‘Once Upon a Time’ season 4, episode 16 review: Who is Maleficent’s child?
What happened to Maleficent’s child? Sunday night’s “Once Upon a Time” answered that question, and did so in a heartbreaking fashion as we were reminded that even someone like Maleficent has a heart in her own way and can be hurt just like everyone else.
Sure, we still don’t know the entire reproductive process of a woman who turned into a dragon, and then laid an egg that was eventually going to turn into a human baby, but we saw Snow and Charming so desperate to take care of Emma that they were willing to sacrifice that child. While they did not believe that they were taking the kid away from her forever, that doesn’t excuse them or their actions since taking a child away from it’s mother is rarely a good thing.
By the point that we saw her child being sent to “another world,” you may have been able to piece together the puzzle of who this child was. The “other world” was of course the real world, and given that this was three decades ago, it only made sense for EVERYTHING to be connected. It always is on this show. This child turned out to be Lily, the same roguish child that Emma Swan had a past with when she was young. We’re clearly going to see her again, since this is a woman who is now tied with both Maleficent and with Emma at the same time. This should be very fun to explore further as time passes … and as Emma Swan starts to potentially turn to the dark side.
She took a huge step here this week, as she started to react negatively to the big news that all this time, she had been lied to by her parents regarding what they did to Maleficent. So even though she, Charming, Snow, and Hook found the Author at the end of the episode (no surprise it was the guy Snow and Charming ran into in the past), there is no telling just what they will decide to do from here.
As for Rumpelstiltskin, he proved with Belle that there is a heart still in there. It’s just locked away in some personal vault, and it’s having a hard time being broken into.
All of these components led to a very good, but rather predictable, episode of the show. Hopefully this sets the stage for some genuine surprises later. Grade: B.
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