Previously on Once Upon a Time… Emma became fully aware how without training and control her magic could harm her loved ones. More specifically, the Snow Queen was able to manipulate Emma against her parents and in many respect her parents against her.

We saw what turned the once light magic that filled Ingrid, the Snow Queen’s heart into black magic, it was the isolation she felt from her sisters, and how Ingrid risked everything to protect her sisters from public scrutiny. Yet in the end it was the outside influence of the Duke of Wessleton, that penetrated the bond of sisterhood, that saw Ingrid into the urn, and her sister to the throne.

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Lastly, Regina and Robin Hood’s love for one another could no longer be held back, but at what cost to Robin’s first love Maid Marion.

Read below for our recap and review of this weeks 2 part special of  “Once Upon a Time.”

This week on Once…. Emma felt compelled to take action because of the incident that happened outside of the sheriff’s station, so she went to the edge of town to contemplate her decisions. In the short term, she thought that losing her magic might bring more security and tranquility throughout the city of Storybrooke. So, she sought the help of an old adversary, Rumplestiltskin. Meanwhile, the Snow Queens journey from blind optimist to vengeful aunt came full circle, as Ingrid did the unthinkable to her two nieces. Lastly, key developments in Operation Mongoose and in Rumplestiltskin’s aim to separate himself from the Dark One’s Dagger came to pass.

Since being reunited with her family, Emma has constantly been called on to embrace her own inner magic, and we’ve seen that manifest itself over the course of the series; however, when the ugly truth that her light magic may have more power than Emma know’s how to control then Emma the control freak loses her way and has an identity crisis. In order to resolve these insecurities she feels as though the only way that she can have her loved ones feel safe around her, is by removing the magic within her, once and for all. To do that though, Emma approaches Rumplestiltskin, and he tells her to meet her at the edge of town in a manor, and that there he will grant her request to lose her magic. On her way there to that climactic sequence though, Emma not only uses magic against her own son Henry, but is told by Ingrid to turn away from where Rumple told her to go because she believes he has nefarious ends to this conquest.

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Upon Emma’s arrival, Rumplestiltskin is busy inside laying the Sorcerer’s Hat inside one of the rooms in the manor, and with the stroke of his wand, opens up the portal that would not only take Emma’s magic, but SPOILER ALERT would take Emma herself in with it. This reality is brought to the fore when Emma’s lover, Captain Hook, calls her after being with Charming, Snow, and Elsa, and he realizes whose involved. After planting the final seed in her mind, that Emma was the one that initially came to this conclusion, and that it was her decision alone, Rumple left Emma inside the estate certain of her future, and his as well. Had he been successful he would’ve had enough magic to harness against the Dagger and not been held hostage to it’s desires. Fortunately, Elsa followed a locator spell that Regina had created to save Emma, and in the end spoke to her better judgement. In the end, Elsa broke through to Emma when she said that although Anna’s support mattered, it was Elsa accepting and loving herself for the good and the bad, that ended up saving herself from the person she had become. With the reaching out of her hand, Elsa and Emma sent a wave of light magic throughout Storybrooke. As Emma came to fully embrace her identity then came a hideous reality that nobody could have predicted.

The other part of the episode, delved even deeper into Ingrid’s genesis from royal princess to villainous Snow Queen. While bringing Elsa the news that her sister was in the dungeons because she possessed the urn that could be used to lock Elsa away, Ingrid attempted to turn the two sisters against each other, by saying Anna was withholding information about their parents whereabouts. When Elsa went downstairs to the dungeon, after dismissing the guards, she opened the cell hugged her and they made a scheme about how to get Ingrid back inside of the urn.  As she left though, Ingrid shackled Anna’s arms, and told her of a powerful spell. A spell known as the Spell of Shattered Sight, which is based on a Norse Legend known as the Trollden Glass, enables those it has cast on to see everyone for their darkness instead of their light.

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This is the spell that the Snow Queen aims to take the city of Storybrooke by storm, and it certainly comes to fruition in the next episode. Sadly though, Anna and Ingrid tag team up against Elsa and with this spell enacted demand that she use magic against Anna. With Elsa unable to do so, Anna opens the urn against her own sister, and Elsa says that she will always love her. As Anna wakes up from the spell, Ingrid is enraged and uses her own magic against both Anna and Kristoff freezing them permanently. With Elsa trapped and Kristoff and Anna frozen, each of those characters were now in the same space at the beginning of the season. With those two over arching plots taken care of lets explore a major subplot between the multidimensional Regina and her love Robin Hood.

In the last episode, Regina had started to make head way with Robin Hood; however, she still wasn’t sold on the idea of furthering her relationship with Robin because their love could cost them his love with Marion, and by extension her life. This episode though, Robin started getting involved with Operation Mongoose in wanting to solve who the author to the Once Upon a Time hardback book was. While Regina was helping the Charming’s realize that there daughter was far more special as someone with magic, Robin Hood and Will went into the public library to pursue a lead, and found a new twist to the tale. They found inside of Robin’s satchel a page from the Once Upon a Time book that revealed that the Evil Queen and Robin Hood ended up following through on their initial encounter and started their romance. With this revelation, we saw that free will can conquer fate, and that Regina could live to be more than the Evil Queen she was scripted to be. Tune in next week to see where this romance leads for both Robin Hood and Regina.

These storylines came to an intersection with Emma deciding that she would not go through with allowing Rumplestiltskin to take her powers through the Sorcerer’s Hat, and the Snow Queen’s ribbon’s shook the story at it’s core. The Snow Queen’s spell known as the Spell of Shattered Sight was put into effect as Ingrid, Elsa, and Emma started embracing their magic, thereby joining them in an unruly sisterhood. As the spell started, Elsa and Emma’s powers were being drained from them and Ingrid had the power of all three of them. Will Elsa and Emma find a way of separating themselves from the ribbons, or to reconstitute the mirror that the Snow Queen had broken at the end of this episode? Or will the magic that Ingrid released from the mirror take over the whole of Storybrooke,  and motivate them to see the worst in each other and tear each other from the inside out.

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Tune in November 30 to find out if Elsa and Emma will reign supreme by night fall, or if the Snow Queen will get exactly what she wants….