Once Upon a Time Recap: Rumple's Shocking Original Destiny Is Revealed
This week on ABC’s Once Upon a Time, the reason behind the Black Fairy abandoning her son after childbirth laid bare a shocking truth about Rumplestiltskin’s original destiny.
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After Rumple just barely revived Blue using the stench of an unhatched dragon’s egg, a “concerned Snow White” was revealed to actually be the Black Fairy, who poofed away with Blue after the good fairy let slip one clue about the location of the other half of the powerful wand.
While Regina (when not teaching Zelena how to drive stick shift!), Charming and Emma sought out the wand piece (eventually discovered beneath the jukebox at Granny’s), Rumple traveled to the dream realm with Emma and Gideon, where Rumple might be able to speak freely to his heart-less son. Except, it was not Gideon’s dream that Rumple and Emma arrived in, but Rumple’s — their first stop being the meager cabin where he was born, to Fiona and Malcolm.
In flashback, we learn that when Fiona gave birth to her perfect boy, the Blue Fairy and Red Fairy (aka Tiger Lily) arrived to report that the newborn is gifted with great light magic, and thus is destined to be a Savior. But with that fate comes the “bad news” that during that same winter, a great evil will be born, destined to vanquish the Savior in a “final battle.” Fiona likes this news not one bit, so she studies up on fairy lore and, after stealing Red’s wand, turns herself into a yellow/(gold?) fairy. With Tiger Lily, she then sets out to find the “evil” baby born with a crescent scar, destined to be her son’s killer, with no luck.
In the dream realm, meanwhile, Rumple comes upon the basket and blanket which were once his. Nudged by Emma to let himself be vulnerable and channel memories through the objects, Rumple looks on in the Sacred Fairy Vault as his mother works to craft a powerful spell. Tiger Lily though realizes that it’s a dark curse she is brewing, one that will banish the evil one (and others) to a “land without magic,” leaving her son safe. When Tiger Lily tries to intervene, arguing that it’s the Savior’s job to die, so that others may live, Fiona plucks out the fairy’s heart. As Fiona transforms into the Black Fairy, she realizes that from the crescent scar on her own wrist, from where Red zapped her earlier, she is destined to battle her own son one day. “Evil was not born this winter,” Tiger Lily observes. “It was made! You are the great evil!”
That, however, was not the whole story. Once back in Storybrooke, Rumple confronts his mother with the truths he has gleaned, at which she shows him the rest of the story, in which Fiona, after realizing her dark fate, stole the Shears of Destiny to sever her son’s Savior ties, keeping them from having to battle one day. Red promptly banished the Black Fairy to the dark realm, then delivered her son to Malcolm. He, though, sees the once-perfect boy now as only a reminder than he has lost his wife, and thus he will saddle him with the name Rumplestiltskin.
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After sharing that memory with Rumple, the Black Fairy tried to justify her motivations, though they came out sounding exactly like that which led Rumple down his own path as the Dark One — protecting family, trying not to lose a son, etc. “You sentenced me to life of cowardice,” he lamented, feeling somewhat robbed of a Savior status. When Rumple notes how their family history spins “like a dark, endless wheel,” the Black Fairy interprets that as him coming to understand her actions. “I love you, and now we can finally be a family — if you’ll forgive me,” she says. “Can you?”
Rumple’s answer, it at least appears, was yes, seeing as after delivering his mother’s plucked, black heart to Emma & Co and declaring the Black Fairy banished, he later meets up with her in secret. A “happy ending” awaits their family, the Black Fairy says, although “a Savior still stands” in their way. “Tomorrow is a very special day for Emma Swan…. It’s the day she dies.”
Emma, however, believes tomorrow to be the day she weds Hook, who in a happier scene invited Henry to be his best man.
What did you think of “The Black Fairy” and its bombshells?
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