Title A Land Without Magic (1.22)

Written By Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz

Major Characters Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison), Regina Mills/Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla), Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin (Robert Carlyle), Henry Mills (Jared Gilmore), Mary Margaret Blanchard/Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin), David Nolan/Prince Charming (Josh Dallas), Jefferson/Mad Hatter (Sebastian Stan), Belle (Emilie de Ravin), August W. Booth/Pinocchio (Eion Bailey)

What Happens First, we’ll tackle the Fairytale Land side of this finale…Prince Charming escapes from the Evil Queen’s dungeon with a little help from the Huntsman (Jamie Dornan) and proceeds on his quest to find Snow White. However, the queen transports him to a forest that is impossible to navigate…without a little magical help, of course. That help comes in the form of Rumpelstiltskin, who offers Charming the Fairytale Land equivalent of a GPS device (he’s enchanted a ring given to Charming by his mother to glow brighter as he approaches Snow White). But of course, all magic comes with a price. In this case, Charming has to hide a potion (made from Charming and Snow’s true love) inside the dragon form of Maleficent. After a daring fight with the aforementioned dragon, Charming succeeds, and, as promised, Rumpelstiltskin gives him the ring, telling Charming that he has a vested interest not only in true love but in what true love creates.

What happens next is a second look at the opening scene of the pilot episode, with Charming racing to his beloved Snow White and restoring her to life with true love’s kiss. The finale takes this scene one step further with a marriage proposal and a promise to “take back the kingdom” from the evil forces that are now controlling it (King George, who Charming has to pretend is his father in an elaborate “Prince and the Pauper”-type story from earlier this season, and the Evil Queen).

And now to the events in Storybrooke…After eating a cursed apple turnover meant for Emma at the end of last week’s episode, Henry is rushed to the hospital while a helpless Emma learns from Dr. Whale (David Anders) that there is no explanation for his loss of consciousness. This triggers Emma to finally see that what happened to Henry is “like magic,” and upon holding his storybook, she finally believes everything he had been telling her all season: Storybrooke is a town filled with cursed fairytale characters and she is the daughter of Charming and Snow, the savior meant to break the curse cast upon them by Regina. This is confirmed during a raw, emotional confrontation with Regina, during which Emma (Henry’s birth mother) discovers that Regina (Henry’s adopted mother) can’t bring their son back to life because she used the last of her magic to create the apple turnover that Henry ate.

The two women then go to the only other person in Storybrooke with substantial power, Mr. Gold. He tells Emma that she needs to retrieve the potion that her father hid inside of Maleficent, who is being kept in her dragon form underneath the town. Before she confronts the dragon, Emma goes to see August, only to watch him return to his original form (a wooden puppet) right before her eyes. Emma defeats the dragon, but is tricked into giving up the potion to Mr. Gold, who experiences his own shocking twist when he comes face-to-face with his beloved Belle, who was thought to be dead. She was freed by Jefferson and sent to find Mr. Gold with the message that Regina is the one who had been holding her captive.

The happiness of this moment is soon forgotten when Emma and Regina receive simultaneous phone calls from the hospital: Henry is dead. While Regina looks on, Emma says her final goodbyes to her son, telling him she loves him and kissing his forehead. True love’s kiss proves once again to be strong enough to conquer all, waking Henry and breaking the curse cast upon all of Storybrooke’s residents. With their memories restored, Snow White and Prince Charming have an emotional reunion 28 years in the making – as do Rumpelstiltskin and Belle. However, Rumpelstiltskin has bigger plans than love at the moment, dropping the potion Emma acquired into a well and bringing magic to Storybrooke through what appears to be a purple version of Lost’s infamous smoke monster.

As the one who cast the curse, Regina knows she will have hell to pay and must go into hiding to save herself now that the townspeople remember who they are. Before she leaves the hospital, though, she pleads with Henry to believe that, no matter what anyone tells him, she does love him. Her tears upon entering her son’s empty bedroom fade to a cruel smile, though, as she sees the purple smoke of magic returning to the town, presumably restoring her powers as the clock strikes 8:15, the same time that Storybrooke was frozen at for 28 years before Emma came to the town in the pilot episode.

Continue reading →