‘Once Upon a Time’ season 3, episode 8 review: Who is Rumpelstiltskin’s father?
“Once Upon a Time” has tried to hand off a series of “twists” over the course of the series, but the majority of them have not been particularly surprising. Take, for example, Neal being Baelfire, and him also being Rumpelstiltskin’s son. We saw these reveals coming a mile away, just as we predicted most of the early reveals about Neverland and Peter Pan in season 2.
But, we have to admit that (spoiler alert!) we never saw the reveal coming where Peter Pan was actually Rumpelstiltskin’s father. This definitely makes that family tree all the more complicated. Basically, it means that Pan is the grandfather of Neal, the great-grandfather of Henry, and he’s also connected to everyone from Emma Swan to Snow White in some shape or form. The “Once Upon a Time” family tree gets more and more twisted. It’s amazing that we never ended up seeing this coming, since it is something that there were some clues to given that this episode was stuffed full of Rumple backstory.
We like being surprised in this context; plus, the entire Neverland story makes complete sense, though we do still wonder how in the world Pan managed to get so much knowledge of the surrounding world. But we did learn yet again that he is a very persuasive guy, and managed to convince Henry that he should give up the heart of the truest believer for him … and he did. We still don’t fully buy that Henry would believe him even while Emma and the rest of his family standing before him was trying to convince him otherwise, but he did. Does this mean that Henry’s dead? It certainly does not look good … but given that an upcoming episode is entitled “Save Henry,” we’re not fully giving into the belief that Henry is in fact dead.
But above all, we are just happy that this was a solid episode of the show that was simple, and gave us a cohesive story from start to finish. Let’s just hope that the rest of the Neverland story is all about this. Grade: B+.
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Photo: ABC