TV Recap: Once Upon a Time 3-12 - New York City Serenade

Once again tonight, we entered the Once Upon a Time vortex.  I sat down to watch an hour show, and 20 minutes later it was over.  How do they do that?  And since in a lot of ways they were starting a new story up, it's very interesting to see what happened.

And boy did a lot happen.

For one thing, Henry is definitely older.  He really seemed to age from the season finale 3 months ago to now.  And was it just me or was his voice deeper?  But that's not what we're really here to discuss.

There were two storylines going on in the episode - one in the Enchanted Forest of a year ago as our characters were returning home and one in our world of a year later as Hook tries to convince Emma that he is telling the truth.

Let's start in the Enchanted Forest.  We arrive there to find Phillip and Aurora about to have a picnic lunch when they are interrupted by a storm of purple magic.  Yep, it's our characters returning.  Aurora and Snow greet each other, and we find out the Ogres are gone.  The group plans to meet up with others returning from Storybrooke and then travel to Regina's castle to start building their life anew.  Regina protected it from the curse while everything else was destroyed.

As the group sets off, Phillip and Aurora have a private conversation.  "Should we tell them?"  "They'll find out anyway, and if we tell her, maybe she will leave us alone?"

Neal wants to go to Rumple's house to try to find a way back to Emma and Henry, but David talks him out of it.  Meanwhile, Hook sets off on his own to find his ship and go back to a life of piracy.

While on the trail to the castle, they suddenly notice that Regina is missing.  Snow tracks her down to discover that Regina is burying her heart in the forest.  Leaving Henry behind hurts too much.  However, Snow talks her out of it, saying that time will help and then she will be glad she has her heart.

Just as she put it back in, the two of them are attacked by something that turns out to be a flying monkey.  The monkey slashes Regina but is then scared away by…Robin Hood and his merry men.  Yes, the duo have finally met, although neither obviously knows that this is Regina's true love match.  In fact, they are leery of each other since Regina had her soldiers tracking Robin before the curse since he is an outlaw.

When they arrive at the castle, however, it is protected by a force field - a green force field.  Someone has hijacked Regina's protection spell, but who?  Robin offers shelter in the forest, and the group goes there, but Regina is determined to find out who did this and make them pay.

Meanwhile, in New York City, we see that Emma is trying to move forward with her life.  In fact, she's been dating Walsh, a great guy, for 8 months now - a guy that is crazy about her and asks her to marry him.  She's taken aback and hesitates, and he doesn't rush her.

See, during dinner, Hook made another appearance and gave Emma an address, saying go here and then meet me in Central Park to talk.

Emma is curious enough to go the next day, and it is exactly where I expected it to be - Neal's apartment.  Emma knows what it is right away when she sees her old dream catcher.  Now remember, she doesn't know another about what has happened.  So you can imagine her surprise when she finds a camera with Henry's name on the strap.

That's why she goes to confront Hook.  He offers a memory potion, but Emma is having nothing to do with it and has him arrested.

Meanwhile, Henry has been talking Emma through her commitment issues (the boy may not know who he is, but he's still pretty smart).  And he's set up a dinner for Emma and Walsh for that night.  However, Emma took the pictures from the camera in to be developed (do they still make cameras like that).  She takes one look at the pictures and bails Hook out of jail.

Why?  The pictures show things from Storybrooke and things that Emma doesn't remember at all.  She still hesitates but finally drinks the memory potion, and it all comes flooding back.

And so we get a little of Hook's story.  He's been off doing his own thing for the last year until he got a message that the kingdom was in trouble from a new curse and needed help.  He went in search of Emma to bring her back to Storybrooke where everyone is again.  (Nope, we haven't seen the last of Storybrooke apparently.  And here I was worried they were done with that.)  Unfortunately, he only has enough potion for one dose, so Henry still doesn't have his real memories back.

But first, Emma must say goodbye to Walsh.  She takes him to the roof of her apartment complex and lets him down gently, trying to explain that her past has come back and she needs to put it to rest.  As he starts to walk away, he says, "To bad you had to drink the potion" and his eyes glow red.

Then he turns into a flying monkey.

He and Emma fight and she flings him off the roof.  He lands on the ground and vanishes in a poof of smoke.

The next morning, Emma, Henry, and Hook set off for Storybrooke, Henry none the wiser about what is really going on.

When they arrive in the town, it feels deserted.  Emma heads over to her apartment to see if David and Mary Margaret are there.  She finds them and learns they know who they are and who she is.  However, they know nothing about what has happened in the last year.  They think they just said goodbye to her, yet they're back and she's back.  The one difference they do know is that Mary Margaret is very much pregnant.  (Since Ginnifer Goodwin, aka Snow, is pregnant in real life thanks to her real life fiancee Josh Dallas, aka Charming.)

Which leaves us with the final scene.  It's set inside the castle back in Enchanted Forest.  Someone is walking down the hall toward a flying monkey.  "You got it?"  The answer is yes, and "It" is some of Regina's blood.  A few drops are put in a vial and mixed in, but why we don't know.  The camera turns and reveals it to be the Wicked Witch of the West.

Another interesting things to note - in the first group scene in Enchanted Forest, we had a blink and you miss it shot of Red, and Meghan Ory was created as a guest star in the episode.  Were her scenes cut or was that just standing there really all she had.  Her new show, Intelligence, was a mid-season replacement show, so she is done filming the first season.  It also isn't doing well in the ratings, so my guess is she will be free to film as much of Once as she and the producers want.  (And there is much rejoicing.)

I must admit, I don't know if I have much more than this tonight.  We're setting the ball back in motion, but it's not rolling fast enough for me to have any new theories.  It was way too short, and I'm so looking forward to see where it goes next week.

Thoughts?  Theories?  Important scenes I missed?  Hit me up in the comments and let me know what you think.