This series began with Prince Charming rousing Snow White from her deadly slumber with true love’s kiss and its first season ended with their child rousing their grandchild from a similar slumber, both of which were caused by The Evil Queen who wanted to off members of this family. It’s nice when a major loop like that is closed so tidily.
Also nice to see in this season finale, that Belle wasn’t left behind, forgotten in her captivity and got to make an appearance, shocking Rumplestiltskin. Yet despite Rumplestiltskin’s love for Belle, he behaved the same way he did with his son, whom he also loved. Although he held great affection for them both, Rumplestiltskin loves the power of magic more.
It’s unclear whether Regina/The Evil Queen would choose magic over Henry as well. I’m betting she would. But whether Regina would pick magic or Henry is irrelevant because, thanks to Emma placing a tender kiss on her son Henry’s forehead after he’d succumbed to Regina’s poison that was intended for Emma, Emma broke The Evil Queen’s curse. It wasn’t Rumplestiltskin’s elixir of True Love that had been locked inside an egg and jammed inside Maleficent the dragon. On Mother’s Day, the power of maternal love saved the day.
While Emma’s love for her son woke all the Fairy Tale Land characters up to the reality of what Regina/The Evil Queen had done to them, the love shared by Snow and Charming, as bottled by Rumplestiltskin, may well prove dangerous because Rumplestiltskin dropped it into the wishing well which retrieves things that were lost. Like magic.
As we were meant to rejoice upon hearing David, in the streets of Storybrooke, shout out, “Snow!” and for Mary Margaret to reply with a look of recognition and call him “Charming” before they embraced, the joy of the reunion was tempered by the ominous mist rising from the wishing well, washing over Storybrooke bringing what Rumplestiltskin called magic to Storybrooke, which was built atop Fairy Tale Land.
This twist brings with it all manner of questions and expertly sets up the second season to be dramatically different than the first.
If, as we were led to believe, magic has been returned to the likes of Rumplestiltskin, The Evil Queen and the fairies, does that mean they’ll wind up duking it out for control over Storybrooke? Will anyone else have magic who didn’t previously? (Does Henry’s book have an addendum?)
Will this lead to some big war where folks take sides and certain players, who had no allegiances to anyone, are wild cards?
Has magic only been unleashed in Storybrooke or will it go global? If it’s only in Storybrooke, does that mean everybody — including Emma and Henry — are confined to Storybrooke?
Now that the characters know the truth, will they start to age? (And how weird will it be for Emma to realize that the woman who looks younger than her is really her mother?)
It was a satisfactory ending to the first season — although I could’ve done without the parallel dragon fights, where Charming tried to stuff the egg into the dragon in one world, while his daughter tried to remove it from said dragon in another — and the writers didn’t drag out the Emma-and-Regina-hate-each-other storyline without advancing it as they did in mid-season. Putting Henry in jeopardy, as they did when he fell down the mine shaft, was a good move.
What did you think of this resetting of the terms of Once Upon a Time, bringing magic to “the land without magic?”
Clacked by Meredith O'Brien 
on May 14, 2012 @ 13:07 EST5EDT
I was seriously worried that the writers would let Regina mind-wipe Emma at the end of the episode so they could start season 2 right back where they started. By not entirely breaking the curse (which is what I got out of the last 10 minutes), they can keep the battle going while avoiding the story getting stale.
While Regina has retrieved a shit ton of power in the last moments of the season, the good guys have a lot more going for them now. One, the good magical creatures should get their powers back, too. Two, Regina can’t hide behind the “She’s just the mayor! She wouldn’t do anything like murder and kidnapping!” Three, everyone knows what they need to do.
Anyone else wondering if the nuns are suddenly having identity crises? You go from being strict Catholics to magical fairies… it would freak ME out!
I think all the characters are going to have identity crises. Can Mary Margaret continue to be a mild-mannered school teacher, now that she knows she’s an exiled warrior princess? Is Jefferson’s daughter going to be confused about who she belongs with (it’s not like her years of memories with her fake parents are going to just disappear)? Is Geppetto going to blame himself for not recognizing his son (speaking of, is August dead)? Will King Charles Widmore go after Charming, now that he knows who he is?That’s just a small sampling of all the stuff that Season 2 could explore. I hope we’ll still get the flashbacks to fairyland; those are so much fun. And I’m most looking forward to Emma developing relationships with Snow and Charming. What a weird family dynamic that’s going to be!
I think we’re going to have to get more flashbacks, if only to show how Snow and Charming take back the kingdom… the kingdom that Charming doesn’t really have any claim over since he wasn’t actually the prince, but whatevs.
Actually, when Snow said, “We’ll do it how we do everything… together,” I added at home, “with violence and everflowing bloodshed!”
Oh, and what about Grumpy and the fairy? Hey, she’s not a nun anymore!
Although they have their memories back, that might not be a good thing. Isn’t that what drove Jefferson mad? Remember when Regina promised to bring his daughter’s memories back and he said that was a torment he didn’t want for her?
I laughed when I saw the nun-like blue fairy in this episode. Because I kept thinking, “where’s her cleavage baring top and 3 inch heels?” So, the nuns will definitely experience confusion next year.
I don’t know how I feel about Charming and Snow getting back together. Although Mary Margaret was initially timid, the more time she spent with Emma the more flashes we saw of Snow. However, David kept doing a 180. Although the finale alluded to his ass-backwards moves as a result of the curse, I wonder. Non of his cowardly behavior overtly bothered me, until recently. Plus, his decision to leave Storybrooke, rather than staying and fighting for MM to show he would become a better man just spoke cowardice. I’m interested to see how his two conflicting personalities play out.
Loved the show last night. Regina’s smirk at the end tells me it will be a great battle next season. While watching, I was thinking that with stories like this they should just plan a 2 or 3 season story and end it right there rather than try to keep going and going. I think it’s great that the curse is done and now it will the story going in a different direction next season.
When Emma finally believed and then heard Regina enter the hospital room, with the look in her eyes and then how fast she moved to put Regina against the wall, I thought..omg..Emma is a vampire!!!
Well, as much as Regina thinks she’s got the upper hand, the fact remains that all of her enemies both know who she is now and will probably have their magic back, too. Plus (and she doesn’t know this yet), but Rumpelstiltskin has finally found out what she did to Beauty… and you know he’s going to make Regina pay.
By the way, do you think they’ll be dropping all the Storybrooke names? Because Mr. Gold is much easier to spell.
That is how you do a season finale. You wrapped up everything from the season and then throw a BANG! on top of it.
Next season will be Fables! (the comic) After all ABC does hold the rights (I think they still do).
In anyway, I don’t think think August is dead. The broken curse didn’t affect him since he was not cursed initially, and we can see that other uncursed chars like Rumple weren’t affected at all, so that’s why they didn’t show him. The magic-back part will probably affect him and bring him back human, though. Or so I hope anyway.
I doubt the hunter will come back :( which is sad.
I think there will be flashbacks next season as well. First, there are tons of characters with untold stories, like Dr. Whale’s (who someone from the show said in some interview that has a solid backstory already written somewhere). Plus, the whole “taking the kingdom back” is a solid initiall storyline to show. I would also love to learn more about Maleficent and her relationship with Regina, and we never did see sleeping beauty didn’t we?
I’m really excited how next season will play out. Even though I got tired of this show midseason, I’m glad the writers were not afraid to do a 180 on the show and make it something else now.