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Once Upon A Time Season 4, Episode 3 Review: “Rocky Road”

 
Once Upon a Time "Rocky Road"
Once Upon a Time "Rocky Road"
Once Upon a Time "Rocky Road"


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Posted October 13, 2014 by

ALL SPOILERS COME WITH A PRICE DEARIE!

…..speaking of….

Rumpel. Rumpel! What. Are. YOU DOING?!

Do you not realize that it is an entirely realistic possibility that your old switcheroo lie with your dagger was going to get exposed in the most inconvenient and personally damaging way possible? Did you seriously not have second thoughts about making magic deals with obviously manipulative, obviously unstable, people capable of murder?

You are going to get caught in this web you are weaving, you are going to break Belle’s heart again and everybody is going to hate you! And then you are going to probably make some startlingly heroic sacrifice that saves the whole town again and people will be reluctantly back on your side. Probably.

Once Upon A Time Season 4 Episode 2 “White Out” Review

It’s a dark day for Rumbelle when Hook, the man who has hated and hunted Rumpel for so long, has a more accurate appraisal of Rumpel’s actions than Belle. What’s probably going to happen is that Rumpel is going try and have Hook killed inconspicuously so that his secret will be kept. But that is going to be screwed up royally.

At any rate.

Robin, Marian and Roland pay a visit to the ice cream shop, with a very subtle, but very powerful reminder of the tension in the family when Roland pleads for ice cream, saying Regina let him have some. Oooooh. Good on Marian for being a responsible mother and not making a big deal about it.

So the Snow Queen casts a freezing curse on Marian’s ice cream, causing her to succumb to the same kind of degenerative freezing curse that afflicted Anna in the Frozen movie. Emma, David and Hook begin to investigate.

Emma and David introduce Will Scarlet by way of running into him and him helping them find the Snow Queen. But then he disappears with the looted register of her ice cream store. We’ll probably see him again.

Back in the past at Arendelle, Kristoff and Elsa continue to trying and maintain the kingdom while Elsa worries continuously over Anna. Things get complicated when Hans and his 12 older, demeaning brothers, arrive at the border with a conquering army and an Urn (GASP!) capable of trapping a magic user.

Elsa is convinced that such a device is an indicator that there are other magic users like her out there. Despite Kristoff’s cautions, the two of them fall into an obvious trap where Hans forces Elsa to give him the urn or he will kill Kristoff.

Hans, you little $#@%. It was certainly a pleasant surprise when the Snow Queen came flooding out of the urn and froze his sorry hide solid.

So the Snow Queen is Elsa’s (and Anna’s) Aunt, their mother’s sister? That seems legit, and also slightly different than what many fans predicted. It also seems like this is probably the truth that the previous King and Queen of Arendelle tried to send to Elsa before being ship wrecked.

But of course, the partial answers lead to bigger questions. How did the Snow Queen end up in the urn in the first place? How did Hans get it? What was the initial relationship between the Snow Queen and her sister like? Why do Elsa and Emma not remember their previous interactions with her? We saw that Elsa and the Snow Queen certainly met, and I’m going to say that her recognition of Emma seemed quite genuine.

There was also the meeting with Rumpel, where it seems like he expected a lot of what has played out so far, Including Emma not recognizing the Snow Queen. The way Rumpel put it, it definitely seems like the two interacted and knew it.

I can’t decide of Rumpel is being his old mischievous, conniving self, wrapped up in the Arendelle Royalty intrigue, or if he has his own angle in mind. He said he eagerly awaits the time when the Snow Queen comes to him to make a deal.

It was good to see Elsa immediately refuting the Snow Queen’s platitudes about even friends and family turning on magic users. Elsa is smarter and more experienced than that. Though I certainly expect her conviction on this point to be tested again soon enough.

It was also great, and a bit unexpected, to see Emma’s magic hold its own and drive off the Snow Queen for the time being. Perhaps her familiarity with Emma led the Snow Queen to drop her guard a bit.

The Snow Queen is totally lying about how Elsa ended up in the urn. She outright stated that she was cursing Marian and killing Hook to get the town to turn on her. Only to show her how much they already distrust her, of course. Pffft. Too bad Grumpy is getting nothing to do other than to be the suspicious one.

This woman has one hell of a persecution complex, and sure as this show is Once Upon A Time, we are going to find out the heartbreaking details of why. I’d believe that the trolls may have had something to do with wiping memories. But at the very least there is going to be a very good reason why Anna put Elsa in the urn, IF that is actually the case.

Also going on in this episode, Archie gives Snow some impromptu advice about handling her new son and her grown up daughter Emma, Henry gives his full, unabashed support to Regina’s plan to, eh, get the original Storybook writer to give her a happy ending.

So hold up, does that mean they are going to change the existing stories or give her a new happy ending? Cuz that could be a bit of contention there. Henry, and a whole lot of good are kinda dependent on things staying the way they are. We learned that at the end of Season 3. Operation Mongoose? Rewriting the book already I see.

Regina also comes up with a novel way of saving Marian’s life for the time being, by taking out her heart to stop the freezing curse from reaching it. This is one of those BRILLIANT moments that Once Upon A Time is still capable of where they find ingenious ways to marry the rules of the show with the worlds of the fairy tales they adopt.

Hook and Emma finally get an earnest declaration of care and a reassuring romantic kiss. We’ll see how much worry they put each other through this season. Rocky Road indeed.

 

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Michael Graff

 
Michael Graff