


RELATED Meanwhile, we visit with Rumple and Belle, who are happily together and doting over a newborn. We then got to see Emma “meet” Hook as they bumped into each other (for an amusingly lingering amount of time), and then go on to help the poor guy out with his fencing skills, which will come in handy very soon. One saving grace for Henry was that upon finding Emma (thanks to the trusty “Wookie prisoner gag”), she remembered him, because that was the very punishment handed down by Heroes and Villains dictator Rumple, that she know the truth but be powerless to act on it.

And while that alone was pure entertainment - Lana Parrilla, for one, did a great job of changing up Regina’s disposition - the stakes were also very real, especially once Henry learned that his other mother, Emma, was being held captive in a remote castle, guarded by Dragon Lily. This set-up afforded the familiar cast new “roles” to play, such as Regina the plucky bandit, Rumple the do-right knight, Charming the guylinered henchman, Hook the goats milk-swilling deckhand, pissy Granny. Robin Hood and Zelena’s wedding bells) and avoiding the bloodthirst of Evil Snow White. Once in this alt-FTL, we got a variation on Season 1, where The Truest Believer struggled to convince his mother Regina, and then Hook, that they had been written into a new existence, removed from their actual lives - all while racing against the clock (i.e. But the storyline demanded it, and in my opinion it absolutely paid off, as optimistic-and-determined Henry hunted down and squared off against the best-selling author whose Heroes and Villains novel banished everyone in Storybrooke to a topsy-turvy Enchanted Forest.
