We begin this episode with a young prince Henry on a white horse galloping through the forest on his way to save a princess in distress. He arrives at a hidden cave where said princess is clearly under a sleeping curse and the protection of a dragon. He draws his sword, but before he can save the day another handsome young prince charges in and steals his thunder. True Love’s KissTM awakens the girl, who thanks her prince and tells Henry he’s like a brother to her.

As a dejected Henry leaves the cave, he encounters wish realm Rumpelstiltskin who’s there to make a deal. He wants Henry to have his happy ending, but Henry wasn’t raised by dummies – he knows better than to take a deal from this Rumple. He declines, but Rumple assures him this is a standing deal – and he may need it one day.

Ahead in Hyperion Heights, everyone is gathered at Roni’s to celebrate the breaking of the curse. Henry asks Regina if it’s possible that Facilier’s absence means he’s up to no good. Regina agrees it’s a possibility, which should bother her a whole lot more seeing as how she was banging the guy all season.

Hook, meanwhile, has been discharged from the hospital and has returned home. Just as he’s ready to open the door his cell phone rings and it’s his beloved starfish.

Alice stands across the street unable to go any closer so they catch up for a minute. It’s clear that while she’s very happy to be reunited with her beloved Robin, part of her longs for the time under the curse when she was playing chess and living under the same roof with her father. Hook vows to her that somehow, someway, he will find a way to break this curse upon his heart.

Regina goes in search of Facilier, calling him by his cursed name and then trying his real name when he doesn’t answer to the cursed name. She ends up finding Rumple instead, bound up and stymied with a magical dampening cuff. But she calls him “Gold.” Don’t ask me why. Anyway, he spills the beans about wish realm Rumple making an appearance and he let her know that Facilier – like any limited plot line tied to him – is dead, dead, dead.

Across town, Tiana is stress-baking instead of celebrating with everyone else. She’s having a post-curse identity crisis. Naveen knows just what to say, giving her a pared-down version of David’s “We Are Both” speech from Season two. He must have taken a class about Post-Traumatic Curse Disorder at Storybrooke University.

Over at Henry and Ella’s house, Lucy has put out three cupcakes with three blue candles meant to celebrate all the occasions they haven’t been able to celebrate together during the time of the curse. She suggests that they all make a wish.

Just as they all blow out the candles, Ella and Lucy disappear, courtesy of wish Rumple, who apparently was waiting for this moment to occur. He has sent Lucy and Ella off to the wish realm and if Henry wants to get them back he’ll need to strike a deal. wish Rumple wants the Dark One dagger of his counterpart. If our Rumple destroys his dagger it destroys wish realm Rumple’s dagger too and he can’t have that. Now Henry, a newly “desperate” soul, has a choice to make.

Henry rushes over to let Rumple, Hook and Regina know that wish Rumple has stolen his family away. Regina reminds him that they do not negotiate with villains and vows they will get his family back. Hook dons his namesake appendage and tells them that Alice had a magical Looking-Glass among her things – unfortunately it’s cracked but Regina is reasonably sure that it’s still viable. It immediately opens up a portal – and again, how the hell did it take Rumpelstiltskin centuries to get to his son when just about everything can open a freaking portal? They all step through but the cracked mirror sends them to two different destinations. Henry and Regina emerge at wish Rumple’s castle – a very dark and sinister place that is littered by skeletons. There they find dear old Dad, a.k.a. Peter Pan locked in stocks. He’s a far cry from the tricky imp we know – this Pan is utterly beaten and he urges them to leave this place.



Rumple and Hook, however, have landed in another part of the wish realm, right outside Rumple’s old hovel of a home. It’s clear that wish Rumple is trying to push his buttons, as he even has the sledgehammer that Rumple hobbled himself with on display just outside the cottage. Hook suggest that they check out his former digs as he has something that may help their cause. Apparently he lived on an unsheltered platform looking out over the sea. He pulls out a conch shell and gives it a blow and lo and behold, there’s Ariel, who’s a good friend in any realm. She offers Hook and Rumple the little bit of squid ink that she has left so that they can immobilize their foe.

Back at wish Rumple’s castle, Regina and Henry have now encountered another familiar face: Cruella Deville – and in a thoroughly bizarre scene, she and Henry get into a sword fight. I have no idea why – swords and physical exertion are very definitely not something that I would ever see Cruella being comfortable with – but the writers threw it in anyway, so what the hell. Henry is victorious over the middle-aged, inexperienced woman in the long, dog fur coat, and she lets them know that Lucy and Ella are in the dungeon.

They rush down to the basement and there they find Lucy and Ella miniaturized and stuck inside of a snow globe. Wish Rumple emerges from the shadows to let them know that the snow globe is unbreakable to everyone but him. Henry refuses to trade his happy ending for his grandfather’s, so wish Rumple adds a little drama to the situation, causing it to snow inside the globe. Henry has until midnight before his wife and daughter freeze to death.

Rumple and Hook show up and Henry whines and bitches for a little while about why Grandpa get should get his happy ending with nobody else can. This is immediately after he just made his stand about not trading his happy ending for his grandfather, so I’m not sure where the hell this is coming from. Anyway, Rumple vows he will find a way to take down wish Rumple. He and Regina take off with the squid ink, leaving Henry and Hook behind to do research in wish Rumple’s extensive library, hoping to find a spell that will release Ella and Lucy.

Rumple goes to confront wish Rumple back at his old hovel, giving him a song and dance about how turning the dagger over to someone pure is not a good idea and probably he should give it to his dark self. Somehow his dark self decides to fall for this and grabs the dagger which is, of course, coated liberally with squid ink. Wish Rumple reminds our Rumple that this will not hold him long and Rumple makes his move, preparing to drive the dagger into his alternate dark heart. Regina rushes in and distracts him just in time for wish Rumple to break free. He sends Regina flying and then he lets our Rumple know the real reason he’s here: he’s here to stop Henry because – just as the prophecy foretold long, long ago – Henry will be his undoing.

Henry, meanwhile has an epiphany by looking at the quill pen in his hand. He knows what he needs to do to save his family, but before he rushes off he conks Hook on the head to keep him from following. Do you think wish Hook has been knocked unconscious as many times as our Hook? How many traumatic brain injuries can one person survive and still function at a reasonable level?

So Henry rushes off to find the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the keeper of the author’s pen. Henry’s life story flashes through the apprentice’s mind at a single touch, and in an awesome moment of the show poking fun at itself, the Apprentice observes that the timelines in Henry’s story “make one’s head spin.”

He also thinks the story could do with a little more romance (must be talking about season seven). He gives Henry the pen and cautions him to remember that the author is there to record the stories not create them.

Henry runs back to wish Rumple’s Castle, steals the black ink out of Cruella’s hair, and gets ready to write a story. Wish Rumple is a step ahead of him and takes the pen from his hand just before he reveals his real motive.

The deal he made was not with our Henry but with wish Henry, who now joins the party. Wish Henry never saw any of his dreams come true and is now a desperate and bitter soul. Wish Rumple is going to use him to rewrite his story.

Wait, didn’t we already do this a few seasons ago? The villain getting the author to rewrite his story? Or am I suffering from post-traumatic memory curse disorder?

In one sweep of the pen, wish Henry declares that the powers of the Guardian are no more. Wish Rumple whisks away the others to join Ella and Lucy in the snow globe, leaving Regina to face a reckoning with wish realm Henry, who’s ready for some revenge for the deaths of his grandparents and also for taking his mother away.

Over now to Hyperion Heights, where Alice grabs her chest and gasps in pain – her beloved papa is in danger and she knows it. She and Robin – who she’s still calling Margot – rush off to see Tiana, begging her to help them find some magic. Tiana gathers a crowd at the foot of the troll bridge and ask them all to scour their belongings for a pair of silver slippers or a magic bean that they all might have forgotten about. Because none of them would want to use that to go back to their home, and again portal opening devices are a dime a dozen – somebody’s bound to have one, right?

Luckily for them, Remy comes through with magic bean he found once while working on a recipe. Tiana loans Alice and Robin her food truck, and as they climb in Alice tells her that they’re going to make a stop along the way to get some help ( because they can probably find another magical device once they get to where they’re going – again you can’t swing a dead cat without finding a magic bean around here). The portal opens, they drive through, and we watch with a satisfied sigh as they passed the sign telling us that they are entering Storybrook.

I’m giving this one 4 quills out of 5, mostly for that one line from the Apprentice.

My thoughts:

I’m glad they got some of the cameos out of the way so the last episode isn’t just one big collection of oddly-placed scenes – like this one was. Why the hell did they turn Tiana into such a simpering hothouse flower? Now that’s she’s free from the curse, she suddenly lost all belief in herself and can’t even get a crowd of her own subjects to pay attention to her? Thank goodness Naveen was there to fix everything! *barf* What was the purpose of Dr. Facilier, anyway? To bang Regina? To confuse the plot? Really, what did he add to the season? And why did wish Rumple take his body instead of leaving it there? If wish Cruella had the author’s magic ink in her hair, then it stands to reason that the author also wrote that she couldn’t kill anyone. So why was she sword fighting Henry with the clear intent to kill? Here’s hoping the final episode has a little more substance and a whole lot of nostalgia.

What did you think? Did this all seem oddly disjointed to you, too?