Well the Evil Queen isn’t wasting any time.
At the start of the episode we immediately jump into the Evil Queen executing her plan. And she’s in for the long haul; she wants to blacken Regina’s heart and tear apart Team Good. In order to really get the ball rolling though, she needs a few things from Regina’s vault.
And who does she have in tow? Why, Zelena of course. Who now must face the terrible dilemma of choosing between which half of her sister she wants to side with. If this episode was any indication, I’d say she’s firmly on Team Evil Queen. Mostly because Regina hurt her feelings a little bit. She had the opportunity to warn Regina of the Evil Queen’s return and she didn’t. It’ll blow up in her face later but we all know Regina will forgive her anyway; this is Once Upon a Time where your arch nemesis becomes your best friend.
The thing that irked me about this scene, and the one later in the episode when Zelena meets Regina at the town line, is that we got the same, mopey, woe-is-me-I-never-had-a-family Zelena we got last episode.
And last season.
And the season before that.
Why is she still on this show again?
I don’t hate Zelena. I just think she has absolutely no reason to be on the show anymore. And it feels like they’re running out of things for her to do.
Moseying on a long, we meet Regina and the rest of Team Good at Granny’s. And Regina, like her Evil Queen half, decides to get moving on that plan she talked about last week. In her first step toward starting over and being a better person, Regina gives a speech to the new arrivals from The Land of Untold Stories about not being afraid of the stories that will come and facing the future together.
The speech started off well enough but kind of got cringey from the middle and onto the end. I know what show I’m watching and what to expect, but sometimes it gets really cheesy. Regina in that moment was too let’s-hold-hands-and-sing-Kumbaya and love solves everything. She was like that for a lot of the episode really.
Edmond Dantes himself, the Count of Monte Cristo, makes his first appearance, very mysteriously.  I must say that the acting in the scene in which he kills the Baron was very good. Craig Horner and Andrew Kavadas pulled me in with their performances. I was enthralled. Then the spell was broken when the Evil Queen entered the scene. Next to Horner and Kavadas in that scene, Lana Parrilla’s acting right then was quite over the top and it was intrusive and disruptive. The Evil Queen is supposed to be a bit cartoonish but in that scene, at that time, perhaps it didn’t call for that.
And then Regina reveals to Snow and Charming that the Count is there to kill them because she hired him to. Very many years ago. And now he’s coming after them. Of course Regina’s past comes back to haunt her! She can’t move forward without looking back. I suppose she will have to deal with the Evil Queen both literally and figuratively; the actual Evil Queen and also the sins she committed when she was her.
Regina wasn’t the only one dealing with the sins of her past and trying to turn over a new leaf in this episode; Killian got in on the action too.
Now that Belle and Rumple aren’t together anymore, she needs a place to stay. So in swoops Killian to offer his ship as an apology for how he wronged her. And, of course, she accepts and forgives him.
With all the villains -turned-good-guys trying to make amends this episode, it reminded me that Rumple is only villain who is still a villain. He’s changed, yes. But he’s still in pursuit of the same things he’s always been and still resorting to the same slimy, underhanded and manipulative means to get it.
Speaking of Rumple, the Evil Queen surprises him at this shop and tries to seduce him. I need that pairing less than I need Zelena to turn evil this season.
It turns out that the Count actually doesn’t want to kill Snow and Charming but he has no choice because the Evil Queen has his heart. He comes dangerously close to killing them, but they’re saved by Regina, who, because of his relentless pursuit, had to kill him in order to do so. I agree with the Evil Queen here; Regina didn’t really need to kill the Count to save them. She could have incapacitated him. And then throw him in the jail maybe? I just feel like killing him wasn’t necessary.
When Emma went to Hopper to tell him who she suspected the person in the hood to be I didn’t think she was going to say Regina. I thought she was going to say herself since she referred to the Evil Queen’s line of tearing them apart. I took it literally and thought it meant that Emma would have to pull a Jekyll and Hyde.
This week’s episode was better than the last. It was more engaging and things actually happened. I wish the Count had been around for more than an episode. I’m not entirely satisfied with how he was incorporated into the show. But overall it was pretty good aside from all the times I noticed Lana Parrilla overacting. She seemed really off this episode.
Random thoughts:
- “You think I should tell my family?” YES EMMA!
- “Well, I mean, the question is; why haven’t you?” Thank you for saying what I’m thinking Hopper.
- Do the writers of the show even know what the timeline is anymore?
- How did no one die when that zeppelin crashed?
- I love how Charming immediately accepted that the Evil Queen was back.
- Why is Henry surprised that Killian doesn’t get his movie references?
- Ha! “Lesser of two evils.”
Once Upon a Time airs Sunday nights at 8 PM on ABC.
