Once Upon a Time Season 2 Catch Up

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:

  1. Broken
  2. We Are Both
  3. Lady of the Lake
  4. The Crocodile
  5. The Doctor
  6. Tallahassee
  7. Child of the Moon
  8. Into the Deep
  9. Queen of Hearts
  10. The Cricket Game
  11. The Outsider
  12. In the Name of the Brother
  13. Tiny
  14. Manhattan
  15. The Queen is Dead
  16. The Miller’s Daughter
  17. Welcome to Storybrooke
  18. Selfless, Brave and True
  19. Lacey
  20. The Evil Queen
  21. Second Star to the Right
  22. And Straight On ‘Til Morning

S02E01 Broken

S02E02 We Are Both

  • 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.

S02E03 Lady of the Lake

  • 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.

S02E04 The Crocodile

  • 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.

S02E05 The Doctor

S02E06 Tallahassee

  • 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

S02E07 Child of the Moon

  • 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.

S02E08 Into the Deep

  • 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.

S02E09 Queen of Hearts

S02E10 The Cricket Game

S02E11 The Outsider

S02E12 In the Name of the Brother

S02E13 Tiny

S02E14 Manhattan

S02E15 The Queen is Dead

S02E16 The Miller’s Daughter

S02E17 Welcome to Storybrooke

S02E18 Selfless, Brave and True

S02E19 Lacey

S02E20 The Evil Queen

  • 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

Once Upon a Time Season 2 Spring Hiatus Catch Up

SPOILER ALERT! Oh, man, you would just not believe how many spoilers that this post has. It’s just so many spoilers.

Oi, did you miss an episode of season 2 of Once Upon a Time? Well, now is a good time for you to catch up, because there are no new episodes until April 21st, and, luckily for you, I’ve compiled this handy-dandy catch up guide with important plot points from each episode.

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:

  1. Broken
  2. We Are Both
  3. Lady of the Lake
  4. The Crocodile
  5. The Doctor
  6. Tallahassee
  7. Child of the Moon
  8. Into the Deep
  9. Queen of Hearts
  10. The Cricket Game
  11. The Outsider
  12. In the Name of the Brother
  13. Tiny
  14. Manhattan
  15. The Queen is Dead
  16. The Miller’s Daughter
  17. Welcome to Storybrooke
  18. Selfless, Brave and True

S02E01 Broken

S02E02 We Are Both

  • 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.

S02E03 Lady of the Lake

  • 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.

S02E04 The Crocodile

  • 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.

S02E05 The Doctor

S02E06 Tallahassee

  • 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

S02E07 Child of the Moon

  • 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.

S02E08 Into the Deep

  • 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.

S02E09 Queen of Hearts

S02E10 The Cricket Game

S02E11 The Outsider

S02E12 In the Name of the Brother

S02E13 Tiny

S02E14 Manhattan

S02E15 The Queen is Dead

S02E16 The Miller’s Daughter

S02E17 Welcome to Storybrooke

S02E18 Selfless, Brave and True

My Thoughts On: Once Upon a Time S02E18 “Selfless, Brave and True”

WARNING SPOILERS! IF YOU DON’T LIKE SPOILERS, THEN YOU SHOULD PROBABLY STAY OFF OF THE INTERNET!

Well, kids, get ready for the 11th hour plotline gamechanger.

Forget about Sneezy losing his memory.

Forget about Mulan and Princess Aurora trying to return Prince Philip’s soul to his body.

Forget about Dr. Frankenstein trying find his lost brother.

I’m willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that the remaining episodes in season 2 revolve around the surrounding world encroaching on Storybrooke.

August Booth (played by eion bailey) on a bed beside isra (played by dianne doan)
Prostitute or girlfriend? Place your bets!

The episode opens in Phuket, Thailand. August Booth is in bed with a Thai woman named Isra. For some reason I feel that it is significant that they bothered to name the woman who August is with in this scene, even though this is the only time we see her in the entire episode. It just feels like one of those little tidbits that they put in that later becomes significant in retrospect. So, anyway, start guessing which fairy tale character Isra really is.

So, including Isra, August has been getting all up into some naughty things and, since August is really Pinocchio, we all know where this is leading…

adult wooden puppet august booth (played by eion bailey and CGI)
LITTLE WOODEN BOY!

UGH. Why did they have to make wooden puppet August look so creepy? Also, I don’t like the way that his mouth moves like a real person’s mouth. I think that puppet August should have a hinged mouth like a marionette, complete with clacking noise when it closes.

August, just like the viewers, is disgusted by his hideous wooden form, but, rather than do good deeds in order to become a real boy again, August decides to try to find an easier way out. Queue an ultra convenient bilingual person that overhears August’s plight and tells him about a mysterious man call “The Dragon” that has magical powers and can cure August of his gross woodiness. Along the way, he encounters Tamara, Neal Cassidy’s future fiancee, because everyone, everyone on this has to have a mysterious past.

Tamara, while not from a magical world herself, is intensely interested in finding magic in the world, and, what’s more, keeping that magic all for herself. Tamara obtains a magic potion from The Dragon and then has it analysed with SCIENCE!

tamara (played by sonequa martin-green) holds up a vial full of magic
THIS VIAL IS PERPLEXING!

“I tested this vial with ALL OF THE SCIENCE and I found out that it isn’t composed of SCIENCE. It is made of SOMETHING ELSE. Mayhaps it be magic?”

Note that all these tests that Tamara performed on the vial apparently only took a couple of hours.

Then, instead of trying to get more magic from The Dragon, she decides to taser him to death, because he knows too much, or something.

tamara (played by sonequa martin-green) tasers the dragon (played by tzi ma)
This isn’t even my final form! BLEH! *dead*

Tamara is the worst, because she murdered The Dragon before we could see his final form. I guess there was only enough in money in this episode’s budget for one creepy-ass CGI critter.

Tamara then somehow follows August to New York, where he meets with Neal Cassidy and then she decides to trick Neal into becoming engaged with her, or something, so she can steal the magic from Storybrooke. It doesn’t make much sense.

August decides to try to stop Tamara from stealing the magic from Storybrooke, because apparently, yes, the entire town can be threaten by a lone woman with no special powers, but she tasers him to death. He was made of wood. Wood doesn’t conduct electricity that well. How could a taser kill him? BAH!

Apparently, it’s the thought that counts and just trying to save Storybrooke is enough of a good deed. The Blue Fairy appears out of nowhere and changes August Booth into a real boy, not a real man, mind you, a real boy with none of August’s adult memories, and, thus, no memories of Tamara. That buys time for the writers to stall a confrontation with her for a few more episodes. How convenient.

Also, part of her evil plan somehow involves having sex with Greg Mendell/Owen Flynn behind Neal’s back. You know what would be nice? It it would nice if this show could have just one female antagonist that doesn’t use sex to manipulate people.

adult wooden puppet august booth changes into human pinocchio (played by jakob davies)
LITTLE HUMAN BOY!

Well, sorry August fangirls and August/Emma fanshippers, August has, effectively, been killed off, but it’s probably for the best that the 7-year-old version of August doesn’t remember what he got up to in Thailand. Still, I hope that Isra comes to Storybrooke looking for an adult August and instead is greeted by a little kid.

a photo of tamara and her grandmother
Gram-Gram

One last thing, it’s mentioned in this episode that the most important person in Tamara’s life is her grandmother.

Who is Tamara’s grandmother? Tamara had to have learned about magic from somewhere, it must have been from her grandmother. I’m willing to bet that Tamara’s mother is Wendy Darling from Peter Pan, because they’ve been foreshadowing a visit to Neverland all season. They’ve also foreshadowed that Neal Cassidy may very well have been Peter Pan, which would mean that Neal would have been romantically involved with both Tamara and her grandmother. It’s so icky that the writers probably went there.

And, if anyone tells me that Tamara’s grandmother can’t be Wendy Darling because she is black, well, they already have Scottish actor Robert Carlyle playing the German character Rumpelstiltskin, so shut up. Also, you’re racist and should go have yourself a sit in The Naughty Corner.

august booth (played by eion bailey) shows off his sweet kung-fu moves
I don’t know karate, but I know crazy!

My Thoughts On: Once Upon a Time S02E13 “Tiny”

Warning! This post contains spoilers!

anton the giant (played by jorge garcia)
I WANT TO BE BIG!

So, in this episode, we learned that the giant’s name is Anton, his entire family is dead and he’s the last giant, because he is an idiot, just like all the other characters on this show.

Arlo: “Hey, Anton, we have these magical beans that can open portals to other worlds and, thus, unleash horrible destruction on said worlds. Please don’t tell any outsiders where to find the beans.”

Anton: “Shut up Dad! I do what I want. You don’t know me!”

jacqueline the giant-slayer (played by cassidy freeman)
OMG IT’S A LADY! TELL EVERYONE!

Also, OMG, it turns out that Jack the Giant-Slayer is really a lady named Jacqueline. How progressive! Too bad she’s another one of those characters that is introduced and then killed in the very same episode, just like: Gus, Cindarella’s Fairy Godmother, Anita, Milah and probably some others that I’m forgetting. They really need to find some other way to get rid of characters that they don’t need anymore.

So, anyway, since Anton is smaller than giant’s usually are, he is considered a “dwarf” and becomes one of the seven dwarfs. Screw Sneezy and his lost memories. We hate Sneezy now. Just forget that Sneezy ever existed.

Rumpelstiltskin has crossed the townline. He is now magic free and very angry at toilet seat cover dispensers. The modern world frightens and confuses him.

My Thoughts On: Once Upon a Time Episode S02E10 “The Cricket Game” & Episode S02E11 “The Outsider”

OI! If you haven’t seen episodes 10 and 11 of season 2 of Once Upon a Time, then you might not want to read this.

I don’t really have much to say about these episodes, other than that they seemed to be mostly about time-wasting and stalling the storyline.

The Cricket Game stalls the “Regina’s Redemption” storyline, by making it look like she murdered Archie/Jiminy, but she really didn’t and everyone finds out that she didn’t really commit murder in the very next episode thereby making this episode completely pointless. But, I guess we have to see Regina suffer a bit more because DRAMA.

The Outsider stalls the “Rumpelstiltskin and Baelfire Reunion” storyline, by first taking Rumpel’s magical macguffin that lets him leave town and keep his memory and then having Captain Hook shoot Belle across the town border and having her lose her memory. So, now Rumpelstilskin has to stay in Storybrooke and look after Belle for a couple of episodes, instead of looking for Baelfire, I’m betting.

Some Problems:

  • Hook has never seen a modern gun before. How was he so sure that the bullet would only make Belle stumble over the townline and not, in fact, kill her?
  • How come nobody seems to care anymore that Sneezy the dwarf has lost his memory? They seemed really keen to fix that earlier and now nobody seems to remember it even happening.
  • Why do the characters on this show always leave their enemies alive? They mow through various underlings, henchmen and mooks without a care in the world, but when it comes to taking the big boss down, they always develop morals, all of a sudden. Hey, henchmen have families too, you know?

Anyway, next episode looks like it’s going to be a Victor Frankenstein episode. I hope that they bring back Sexy Igor!

5 Days ‘Til “Once Upon a Time”

Here a some little things, you may or may not have noticed, that I hope they flesh-out in season two of Once Upon a Time.

Gay Dwarfs?

In episode 14, Dreamy, Sneezy’s counterpart, Mr. Clark, and Sleepy’s counterpart, Walter, really want to sit together at the diner. Grumpy’s counterpart, Leroy, tells them they should have dragged their sorry asses out of bed a little earlier, implying that they both get up at the same time and, possibly, that they sleep in the same bed.

There wasn’t any implication that Sneezy and Sleepy had a romantic relationship in the fairy tale world, so how will the react in season two? How would a person feel if in one life they wear gay and in the other one straight, and then, they had those lives slammed together?

Then again, all dwarfs are male, so, maybe, it’s weird for them not to be gay.

walter mr. clark and leroy
They love eachother. You can’t tell me differently.

What’s in Storybrooke’s Library?

storybrooke's library
The Library and Emma’s Butt

In the the season finale of season one, A Land Without Magic, we see that Storybrooke has a closed-up library.

A library in a town full of storybook characters seems like a very dangerous thing. We don’t know how far all of the characters have reached in their own stories. What if some of them haven’t reached the ends of their stories yet? What happens if they go to the library and read their own story and they don’t like the ending?

Is That Dude in the Basement of the Hospital Pocahontas’ Dad?

a native american and regina mills
SWEEP THE LEG!

In episode 12, Skin Deep, Regina Mills, on her way to visit Belle in the basement psyche ward, passes a native american man sweeping in the hallway. This is an obvious play on Chief from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But, maybe, it’s more than that. Pocahontas’ dad is a chief. Maybe Pocahontas’ tribe are enemies of Regina, so she locked their chief up, like she did Belle.

Of course, Pocahontas wasn’t actually a fairy tale character. She was a real person that we actually know a lot about. Disney continuing to treat her life like it was a fairy tale is, perhaps, unwise.

Anyway, until we meet again (tomorrow).