Once Upon a Time “Shattered Sight” 

After seeing the first glimpse of the Shattered Sight curse at work last week, I expected a dark episode filled with stress and urgency trying to save the town from the curse. With mostly dwarves fighting though, this week is nothing but comic relief. Where is Robin with his bow? Where is Red, and why isn’t she out hunting? Sure, there was a lot of content to compress into one short hour, but I wish it weren’t so… fluffy.

With the Snow Queen on the loose, and Emma and Elsa bound to her by the yellow ribbons, letting Regina out of her self-imposed prison seems like a risky proposition. Sure it gets the ribbons off their wrists, but now Regina is free to run amok through town. It doesn’t seem like Emma to risk lives wantonly like that. She has no way of predicting what Regina might do, I would have expected her to have a plan in place to re-seal the vault before ever opening it. She could very easily have found herself in a two-front battle.

It’s interesting that Gold is waiting for the stars in the sky to align with the sorcerer’s hat. It seems strange that they ever would, being in a different realm and all. Still, I wait with anticipation to see if he succeeds, and what form things take. I would still like to know if those trapped inside the hat are gone forever, or if they can be released. Hopefully we’ll know one way or another next week.

It’s wonderful to finally have the answers to how Emma lost her memories of Ingrid, and what happened all those years ago when the two last met. The memory stones are a nice touch, it must be nice for her to be able to choose a memory at will and revisit it, particularly when she can see it from the other point of view. It’s also refreshing to know that Ingrid did plan to adopt Emma, it seemed very odd to me that she hadn’t gone that route. Now we know she did try, but in her excitement she made a fairly significant mistake.

Anna finally finds her mother’s scroll thrown to sea all those years ago. I suppose it was her destiny all along to be the one to melt the ice in the Snow Queen’s heart. After all, her youthful heart is pure and she revels in the joy of living. That was a significant factor in the original fairy tale, I’m glad they made use of it here. Her similarity to Gerda is no doubt an asset as well when reading her mother’s words to Ingrid. It’s wonderful that Elsa gets to hear that in the end her mother didn’t want to rob her of her gifts, and that Ingrid gets to hear that Gerda regretted her actions of the past. I’m still not sure that would be enough to cause such a diametric shift in thinking for the Snow Queen, but I suppose if her heart has warmed, she may have naturally gone back to the carefree girl she once was. That girl was used to sacrificing her happiness for that of her sisters, so it seems like less of a stretch.

Favorite Lines:

Hook, to Henry: “Did Emma use that word? ‘Together?’”

Regina, twice: “What am I wearing???”

Snow White to Regina: “You think the curse made me angry? Don’t. Wake. My. BABY!”

Once Upon A Time‘s winter finale airs Sunday, Dec. 14th at 8/7c on ABC.