Once Upon A Time Recap: Season 5 Episode 12

Well, it's only fair that my first post on my new blog will be something that's gotten me a great deal of attention on Facebook. It's been a while since I've done one of these, so I'll start by giving you my overall opinion of the first half of season 5 just so everyone's caught up. The first half of season 5 was, simply put, good not great. There were a lot of interesting characters, some interesting ideas, some much appreciated explorations into the origins of the Dark One, and the inclusion of the character of Merida from Disney's Brave, who, unlike Elsa and Anna from season 4, was well integrated into the Once Upon a Time Universe as opposed to highjacking the story from our main characters to cash in on something popular at the time. That having been said, there were quite a few plot threads that went nowhere, still more that felt completely unnecessary. Turning King Arthur into a villain seemed like a good idea on paper, seeing as how they did such a good job of it with Peter Pan, but ultimately, he never amounted to being much more than some jerk whose story wasn't that interesting and never really went anywhere. Merlin, when introduced seemed kind of cool, but again, aside from his direct connection to the origins of The Dark One, he felt like a waste of a character and gotten killed before he was able to have any significant impact. Rumple, now stripped of the Dark One powers gained a great deal of character development and growth, but all that was completely undone by the end of the fall season. So, where are we now? Well, after Emma turned Hook into a Dark One in order to save his life, the Pirate kinda went nuts and tried to destroy the world. However, his plans were thwarted and the darkness was removed from both him and Emma, which came at the unfortunate cost of Hook's own life. Rumple, having used magic to make himself the Dark One once again strikes a deal with Emma, take us to the Underworld to save Hook, or Belle will find out that you're still the Dark One. Reluctantly, he agrees, and the last episode ended with Emma, Snow, David, Henry, Regina, Robin & Rumple entering the Underworld.

The thing I've noticed about some of the later seasons of Once Upon a Time is the budgetary limitations regarding their sets. Particularly present in the first half of the season when they literally brought Granny's restaurant to The Enchanted Forest so they could keep using that set, regardless of how much it confused the viewer. However, here, they seem to be using it to their advantage. The Underworld is basically just the set for Storybrooke with a red tinted filter over it, but it's implied that this is not the true form of the Underworld but rather how they percieve it or how it was made to look in order to mess with our heroes heads. I like the idea that the Underworld in it's inhabitants are actively messing with our heroes heads, making them unable to trust anyone or anything. Sure enough, our heroes split up, many of them encountering figures from their past. Snow has a chance encounter with James, David's amoral twin brother, Rumple briefly meets up with Pan, who offers to help him escape, but it's clear he has alterior motives, Emma has a brief but heartfelt reunion with Neil, and finally, the meat and potatoes of the episode, Regina reunites with her mother Corra, who gives her an Ultimatum, leave the Underworld, or your father will be sentenced to an eternity of torture. What I like about this is, they could have easily made Corra the outright villain here and not much will have needed to be changed, but instead, they make her seem like she's genuine in her desire to protect her daughter, again, adding to an overall theme of not being able to trust anything you see.

The Flashback is standard fair for this show, taking place between Regina and Snow's war, but what's noteworthy is it provides set-up for one of my personal favorite episodes from season 1, Hat Trick. Of course, Regina saves her father and, because of this, he ascends into heaven. On paper, that sounds cheesy, but it's actually a pretty heartwarming scene, and Henry finally gets to meet his adoptive grandfather. The episode ends on a high note however with the reveal of our new villain, Hades, who is shown to be suave and well spoken, much like his disney counterpart, but also a force to be reckoned with and someone definitely not to be crossed.

Overall, this was a strong episode, sets up a new status quo, brings back a lot of fan favorite characters and teases the return of more. Here's hoping that they can continue the momentum into next week. Speaking of, join me next time as we meet Hercules... a surprisingly un muscular Hercules.