We begin this episode with Henry and (Cinder)Ella in the alternate realm, getting all worked up over swords. She leans in for a kiss and backs off, only to see Alice spying on them from behind a tree. Alice tells them she needs to find someone. I’ll give you one guess as to who.

Alt-Hook, meanwhile, is grilling Regina about the tower – which she found in ruins. He’s devastated, but before he can start manfully crying, Alice strolls up. He’s thrilled to see her, but as she goes in for the hug he jumps back, reminding her that she can’t touch him because his heart is poisoned. She assures him that she’s shielded now – she’s found a cure. She throws herself into his arms, and he’s blasted away, writhing in pain.

Alice runs off and vanishes through a portal to Wonderland with Ella and Henry is pursuit.

Arriving in Wonderland, Henry and Ella race right into a trap – a net reminiscent of the old Snow and Charming days because they want us see a parallel between Henry and Ella and Snow and Charming that ISN’T F–KING THERE.

Just as he’s about to kiss her, he finds the sword handle instead and cuts them free. He tells her they’re sure to reunite Alice with Hook because family always finds each other, and she scoffs, telling him she’s from a very different world – a world of broken dreams. Oh boo-freaking-hoo, ya whiner. You can’t swing a dead chimera around here without hitting a broken dream. Toughen up, buttercup.

Ahead to Hyperion Heights, and Jacinda pays a visit to Lucy in her new group home, with Sabine there as moral support. Sabine recommends that Jacinda talk sto a certain lawyer – one whose name obviously doesn’t sit well with Jacinda.

Henry, meanwhile, is interviewing Drizella about the Eloise Gardner story, and she’s laying on the flattery pretty thick. She even offers to have Belfry Industries sponsor him if he’d like to turn his blog into a podcast. A sponsored blog! Can you imagine?

Regina shows up and gets rid of Henry so she can warn Drizella to keep her flea-bitten bitchpaws off her boy. Drizella mentions that she’s working with Gothall and when Regina tries to ferret out her agenda Drizella waves her off with “You think I’m going to ‘villain monologue’ for you? Please.”

Over at the station, Rogers shows up to applause as he’s finally cracked his big case, though Rumple warns him that he doesn’t realize what he’s opened up. Gothall shows up with a thank you cake, and when she tells Rogers that she didn’t have much luck with the therapist he sent her to he gives her his number, telling her she can call him when she needs him.

Not long after, Regina strolls in to find Rogers about to serve himself some witch cake. She urges him to reach out to Tilly despite her recent betrayal, and then she tosses the cake in the trash, warning him that “too much sugar will kill ya.”

Back at Roni’s bar, Henry meets and bonds with a guy named Nick over musical preferences. He learns that Nick is a lawyer – and also Lucy’s Dad. Jacinda has asked Nick to help her with her custody fight.

Not long after that, Henry arrives at Lucy’s group home, a place where non-family twenty-something guys are allowed to call on and visit little girls unsupervised.

He’s brought the story book and she wants to find out who Nick is because he’s not her Dad, Henry is. She reminds him of the story of Katherine in Storybrooke, married to David in the curse but not in real life.

“What if I’m the Katherine?” Henry postulates, and Lucy shakes her head. “Nobody wants to be the Katherine.”

Henry jokingly asks if he should slay a dragon, and it gives Lucy an idea. We won’t find out what that is this episode, but keep that tidbit in mind as I’m sure it’ll be called back to later.

Back in Wonderland, Ella opens the small door into the infinite maze, tipping her hand that she’s been to Wonderland before. She confesses that her real mother married her step-father – the only father she ever knew – and gifted him a pair of magical matching lockets. ‘Cause guys so often wear flowery heart-shaped lockets. Anyway, with the magic they could always find each other.

Mom abandoned them both and went to Wonderland. Step-Dad started searching in the infinite maze, but halfway through the locket stopped working because Mom had stopped loving him. He returned to Ella a broken man. Ella drinks the shrinking potion and heads into the infinite maze, determined to find her mother and some answers.

Back in Hyperion Heights, Jacinda is dressed to the nines and ready for a fancy dinner with Nick so they can discuss the case. Sabine asks her if she’s planning to nurture any lingering feelings she has for Nick.

Gothall is back at the top of Belfry Towers, trying in vain to get a twig to flower with magic. Drizella shows up and demands that the witch help her wake Anastasia, because her body contains magic and Drizella wants it.

Jacinda’s date with Nick is clipping right along. He tells her how he’s reinvented his life and matured. He’s scoring big points helping her with Lucy, however, he needs the original court order that assigned custody of Lucy to Victoria – it’s missing from her packet.

Back in Wonderland’s infinite maze, Ella makes her way to the Mad Hatter’s tea party and for a moment I had a blinding hope that we’d see Sebastian Stan. But of course we didn’t. He’s too big for this stuff now. So we’ll have to make do with this:

Instead, we see Alice, who inquires about her papa. She offers Ella tea and around the teapot is a ridiculously conveniently draped locket. It turns out Alice knows Ella’s mother, Cecelia. Alice tells her that Cecelia was attending a tea party when a Jabberwock attacked. Alice slayed it, but no one else survived.

She also shows Ella a mark on her wrist that shows her to be touched by the Curse of the Poisoned Heart – you get it when you’re touched by the one you can’t be with. Ella’s father had the same mark, meaning Cecilia came to Wonderland to get lost in the maze and protect her family.

Alice then confesses that she met a sorceress named Drizella who claimed to have cured her, but it didn’t work. Speak of the devil – Drizella has surprised Henry and frozen him with magic – or only partially frozen him, since he can speak. She starts to poison his heart with a funky Mario mushroom, but Ella leaps in from the sidelines with a right cross and Alice drops a portal mirror on Drizella, sending her back to her own realm.

It turns out Ella’s magical locket started to glow as soon as she realized Henry was in danger. She kisses the bejeezus out of him, sealing the true love deal, and I am – nothing. I mean I feel nothing. Blah. Sorry. She still hasn’t won me back yet and neither has he – although I like him better than her by a mile.

Ahead to Hyperion Heights, and Sabine finds Henry fixing the food truck, hoping to get some brownie points of his own. Jacinda strolls in all dolled up with Nick in tow, much to Henry’s dismay. Jacinda runs Henry down as he’s leaving to let him know her terrible secret: she didn’t lose custody of Lucy – she gave her up, voluntarily signing away her parental rights. She can’t bear for Lucy to know that. Henry recommends that she tell Nick, and give him a chance to be a real Dad to Lucy.

Rumple strolls into Roni’s and Regina knows he’s awake and confronts him on it. He still tries to put up a front despite her all but begging him to team up with her. “If you’re keeping your cover because of the Guardian, it won’t work,” she tells him. “Belle wouldn’t want that.” He pastes on a bland look and pretends not to recognize the name, and Regina says she’ll find help from someone else.

Ella and Henry deliver the Knight chess piece that Alice had been keeping to Hook, letting him know that she’s staying away to protect him. They also tell Regina that Drizella tried to poison Henry’s heart.

Nick shows up in the rebel camp and it turns out he and Henry have a strong bromance. His name is actually Jack – I’m guessing of beanstalk fame since he mentions giants, but I preferred the magnificent rack of original Jack, thankyouverymuch.

Ahead to Hyperion Heights, and Nick has arranged for Lucy to be released to Jacinda’s custody. Her worries were for nothing because Lucy forgives all – mainly because she doesn’t believe the curse story to begin with. She’s indifferent toward Nick because of it, as well.

Henry is getting drunk at Roni’s, where he’s wondering why people fall in love anyway. Because he’s in love after never even having one date with Jacinda, of course. Roni mentions that she needs help, and she’s going to San Francisco to find someone that Victoria pushed out of Hyperion Heights years ago. Someone who hates her with every fiber of her being. She invites Henry on a road trip.

Rogers finds Alice at the troll bridge. She confesses that she’s worked for Weaver because she thought he gave a damn about her and he was a good man and she needs that to tether her to the world.

He gifts her a chess set and asks if she’d like to set up a weekly game. He’s feeling “untethered” now that he’s completed his mission and found Eloise Gardner, and she agrees that she shares the “coming untied from the world feeling” and suggests that now maybe they’ll drift with the planet in the same direction.

Jacinda arrives at Roni’s to find out that Regina and Henry skipped town. She’s bummed because she made him a mix tape.

Drizella arrives at the tower with Anastasia’s coffin, and the witch is ready to rock. Unfortunately, they’ve opened an empty casket.

Victoria was one step ahead of them.

I’m giving this one 4 yawning emojis out of 5.

I went with emojis because Henry and Jacinda bore me together and separately at the moment. The rest of the episode was solid, and I must say, I’m hesitantly glad I stuck with the show. So far.

My thoughts (on episodes 7 & 8):

Nick/Jack is a nice piece of mancandy and I’m glad to see him. But if he ends up being Regina’s love interest that will be seriously weird, since he’s Henry’s best bro. My bet is on Sabine, since he’s a musician.

Everyone’s making it very clear that Gothall is a force to be reckoned with, and she seems desperate to grow that flower in this land without magic. Regina told Hook that the flower was powerful enough to kill an immortal – is that Gothall’s plan? Is she going after Rumple? Or going to try to imprison him to get to the dagger?

The San Francisco road trip can only lead to Zelena, but I find it interesting that Regina says whoever this mystery person is “hates her guts.” Clearly Zelena’s under the curse, too (if she’s been pushed out of Hyperion Heights). I wonder if the bad blood has anything to do with Robin (the kid, not the outlaw). Was Robin the baby that cursed Roni was trying to adopt – and was there a battle between her and Zelena, as the birth mother?

The lullaby that Hook sang to Alice sounded more like rock ballad than lullaby to me. I wonder if the band that Henry and Nick bonded over happen to have that song in the repertoire. Maybe that’s what’s going to wake Rogers up.

So the father that partially raised Ella is really her stepfather. Does that mean there’s a birth father out there? I mean, why change the story to write that in unless there’s a plan for it?

I’m getting the vibe that the original Rapunzel is actually younger Victoria. She mentioned that she learned about broken hearts from Gothall – was she speaking of her imprisonment or a deeper betrayal. Hmmmm.

Someone on Reddit postulated the theory that the Guardian is the troll under the bridge. I’m going with that, too. Wonder how that’s going to shake out.

What about you? Is Ella/Jacinda finally winning you over? And how excited are you to see Zelena?? Yeah, baby!