‘Once Upon a Time’ season 6, episode 8 review: The Evil Queen’s magic-mirror plan shatters
Last week’s new episode of “Once Upon a Time” ended with one of the more depressing twists we’ve seen unleashed on the ABC show over the years. After all, what would you call something that basically was enabling the Evil Queen to separate Snow White and Charming from one another for eternity? If one is awake, the other is asleep, and in the opening minutes of tonight’s episode, we saw this play out in heartbreaking but extremely well-crafted fashion.
Of course, Emma wanted to do everything that she could to help her, and she and Regina have a plan! What was it? Let’s just say that it had a thing or two with trying to capture her within a mirror, but due to some spying, she managed to get a leg up on them and eventually trapped Emma and Regina in the mirror instead. Here, we saw the Mirror World! All of a sudden, we know now what Sidney Glass went through. It looks awful.
What made matters worse is that the Queen took advantage of this opportunity to parade around town wearing her finest Regina mask in order to ensure that she could get everyone to do her bidding. What she probably underestimated was how nobody was really going to buy that she was anything close to the person Regina became over the years in Storybrooke. She just couldn’t flip that switch overnight.
Belle and Zelena’s new mission – While many of the other characters on the show are currently preoccupied with the Evil Queen, Belle’s got a mission of her own: Trying to stop the Dark One at any point to ensure the safety of her child. She knew the he was up to something, and was willing to recruit anyone and everyone she could who will help her to achieve this goal. That included Aladdin, one of the best thieves in the business and a man who does still have “savior” on his resume.
Meanwhile, “Regina” went to Mr. Gold’s pawn ship in order to make her goal clear to him: She wants to retrieve a magical hammer, one that she can use on Henry to further along her own plan, potentially to build an ally. She didn’t view this as a way to remove any issues that were there; instead, she referred to it more as a “beginning.”
Henry’s role – While all of this was going down, all Henry really wanted was more of a relationship with Violet, and when he realized that “Regina” was not who she claimed that she was (once again, the Queen’s a terrible impersonator), he used her in order to ensure that he was able to keep the ruse going. Emma and Regina were off in mirror-land worrying about him, and maybe even underestimating his ability.
Luckily, they had a way in order to distract themselves courtesy of the Dragon a.k.a. the awesome dude who’s seemingly died several times now. He informed them that in between Sidney Glass and himself, they had devised a way to get out of there — one that was unfortunately railroaded rather quickly by the Evil Queen realizing what was up, cornering Henry, and turning the Dragon into an actual dragon using his heart. In other words, we figured that the Dragon, who is this show’s version of Kenny from “South Park,” was probably going to be killed off again sooner rather than later.
This is where things got surprisingly dark for this show, given that the Evil Queen put him in an awful position: Giving him the magic hammer, and telling him that he could use it to kill the Dragon once and for all. If that happened, he’d save his mothers; yet, at the same time, he’d darken his heart and become more like the Evil Queen. Emma and Regina had to figure out a solution to their predicament quickly, since the longer they waited, the more likely it’d be that Henry restored to a darker path. Luckily, Henry’s ingenuous plan of smashing the mirror, coupled with the mothers’ plan coming to fruition, ended up working. Everyone was free, and Hook was there to play hero at the last minute.
The Beast is back – Unfortunately for Belle, this man is going full-tilt now as a bad guy. Her plan fell apart, and to make matters worse, he’s not giving her a lot of options to run away. The one thing that she’s got on her side is Zelena, who gave Rumple a not-so-lovely reminder (at least to him) that he can’t hurt her because of what happened at the hospital.
Meanwhile, Regina met up in the closing minutes with Rumple in order to figure out their next move. For Rumple, this meant trying to configure a plan in which the Queen would be so kind as to kill her own sister. Yep, he’s still out for himself.
There was at least a happy moment near the end tonight, as Henry got a chance to have a nice, romantic moment with Violet. She told him that she was struggling with finding her identity at school, and that was causing her to be distant.
Overall – While there was no iconic moment in this episode, it was entertaining and most of the characters acted true to themselves. The show does still have a problem in that the Evil Queen’s still not as evil as she could be, but we’re enjoying the right. Let’s just hope for more of a defined endgame shortly. Grade: B.
The next week – You can see a preview for what is coming up next over at the link here. However, this episode won’t be coming up on the air until November 27. (Photo: ABC.)