In a flashback to the Evil Queen’s marriage, the reason behind her hatred of Snow White is revealed. Meanwhile, August and Emma team up to investigate Kathryn’s murder from a new perspective. Here is a recap and review of “The Stable Boy”.
Recap:
Emma loses hope as she continues to look into Kathryn’s murder, until August suggests they look over everything again. Together they visit the location where the heart was found and uncover a broken piece of the shovel used to bury it. With Henry’s help, Emma and August break into Regina’s home and match the shard to a shovel in her basement. When Emma confronts Regina legally, the shovel has gone missing and Emma realizes that Sidney bugged her office. It is revealed that Mr. Gold was the one who proposed the plan to Regina to get rid of Mary Margaret. Mr. Gold suggests that Mary Margaret talk with the D.A. before her trial, and she agrees. After it does not go well, Mary Margaret is taken away. Then Ruby finds Kathryn alive behind the diner.
Cora, the Evil Queen’s mother, constantly attacks her with magic to restrain her and disapproval at her not being married already. Regina expresses her lack of concern about status, but keeps her romance with the stable boy, Daniel, a secret. While out riding, Regina saves a young girl from a runaway horse, and discovers the girl is the king’s daughter, Snow White. The king then proposes to her, and Cora consents on Regina’s behalf. Upset, Regina plans to run away with Daniel, but their plan is overheard by Snow. Regina explains true love to her and Snow promises to keep the secret. However, Cora leads Snow into telling her the secret. Claiming she is acting out of love, Cora rips out Daniel’s heart and forces Regina to go through with the marriage to King Leopold.
Review:
Regina in the Evil Queen form is my favorite character, so I was thrilled we would hear her back story tonight, but the big reveal about what Snow did to make Regina hate her is giving me mixed feelings. On the one hand, Once Upon A Time has so strongly focused on love leading to your happy ending that this story fits perfectly. However, it was not very unique or unexpected, and the dramatic moments kind of fell flat. Granted she is the Evil Queen, and evil is not logical sometimes, but I find it hard to believe that Regina would so strongly blame this young, naive girl for doing something she did not fully understand. It would have made much more sense if Snow intentionally sabotaged Regina’s happiness once she was older and capable of plotting against someone. Or, it would have worked if all of Regina’s anger had been building up and this one event made her snap, but I did not get that impression from this episode. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed watching tonight, but it is leaving me a little discombobulated.
I was thrilled when they announced that Barbara Hershey had been cast as the Evil Queen’s mother because she was such a convincing conniving mom in Black Swan. But here she did not radiate evil as well as Lana Parilla does as the Evil Queen. I expected Cora to be more of a fleshed out and prevalent character but she was instead bland and did not make much of an impact on me. I see how her influence caused Regina to become the woman that she does, but I think more could have been done with her. Additionally, I was hoping we would see a clear visual transition from brightly dressed young Regina to dark, evil, awesomely dressed, Queen. Maybe further down the line.
We have seen Emma investigating the murder and defending Mary Margaret for several episodes and there has not been much progress (aside from the ending of tonight’s episode, which we’ll get to shortly). It was starting to get drawn out and repetitive to watch Emma spend all her time each week accusing people of different things and getting nowhere. Kathryn popped back up alive, so solving her murder is out of the question, but now Emma has to investigate where she has been and who was behind her disappearance. I thoroughly enjoyed Emma running around with Henry, not believing his crazy theories, but since then she hasn’t been an interesting character.
And here we go again with the other love interest getting in the way of Mary Margaret and David. Not that long ago I praised Once for moving past the “other love interest” diversion and keep characters apart through other means (like suspected murder), so hopefully they do not go back down that worn out slope. Kathryn’s emergence sort of came as a shock, considering that spoiler didn’t come out before tonight’s opening credits, but I was not convinced she was dead in the first place. There was some flawed logic in their assuming the heart belonged to her; since she was the only one missing from Storybrooke, it had to be her’s. Wait, what? What about the rest of the world? I know no one is allowed to leave Storybrooke, but Emma and August have successfully entered, so it follows that others could also. With this ending and the next episode focusing on Rumpelstiltskin, does anyone believe that he was not in some way behind Kathryn’s disappearance? I look forward to having this mystery solved, as well as the reasoning behind August’s intentions towards Mr. Gold.
5 Comments
I thought in one episode, Emma said they did DNA testing of the heart and it matched Kathryn’s?
They did, and yes it matched Kathryn’s. Remember that Regina has an entire filing system of hearts…They don’t ‘die’ until the life is ‘squeezed’ out of them (they also turn into a sand-like substance so for full effect the whole heart was needed). So this was planted by Regina as evidence of foul play.
My apologies! They did do DNA testing. So then I guess my question becomes, what is the full scope of magic in Storybrooke? Living without a heart, obviously some magic went into that. But how did Regina’s magic translate into the real world? I am assuming it’s a loophole in her deal with Rumpel, so what else did that deal consist of?
Or, since they probably didn’t send for the DNA testing outside of Storybrooke, someone in Regina’s pocket could have just forged the results, and Kathryn still has her heart in place. But then we must look at how Sheriff Graham was able to live without a heart. I think it’s a great opportunity to bring him back. *hint hint*
Graham was able to live without a heart due to magic. I assumed the heart in the box was a fleshy human heart, not a magical, glowing heart capable of turning into dust when crushed, or capable of being pulled out of your chest without pain and no blood, etc….I dunno. I just always assumed that the heart Regina removed and a heart as we know it are two different things….Does this make sense?