‘Once Upon a Time’ season 2 premiere review: When worlds collide

“Once Upon a Time” made some pretty big promises leading up to its second-season premiere Sunday night: to introduce us not only to magic within the context of Storybrooke, but to also explain a little bit as to how it works. Plus, there was the fact that everyone now knows who they actually are, as well as who everyone else is with a few exceptions. (For one, nobody seems to have any idea just who Dr. Whale is.)

So let’s try to do our best to detail some of the moments from this episode that still have us shocked:

1. The fairy tale world still exists! – Based on what we saw during the first season, we were under the assumption that the entire land of fairy tale creatures was no longer existent. However, we found out by the end of the episode that this was not entirely the case. The side story that we were seeing all season long involving Prince Phillip, Aurora, and Mulan was actually still happening in the present alongside what was going on in Storybrooke, We found this out at the end of the episode, as the attempts by Regina to cast a wraith away ended up going south, and Mary Margaret and Emma were sent there to work on some of their mommy issues.

2. Who created these wraiths? – We don’t know what these things are, but someone apparently marked both Phillip in one world, and Rumpelstiltskin had the power to mark Regina in the other. How do you kill these things? Basically, they are at this point the Dementors of the “Once Upon a Time” world. The most shocking part of all this was that Belle wanted to stay with Rumple at the end of this.

3.  Who is Dr. Whale? – Just in the span of one episode, we learned that this guy both slept with Mary Margaret once, and also has a dark side.

4. Who was the man at the beginning? – Someone seemingly received a message from a carrier pigeon reading “Broken,” and we don’t really have any idea who this is. Do we have a guess? Sure, but only because there is only one person seemingly connected to the people in Storybrooke who may not be there…

What did you think about this premiere, and where do you think that the season is going to head next? Be sure to share some of your thoughts below!