SPOILER ALERT! Well, you really should know all of this by now, but I’m warning you anyway.
Well, it’s almost time for season 3 of Once Upon a Time. Now would be a really good time for you to catch up on any episodes you missed from season 2. Luckily I have made you with handy list with be plot points!
All episode titles link to posts that I wrote about that episode and character names link to the tag archive for that character.
Table of Contents:
- Broken
- We Are Both
- Lady of the Lake
- The Crocodile
- The Doctor
- Tallahassee
- Child of the Moon
- Into the Deep
- Queen of Hearts
- The Cricket Game
- The Outsider
- In the Name of the Brother
- Tiny
- Manhattan
- The Queen is Dead
- The Miller’s Daughter
- Welcome to Storybrooke
- Selfless, Brave and True
- Lacey
- The Evil Queen
- Second Star to the Right
- And Straight On ‘Til Morning
- This is the first appearance of Mulan, Princess Aurora, Prince Phillip and Neal Cassidy.
- Prince Pillip awakens Aurora from a sleeping curse cast by Maleficent.
- The soul-sucking creatures called “wraiths” are introduced.
- A wraith steals Prince Phillip’s soul.
- Regina is mark for death-by-wraith by Rumpelstiltskin and, in an attempt to save her, Emma and Snow White are transported to the Enchanted Forest by Jefferson’s hat, which is subsequently destroyed barring them from returning.
- Henry no longer trusts his adoptive mother, Regina, and goes to live with his grandfather, David.
- The people of Storybrooke, having newly regained the memories of their past lives, must come to grips with essentially being two people at once.
- Grumpy pushes Sneezy across the townline which makes Sneezy lose his fairy tale memories, leaving him with just his memories of being Mr. Clark.
- David searches for a way to open a portal to the Enchanted Forest to retrieve Emma and Snow White.
- In the past, Regina uses a magic looking glass that Rumpelstiltskin gave her to trap her mother, Cora, in Wonderland.
- It is revealed that Rumpelstiltskin is the one that originally taught Regina how to use magic, specifically, dark magic.
- Regina rediscovers how to use magic in Storybrooke, but changes her mind on using it to make Henry love her, because it would not be a real love.
- Meanwhile, in the present-day Enchanted Forest, Mulan and Aurora have taken Emma and Snow White prisoner.
- Sir Lancelot is introduced.
- In the past Enchanted Forest, Snow White is kidnapped by King George who poisons her so that she cannot have a child.
- King George’s men also shoot Prince Charming’s mother with a poison arrow.
- Snow White, Lancelot, Prince Charming and his mother all travel Lake Nostos for a cure, but there is only enough water left there to heal one person.
- Prince Charming’s mother pretends to drink the healing water and Lancelot secretly puts the healing water in Snow White’s goblet.
- Prince Charming’s mother sacrifices her life to cure Snow White and lives just long enough to see Snow White and Prince Charming get married, which was her dearest wish.
- In the present-day Enchanted Forest, Snow White and Emma are trapped in a prison with Cora.
- Lancelot, having recognized Snow White from their past dealing frees them from the prison and they go off in search of the wardrobe that brought Emma to our world.
- They find the wardrobe, but it turns out that Lancelot was really Cora in disguise and they have to destroy the wardrobe to keep her from getting her hands on it.
- In Storybrooke, Jefferson is reunited with his daughter and David has trouble dealing with his new job of taking care of Henry.
- This is the first appearance of Captain Hook, Smee and Rumpelstiltskin’s wife, Milah.
- In the past Enchanted Forest, Milah ran off with the pirate, Killian Jones, and Rumpelstiltskin crushed Milah’s heart and cut off Killian’s hand in retaliation, making Killian into Captain Hook and Rumpelstiltskin into the crocodile (metaphorically?).
- In Storybrooke, Moe attempts to get his daughter, Belle, over the townline to erase her memories of her love for Rumpelstiltskin, but Rumpelstiltskin saves her at the last second.
- In the present-day Enchanted Forest, Cora shows a bottle of the ashes from the wardrobe to Captain Hook and they start hatching a plan to get to Storybrooke.
- This is the first appearance of Sexy Igor.
- We learn that Dr. Whale is Dr. Frankenstein.
- In the past Enchanted Forest, Rumpelstiltskin stages an elaborate ruse wherein Regina is made to think that Dr. Frankenstein could possibly bring Daniel back to life with one of Regina’s stolen hearts, but Frankenstein secretly doesn’t even try and keeps the magical heart for his own purposes. Regina, her heart broken and darkened, is then open to learning dark magic from Rumpelstiltskin.
- In Storybrooke, Dr. Frankenstein steals one of the hearts from Regina’s vault and uses to resurrect Daniel for real this time, but Daniel comes back as a monster.
- Regina learns to let go and destroys Daniel.
- In the present-day Enchanted Forest, Snow White, Emma, Mulan and Aurora meet Captian Hook who tells them that he may know a way back to Storybrooke, a magical compass at the top of a giant beanstalk.
- This is the first appearance of Anton the giant.
- In the past, Emma is a thief and she falls in love with a fellow thief named “Neal Cassidy“.
- August Booth meets alone with Neal and convinces him that Emma, in order to fulfill her special destiny, must be rehabilitated from her life of crime and he convinces Neal to rat Emma out for a crime that she didn’t commit so that she will be thrown in jail, because jail will straighten her out or something.
- Emma finds out that she is pregnant in jail.
- In the present-day Enchanted Forest, Emma climbs the the beanstalk, retrieves the magic compass, decides to spare the giant’s life and leaves Captain Hook chained up in the giant’s castle.
- Aurora has been having nightmares ever since she was woken from the sleeping curse.
- Henry is also having nightmares after coming out of his sleeping curse
- In the past Enchanted Forest, while on the run from the Evil Queen, Red gets split up from Snow White and runs into her mother who Granny said was dead.
- Red’s mother and her wolf pack teach Red how to control her wolf form.
- Snow White finds Red, but accidentally leads some of the Evil Queen’s men to the wolves’ lair and they kill one of the pack.
- Red’s mother believes the death is Snow White’s fault and wants Red to kill her. Red and her mother fight instead and the mother is accidentally killed in the process.
- In Storybrooke, the dwarves have found fairy dust and they think that it can be used to fix Jefferson’s hat.
- Albert Spencer frames Ruby for the murder of Billy and uses the the resultant distraction to steal Jefferson’s hat and destroy it.
- Aurora and Henry meet in their nightmares.
- In the present-day Enchanted Forest, Cora raises an undead army of the people that she stole hearts from.
- Henry meets with Aurora in the nightmare zone.
- David ends up trapped in the sleeping curse.
- We learn that the Queen of Hearts is Regina’s mother, Cora.
- This is the first appearance of Greg Mendell.
S02E12 In the Name of the Brother
- Dr. Frankenstein’s brother, Gerhardt, is introduced.
- Prince Charming’s twin brother, Prince James, and Jacqueline the Giant Slayer, kill all the giants except for Anton.
- We discover that Neal Cassidy is Rumpelstilskin’s son, Baelfire.
- Snow White tricks Regina into killing her own mother.
- This is the first appearance of Kurt Flynn.
S02E18 Selfless, Brave and True
- The Dragon is introduced.
- August and Tamara had met in the past.
- August gets turned back into a little boy.
- It is revealed that Tamara is only with Neal to gain access to Storybrooke and steal its magic.
- Tamara is in a relationship with Greg Mendell.
- This is the first appearance of Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham.
- Belle’s alterego, Lacey, is a very naughty girl.
- The flashbacks show Belle starting to soften Rumpelstiltskin’s dark heart.
- Regina discovers where the magic bean field is hidden and destroys it.
- Greg and Tamara have brought Hook back from New York tied-up in their trailer.
- In the past Enchanted Forest, Regina disguises herself as a peasant so that she can find out what people really think about her.
- In the present Storybrooke, Regina ventures into the catacombs with Hook to retrieve a trigger that will annihilate Storybrooke. Regina plans to escape the annihilation with Henry by using a magic bean she stole.
- Hook betrays Regina and gives her to Greg and Tamara.
- Greg and Tamara kidnap Regina, because Greg wants to know what Regina did with his father, Kurt Flynn.
S02E21 Second Star to the Right
- After falling through the portal that his father, Rumpelstilskin, refused to travel through, Baelfire is transported to 19th century England, where he is taken in by Wendy Darling and her family.
- The Darling children are visited every night by a malevolent shadow creature. Baelfire allows himself to be taken by this creature to Neverland so that the Darling children would be spared by it.
- Neal finds out that Tamara is evil and plotting Storybrooke’s destruction.
- Tamara shoots Neal and he falls into a portal she created with magic bean.
- Regina had killed Greg’s Father, Kurt.
S02E22 And Straight On ‘Til Morning
- Tamara and Greg activate the Storybrooke destroying dealy.
- It is revealed that Hook acted as sort of surrogate father to Baelfire during his time in Neverland, until Baelfire discovered Hook’s past with his mother, Milah, and Baelfire ends up hating him.
- Mother Superior creates a magic potion that can restore people’s memories.
- Neal is not dead as previously believed. He is really transported to the Enchanted Forest and found by Mulan and Aurora.
- Emma and Regina combine their magic powers to save Storybrooke from annihilation.
- Tamara and Greg Mendell kidnap Henry and take him to Neverland.
- Emma , Hook, Mary Margaret, Regina, David and Rumpelstiltskin join forces and take the Jolly Roger through a portal to go after Henry.