The Welcome Back of Premieres - ONCE UPON A TIME

September 27th has now arrived and ABC aired the first episode of Once Upon a Time's season five. In a previous entry, we discussed the art of mastering the finale, but perfecting the premiere of a season is just as important as ending a season. For the past four seasons of Once, the show has dazzled us with great returns, including a great beginning. There is nothing more important in a television series than a pilot episode. The pilot episode is always what networks call a test-run episode to see how the ratings go on the show and get a feel for whether or not that particular series is worth picking up. Thankfully, Once did an excellent job at coming into the network's radar. 

In season one, the introduction was written in a standard pilot fashion. There was an obvious plot point introduced of a witch casting a curse on a town and making everyone of the fairy tale characters forget who they were. The pilot episode starts with Prince Charming kissing Snow White in her coffin and awakening her with true love's kiss. At the wedding, the evil queen, Regina, makes an appearance and threatens to destroy all of their happiness. Snow White is pregnant, but she has to give up her baby, Emma, and send her through a wardrobe to save her life because there is a prophecy told that she will be the savior and break the curse on her 28th birthday. In true pilot fashion, the writers also introduce Emma on her 28th birthday nonetheless as a bail bondsperson on a blind date with her target. Emma Swan is this strong and confident woman with a hint of abandonment issues as most kids are who don't know their real parents.
 
Emma meets her son who she gave up, Henry who then takes her to a small town called Storybrooke because he believes she is meant to break the curse. Therefore, the adventure begins. In season two, the premiere episode introduced the breaking of the curse and the return of magic. Immediately, Emma and Snow are thrown into a portal to the Enchanted Forest and begins that adventure. It was a nice premiere to go into season two because after a whole season of spending most of the show being in Storybrooke with Emma and the other characters, there were only flashbacks of how the curse came about and backstory flashbacks to each character. For the fans, it was a refreshing change of pace to actually have Emma and Snow White fall back to The Enchanted Forest in present time. In season three, the writers came into the new season immediately in Neverland which was a nice change of pace because this time the motivation was Henry and they did a wonderful job of uniting heroes and villains in this particular episode. The writers also introduced an admirable foe heading into the new season.
 
After falling through the time portal and bringing back the vase holding Elsa, season four premiere did a fantastic job at introducing the Frozen story. This particular season premiere was written well because they were planning for a unique story arc to add towards the end of the season involving Emma turning dark. You can immediately feel that foreshadowing of Merlin and the Camelot vibes irradiating the moment Rumplestiltskin is in the sorcerer's house near the sorcerer's hat. A truly good season premiere leaves a nice hint of what's to come even farther in the future. 

Going into the season five, there were a lot of questions that needed to be answered and in true premiere fashion, there are still questions that need to be answered from last season

plus more questions for this season already. The premiere began with a flashback of when Emma was a young girl watching the Sword and the Stone in the movie theater and what we can assume was Merlin pretending to be an attendant was talking to Emma about not touching Excalibur and trying to pull it from the stone when she was older. Then, we head to Camelot where King Arthur and his two knights ride to the stone to free Excalibur because of a prophecy that Merlin told Arthur. When a fellow knight friend tries to steal the power for himself, the sword vanquishes him into dust. Arthur steps up to the stone in true lore fashion and pulls the sword from the stone only to discover there is a piece of the sword missing on the end of it. 

Taking a look at the design of Excalibur, notice it is designed similar to The Dark One's dagger. So the Dark One's dagger is made from a piece of Excalibur! Point for the writers on that one again! Safe to assume, maybe the darkness can disappear in part when the final piece is reunited with Excalibur then there is no dagger to tether the darkness to anymore. We can see why Merlin did that. 

Back in Storybrooke, just after Emma disappeared, Hook grabs the dagger in hopes of trying to summon her back. Emma, in the Enchanted Forest, manifests out of the chamber that holds The Dark One. Last season, Rumple was left in a preserved state, but fear not. The writers found a creative way to keep our beloved Rumple in the show already. He becomes the "voice in Emma's head". We see Rumple appears near Emma the moment she surfaces and she realizes he is the image of the darkness inside of her,

trying to help her hone in on that power. Talk about having a bad conscience. Emma wants to find Merlin to help her remove the darkness out of her since she knows she is in the Enchanted Forest, so we are aware at this moment Emma doesn't want to be evil. The good is still in Emma, but we know she might be tempted from time to time which we also see when the premiere introduces a fiery lass named Merida. Emma and Merida are in search of the whisp for two different motivations. Merida is trying to rescue her brothers. Emma wants to find Merlin. 

Now back in Storybrooke, Hook suggests to Regina to have the Wicked Witch, Zelena help them create a portal to find Emma. The apprentice gives them a wand that has to be yielded by someone both light and dark, but Regina finds out she can't use it because she is no longer dark. Zelena wants to help but only if Regina removes the bracelet that is keeping her from using magic. Regina refuses but Hook asks Henry to help him break Zelena free from her prison. When Zelena steals a knife from Hook, she cuts off her hand to remove the bracelet and puts her hand back on. Zelena escapes the prison.

Merida overhears Emma talking to herself, or "Rumple, voice of reason". Rumple tries to

convince Emma that she needs to remove Merida's heart to get the whisp because once the person who whispers to it does so, the whisp belongs to them. Merida has left the campsite and Emma follows her to the Hill of Stones and tries to steal the whisp back, but the only way Rumple thinks this will work is if Emma rips her heart out. He is slowly trying to get Emma to take in her darkness.

Meanwhile, Regina and Zelena go toe-to-toe in the street after Zelena tricked Robin Hood by pretending to be Regina. Zelena gets the wand from Regina, but Regina has cursed it. The gang goes to Granny's Diner to prepare to travel through the portal created, in the form of a twister, to find Emma. Regina uses Emma's baby blanket to change the location of the portal and the twister sweeps the diner up, taking them to the Enchanted Forest.

Emma is at the Hill of Stones with Merida, hearing voices in her head, meaning Rumple, and Emma rips Merida's heart out once convinced. Just as she is about to crush it, Hook's

voice comes from the background and Emma stops. Hook, Snow, Regina, Robin Hood, Henry, and Charming rush to Emma's side to show they have found her and want to help her. Hook stands by Emma while she hesitates to give Merida her heart back and Emma wants to remove the darkness or she will hurt the people she loves. Hook manages to talk her down and Emma returns Merida her heart. Emma and Hook embrace in a hug as Emma is relieved that he's there and she didn't kill Merida. When Snow and the others try to give Emma the dagger so she had control over herself, Emma gives the dagger to Regina to protect her and to do what needs to be done if Emma ever goes dark.

To end the return episode, Emma and the others go to Granny's Diner where it apparently had dropped in the middle of the forest. Before, Merida thanked Emma for showing her that darkness is a part of her as well and that she would show mercy to her enemies once she found her brothers. 

The knights of Camelot ride up with Arthur because Arthur knew they were coming. He

informs Emma and the others Merlin saw a vision of them coming. It was up to Emma to help them find Merlin. Arthur takes Emma and her friends to Camelot, but once they enter the castle territory, we are taken back to six weeks later. The diner drops back in Storybrooke and the entire group is back in dresses and weird costumes from Camelot. Once again, they have no memory of what happened over the past six weeks. 

What we do see however, is Emma Swan. The Dark One. The others see Emma standing in the diner and she is dressed in all black with an evil look in her eye. She informs them that they failed to find Merlin and remove the darkness in her, so now she has become the Dark One and she turns one of the dwarves to stone. Regina threatens her, but Emma now also has her dagger back somehow. Emma threatens all of them that she will make them pay for what they did. 

Here is the flaw with this premiere. Once Upon a Time has done a fabulous job at doing finales and premieres. However, I find already that the memory loss storyline has been played out for the past four seasons. The show started out with no memories, season three ended up having a memory loss story arc. The villains that keep casting curses for them to lose their memories aren't being very creative at all if they want to confuse the heroes. Regina was the first one to do it, then her sister did. 

We're still left with a few questions and now a whole bunch more. Rumple was shown to us once in Storybrooke, still in his comatose state. Also, Robin Hood isn't looking as heroic as I expect him to because he seems to get taken advantage of a lot lately especially after Zelena revealed herself as Marian. In the end of season four, I feared the male leads were starting to get downplayed a lot and the women were outshining the heroic men of the show. 

Hook is not as clever as he used to be, which I think he will have to be in order to get Emma back. Robin Hood is kind of walked all over by witches lately and Charming kind of takes a back seat to Snow sometimes. The good thing about the show is that the women on the show are strongly written which is a nice thing, but what was great about it beforehand is the men were challenging the women. Emma and Hook were constantly sharing witty banter and Hook always seems to bring out a fighter in Emma, which was excellent. Snow and Charming were a tag team in all their endeavors. Robin Hood and Regina started out as this intense, fiery relationship, but all of the scenarios have changed. So far, the good character transformation is Henry, but the other difficulty with this is there are a lot of characters on this show which makes it hard to focus on one when each of them play in a scene together as a group.

We still have yet to see Lily or how that's going to play out and it's also been confirmed that Mulan is returning to the show. My guess is either she joins them in the first half or becomes part of Season 5B somehow. 

Once season five gets going farther in, the transformation on Emma's darkness might reveal the effects on each character soon. The addition of Merida is excellent. The addition of King Arthur is even better and once Merlin gets in that will add a nice dynamic for Emma. 

It's still the first episode and we've got a lot more coming, so I'm counting on the writers to take the fans on an epic journey because they've always been fantastic at it. Though season five's opener wasn't as strong as their previous ones, I feel like the season will be strong overall once they pick up momentum. 


Once Upon a Time airs on ABC at 8/7c.