timelines?  and are you as in love with Andrew J West as I am in this moment?