TV Recap: Once Upon a Time 3-13 - Witch Hunt

Red had speaking lines!  Regina is still working with our heroes!!!  Yes, I was very happy with some of the events from last night’s episode of Once Upon a Time.  Yes, sometimes it truly is the little things.

Shall we get to it?  Here’s what happened….

We start with the flashback to the Enchanted Forest of a year ago.  Regina has the idea that the tunnels under her castle just might allow access to the castle.  The entire army couldn’t go through, but one person could slip through to shut off the protection shield.  Regina is the one to do it since it will involve magic.

Before she can do that, the Wicked Witch sends out a flying monkey to make sure Regina knows she is there.  When it arrives at the group, it appears that it is going for Robin Hood’s son, so Regina steps in, stops it, and turns it into a cute monkey stuffed animal.  Between the flying monkey and the green magic, Regina and Belle figure out who this is.

That night, Regina sets off to go through the tunnel.  Robin shows up and insists on joining her.  They get a surprise part way through when they arrive at the crypt.  It was supposed to be sealed with blood magic, the most powerful magic of all.  How could someone get in?

When they reach the cambers, Regina sets about making a spell – a new sleeping curse.  And she intends it for herself.  If Henry ever finds her, he can wake her.  But until then, it is too hard to live without him.  Robin tries to talk her out of it, but he gets frozen to the floor for his efforts.

Regina goes out to the courtyard and erases the protection spell, but before she can put herself under the curse, the Wicked Witch shows up.  She reveals her name, Zelina.  And then she drops the bombshell.  She is Regina’s half-sister.  And she was trained by Rumplestiltskin.  Both abandoned her years ago and sent her to OZ after Regina was born.  She’s come back for revenge.  She is going to take everything from Regina.

And then she flies off.  The fight is far from over, however, and Regina now has a reason to live – a worthy adversary.

Meanwhile, in modern day Storybrooke….

We learn that in addition to having no memory of the past year, people are disappearing from town.  Several of the dwarfs are missing, for example.  There is also a group of people who are setting up camps outside of town.

The next morning in the diner, Henry is introduced to David and Mary Margaret as old friends.  Ruby almost slips up when giving Henry hot coco with cinnamon on top but manages to cover it.  Then Regina sees him and in her shock drops a cup.  Emma quickly pulls Regina aside and fills her in the on situation.  Regina is upset that Henry doesn’t know who she is – it’s more painful than if she never saw him again.  But, despite some tough questions (or maybe because of it), Emma believes that Regina isn’t behind the curse.

Just about then, we get a panicked appearance from Robin Hood.  He and his merry men are one of the groups camping around town.  Little John was chasing a wild turkey toward the town limits when a flying monkey swooped in and took him away.  David joins the group of men trying to track him down.  They find him with a giant bite mark and take him to the hospital where he starts thrashing around … and turns into a flying monkey.

Meanwhile, Emma is leading a town meeting to try to find out what happened.  However, when Regina shows up, the town turns on her, certain she is behind the new curse.  Even Emma changes her mind.  Regina creates a mild earthquake (much like the one we had here this morning?) and vanishes.  Emma goes after her….

…And finds Regina in her office in city hall where the two of them had agreed to meet up.  It was a set up to keep the person who is behind the new curse from thinking they were hunting for him or her.  Instead, Emma gives Regina the rest of the memory potion and they hope to replicate it.  Something goes wrong, however, and it doesn’t work.  That’s when Emma gets the brilliant plan to set up a new con.  They use Grumpy to spread the word that Regina is working on a memory unblocking potion to help them all remember what happened.

It works.  A little while later, someone is inside Regina’s office.  She’s used blood magic to seal the person inside, however, whoever it is disappears in a puff of green smoke.  Regina, having lost her memory of last year (and the fact that her half-sister could get around the blood magic), wonders what is happening.

Emma and Regina have had a heart to heart while waiting for their failed trap to spring.  In that time, Emma talks Regina into meeting Henry as another of Emma’s friends.  She does, and Henry warms to her, but the fact that Regina doesn’t know him still obviously upsets her.

Meanwhile, a worried Mary Margaret is reading through a book on babies at Granny’s.  A nice woman introduces herself as a mid-wife and promises that babies are strong and survive most things.  This woman?  The Wicked Witch of the West in disguise calling herself Elena.

As the episode nears its end, David reports back to everyone what happened to Little John.  Regina puts the same clues together she did before and deduces that their enemy is the Wicked Witch of the West.  But who is she now?

And for the final scene, the Witch goes home and then down into her storm cellar.  (And was it just me, or did the house look like something from Kansas?)  She has a prisoner down there, and she offers him food and drink.  The prisoner?  Mr. Gold.

Which leaves us with the question – how did he survive plunging the knife into his heart at the end of the winter run?  Is he still a cursed Rumple or is he human all the time now?  Has he been her prisoner the entire year?  He is certainly mad enough to be.

Another little tidbit I left out is that Hook got a message saying to go get Emma and the memory potion delivered to him via a bird.  The assumption is that Snow White sent it.  Unless we hear otherwise later, I’m going to assume that’s the case.

There are two competing lines for favorite this year.  Grumpy asks if their new foe is the Wicked Witch of the East or the West.  Why does it matter?  With one you drop a house on her, with the other you pour water on her.  Then there’s David’s line after Little John has turned into a flying monkey.  “Okay, I did not see that coming.”

I am wondering at this point if Henry is the reason they have all been cursed.  The Witch is out to take everything from Regina.  Even though Henry was not in their world, could it be that she wanted to take him away from Regina in front of her to make her suffer?  I don’t know, just a thought.

As I mentioned at the top of the recap, I am so thankful to see Regina working with Emma again this half of the season.  I like the character growth we’ve seen, and I really didn’t want to see that be wiped out.  That would have felt forced.

And so far nothing about this half of the season feels forced to me.  Even making the Witch Regina’s half-sister I can buy.  I am loving Henry being the one with the memory problems this time around.  It’s a nice mirror to season 1.  I hope they play with that a bit more.

I think this is all I’ve got this week.  Thoughts and theories are more than welcome, as always.