S07.E07: Eloise Gardner

[formerlyfreedom]

Quote

 

In pursuit of revenge, Hook seeks a dark and powerful magic, but an encounter with Rapunzel could alter his fate forever. Meanwhile, in Hyperion Heights, Ivy’s plot to take down Victoria intensifies and has unexpected consequences for Jacinda and Lucy. Rogers enlists Henry and Tilly’s help in his ongoing quest to find the missing Eloise Gardner, but what he discovers isn’t what meets the eye.

 

[kpw801]

OK.  I totally didn't see that coming. I mean we all sort of knew Alice was Hook's daughter but Goethel was the mother?  Wow! 

[Kktjones]

3 hours ago, Kktjones said:

So I'm guessing Rapunzel is actually mophead under a glamour spell and she tricks Whook into sleeping with her. Major eyeroll...

I don't even watch the show anymore and I correctly predicted this one. I mean rape by deception AGAIN? A&E really never learn...

[Souris]

Still the rapiest show on network TV, I guess. Their consent issues are beyond troubling.

Edited November 18, 2017 by Souris

[Watt]

This show is so extra.

[Rumsy4]

Yuck to the dub con sex (A&E love going back to the same old well). 

But Alice is confirmed as WHook's daughter. I loved that he gave up the ship for his daughter, in a neat parallel to what Hook Prime did for Emma. I think it's very much in-character for Hook to give up his revenge for real love.

I also loved getting the back story on Killian's mother and the lullaby he sang. I'm sure Killian Prime will be singing that to his daughter in Storybrooke as well. It's nice that Killian's backstory will be fleshed out through WHook.

I hope Victoria stays locked up.

Edited November 18, 2017 by Rumsy4

[cappoe]

It's crickets on Twitter even though the writers are asking us to let us know what they think. Bridgette said she'd be on Twitter to talk. It's crickets. They're getting chewed out completely and rightfully so.

If I was a betting man, something like this in today's social climate could effectively end the show.

[KingOfHearts]

I'm sticking to my guns. I believe the Wish Realm really did exist pre-wish, no matter what was said outside the show. The flashbacks were pretty explicit when they said it was the Wish Realm, "many years ago".

To whoever said there would be three Regina's, congrats. It's now canon.

The handling of Wish Queen was weird. She didn't seem all that devastated that the Charmings stole her magic and stopped her curse. In S1, Regina was broken enough to be willing to kill her own father. She had nothing left in her life. Then here, WQ is like, "Oops. I better run off to Vegas!" WHook didn't seem that mad, either. 

It did crack me up when Wish Queen said, "What could be important than revenge?!"

[Rumsy4]

4 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

It did crack me up when Wish Queen said, "What could be important than revenge?!"

Yeah. That was funny. 

Also, that pregnancy was over before you can finish saying Dark One's Onion Rings. 

Colin gave a fantastic performance. As I said in the spoiler thread, he plays younger Wish Hook slightly differently than Hook Prime. I loved all the singing and the magical Gnome about to kill poor Smee (now, Captain Smee). 

And Killian singing his daughter lullabies and rocking her!! Squeeee...

[cappoe]

Yeah I've already seen a CS gif set using that moment. It's definitely more fitting.

[Terrafamilia]

At least things seem to be moving along.

[cappoe]

Shows that glorify male rape as much as OUAT does have no right to be on the air.

[Shanna Marie]

Aside from our third round of rape by coercion/deception, I have to admit I kind of liked this one, probably because the focus was on Hook/Rogers and not the chemistry-free duo. I mean, we had Hook singing and then fighting a giant garden gnome and then Hook singing while holding a baby. It's like someone's been reading my diary. Though "She Moved Thru the Fair" isn't what I'd consider a lullaby. Still, we finally know something about Mama Jones.

And it seems that they heard my suggestion (yeah, I know I only mentioned a day or so ago, but it does seem I was on the right track) to make Jacinda a waitress at Roni's so there could be more character interaction.

Not only did both Hooks give up revenge for love, but a steep climb was part of it -- with Hook Prime, it was the beanstalk with Emma, and with Wish Hook, he climbed the tower to look after his daughter.

Though, didn't it seem like Wish Hook in the Wishverse episodes had the Jolly Roger? And what was he patrolling in during the last episode without a ship? Or did he get the ship back when Emma sent him back to the Jolly Roger magically, not knowing he'd given it up?

[thuganomics85]

Hey, this episode didn't totally suck!  Mainly due to getting plenty of Hook and Colin O'Donoghue being awesome.  And they reveal that Alice/Tilly is actually his daughter!  Of course, they reveal that she was the product of Goethel/the witch Victoria has locked up, after she pretended to be Rapunzel.  So, basically another Zelena/Robin "situation."  These writers have some weird fetishes, to put it mildly.

Wish Regina might be my new favorite Regina.  And a Smee sighting!

As much as I hate all the angst it will no doubt cause, Roni/Regina's method of keeping Henry and Jacinda apart isn't a bad one.  Playing into Jacinda's fears that it could make her look unfit and lose Lucy is a sinister, but effective strategy when it comes to her.

Victoria getting played was hilarious.  She really isn't cut out at this whole villain thing.

Could Weaver actually be sincere about trying to protect Hook?  I'm sure Rumple would really appreciate the irony there.

[Rumsy4]

13 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Though, didn't it seem like Wish Hook in the Wishverse episodes had the Jolly Roger? 

He probably went back to the Jolly Roger after he was cursed by a/another Witch. Smee said  the Jolly Roger would always be Hook's. 

I wonder if the witch that cursed poor WHook is Gothel again, or someone else. Maybe she wanted the last petal and WHook refused to give it to her. I must say though, Gothel is more in the vein of the typical OUAT villains than Victoria ever was. 

Edited November 18, 2017 by Rumsy4

[Watt]

It's not going very well over on Twitter.

[Shanna Marie]

12 minutes ago, thuganomics85 said:

Could Weaver actually be sincere about trying to protect Hook?  I'm sure Rumple would really appreciate the irony there.

That's what I was trying to figure out. If he does have his memories, then would he be trying to protect any incarnation of Hook? It would kind of help if we'd ever seen Rumple and WHook together in the past so we knew if they'd called a truce. But I suspect a lot of it was about not wanting the witch to be freed because that would mean problems for all of them.

I had massive Haven flashbacks when they were showing the tattoo. It's not too different from the Guard tattoo.

If WRegina got her magic back, why didn't she go on to cast the curse?

[Rumsy4]

19 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

If WRegina got her magic back, why didn't she go on to cast the curse?

She didn't. She just wanted passage out of Wish Enchanted Forest.

Edited November 18, 2017 by Rumsy4
Storybrooke/EF mixup

[InsertWordHere]

I admittedly have not been paying much attention to this show. Are we supposed to think Tremaine is the original Rapunzel and she’s the one who imprisoned Gothel? Did the original look like the version Hook saw in the tower? Or is that just supposed to be a de-aged Gothel  

The only reason I think Rumple might be sincere with regards to Wish Hook is because he has a soft spot for Alice. Also, I agree with Rumple that freeing Gothel is a bad idea. So it might just be that. 

[sharky]

Still don’t care all that much about the new characters except for Alice. Why do A&E insist on the most convoluted way to tell a story when less complication, in the right hands, could be amazing and make us actually invest in characters?

Cant believe I’m about to say this, but I like WokeRegina. Also liked her in the wish realm and was really hoping for some Hooker Queen. It could’ve easily gone that way! I mean, the whole Gobbles thing was way too contrived.

Again, imagine the possibilities in the right hands.

Also A&E do not deserve Colin and Bobby. Damn, they were good this episode. Is Weaver steering Rogers towards Alice for a reason? And the dagger! And the fight! Again, Colin and Bobby were superb. A&E better be fucking thankful for that talent because I doubt they’ll be able to get this caliber of actor for their next project — if there is a next project. 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

To whoever said there would be three Regina's, congrats. It's now canon.

That was I, but it was already the case because the defeated Evil Queen of the Wish Realm was mentioned in "Wish You Here" and "Tougher Than the Rest". A&E said back then that she's now old and in exile somewhere.

3 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

She didn't. She just wanted passage out of Wish Storybrooke.

You mean Wish Enchanted Forest.

1 minute ago, InsertWordHere said:

I admittedly have not been paying much attention to this show. Are we supposed to think Tremaine is the original Rapunzel and she’s the one who imprisoned Gothel? Did the original look like the version Hook saw in the tower? Or is that just supposed to be a de-aged Gothel 

Not de-aged. I think it's very likely Tremaine is Rapunzel.

[KingOfHearts]

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Also liked her in the wish realm and was really hoping for some Hooker Queen.

Wish Queen was probably the best iteration of EQ since the original. Probably because it was just Lana having fun and it wasn't thrown in our faces. I don't want to say it felt natural, but it didn't have all the extra weight. Wish Queen was allowed to be the petty bitch she is.

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That was I, but it was already the case because the defeated Evil Queen of the Wish Realm was mentioned in "Wish You Here" and "Tougher Than the Rest". A&E said back then that she's now old and in exile somewhere.

I thought either @Souris or @Rumsy4 made a joke a few months ago about three Regina's. It was something along the lines of, "What could be worse than Clone Queen? Three Regina's."

Edited November 18, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[Rumsy4]

14 minutes ago, InsertWordHere said:

I admittedly have not been paying much attention to this show. Are we supposed to think Tremaine is the original Rapunzel and she’s the one who imprisoned Gothel?

I think she is. I saw some tumblr edit of the Rapunzel actress and a younger picture of the Tremaine actress, and they do look similar. And from the promo, looks like Rapunzel's in the next episode as well. That's another confirmation it's a main character and not a bit player.

11 minutes ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

You mean Wish Enchanted Forest.

Yup. Made a mistake. 

Edited November 18, 2017 by Rumsy4

[Noneofyourbusiness]

4 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

I thought either @Souris or @Rumsy4 made a joke a few months ago about three Regina's. It was something along the lines of, "What could be worse than Clone Queen? Three Regina's."

Oh. I made a post about the age of the Wish Realm in Spoiler Discussion yesterday where I mentioned Wish Evil Queen, Serum Evil Queen and Regina, and said "Oh my god, I just realized there's three of her."

[Rumsy4]

9 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Wish Queen was probably the best iteration of EQ since the original.

Agree. Lana made it too campy in later seasons. In this episode, she more like the EQ of old.

9 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

I thought either @Souris or @Rumsy4 made a joke a few months ago about three Regina's. It was something along the lines of, "What could be worse than Clone Queen? Three Regina's."

Yeah. I did talk about that recently, but IIRC, we've also discussed this possibility when the Wish Realm episode first aired. She's like the Mr. Smith of OUAT. 

Edited November 18, 2017 by Rumsy4

[Noneofyourbusiness]

Just imagine if a woman had found a man imprisoned in the tower, they had slept together, and the next morning the man had revealed he was in disguise and there was a magic baby there to take his place as the prisoner of the tower. Do we only honestly think that would have passed?

[Rumsy4]

I know we're not supposed to ask these questions for the sake of our sanity, but how did WHook take care of his baby? He had to have climbed up and down to get supplies almost every day. How did he pay for stuff? Did he empty the coffers of the JR before he handed it over to Smee? 

[Shanna Marie]

I could see how they maybe, just maybe didn't realize what they were depicting with Graham, though it's not exactly subtle when Regina rips out his heart so she can control him and then orders him sent to her bedchamber. Then they went and doubled down with Robin and Zelena, and they caught a lot of flak for that, so there's absolutely no excuse for going there again. In a way, their depictions of male rape as no big deal undermine what women go through, like they're perpetuating the "it's not so bad if they're hot" idea -- as has come up lately with the various sexual harassment accusations, with some men commenting that the women wouldn't be complaining if it was someone more attractive than Louis CK -- or making it seem like rape is no big deal, so what are women complaining about.

You can't give true consent if you don't know the truth. Funny, they did treat it as a bad thing when "Prince" Jonathan got Cora pregnant under false pretenses. She did consent, but because he told her he was a prince and he said he was going to marry her, and he was shown to be a horrible person when that turned out to be a lie.

I guess we have an idea what Baby CaptainSwan may be named if she's a girl. If WHook named his daughter after his late mother, then Hook Prime may do the same, since Emma's mother is still around, and I can't imagine Emma being willing to name a child "Snow White."

[Camera One]

I decided to take a break because I'd probably go crazy if I actually watched two of these in a row.

I thought this episode was better in a few ways, though there is something very disjointed about the episodes this season, including this one.  I just can't buy some of the characters' thought processes and each action doesn't seem to naturally lead to the next action.  I can't put my finger on it, but even in a "better" episode, my mind was not fully in the episode.

I see that A&E were careful to set the flashback after the Evil Queen failed to enact the Curse and included in the previouslies Whook saying "that's when our tales parted ways".  

I didn't like the Alt Regina... it felt like fake acting to me.  

I can't believe A&E pulled out their "sex with someone impersonating someone else" card AGAIN.  They clearly didn't see the Zelena/Robin thing as a problem at all.  These guys are never going to regret anything they wrote/did on this show.

Having said that, I liked that they're actually exploring an alternate scenario... they are doing what I hoped they would do last season when we got the Wish Realm.  I really wanted to see what life would have been like if The Evil Queen hadn't enacted the Curse.  Of course, A&E had no interest in showing how that would have affected Snowing, or Emma (beyond making them into caricatures).  I liked seeing this alternate path of Hook abandoning his revenge.  I wouldn't mind seeing more as the baby grew up, though from this episode, he actually lived with her full-time rather than visiting her for chess games.  That might have come later after Gothel returned, I'm assuming.  

Gothel is a much more convincing villain... her cold look at the back of the ambulance was chilling.  I'm guessing Ivy and eventually Victoria will be getting the redemption path, or one will be killed by Gothel after they make us feel sorry for them.  Ivy is pretty stupid for letting that Gothel go... which suggests she isn't as all-powerful as she seems.  

I did hate the whole Ivy dropping by to tell Roni to break up Henry/Jacinda.  It felt so much like a daytime soap I cringed.

Even in the present-day, this episode was slightly better since it tried some character combos we hadn't seen yet.  Lucy was better when she was standing up against Victoria... probably the first scene where I could root for her.  I was glad they had scenes between Adult Henry and Rogers, but I actually felt zero chemistry between them, which disappointed me.  Partly, it was because Henry served zero purpose.  I can't believe Henry was the one to threaten Alice with an arrest for selling watches... it's like they needed to give him a line, but seriously?  

It was more interesting to see the various villains in conflict with each other.

I have more to say on this episode, but I think I'll watch the next one now.

Edited November 18, 2017 by Camera One

[Noneofyourbusiness]

Ew, I just thought of a terrible name for this "ship". Rape-punzel.

[OnceUponAJen]

I'm saving up all the episodes after 7x02. I don't  know if I'll ever actually watch them.  I can't believe they tripled down on the dubious consent scenario.  I'm seeing a lot of angry Twitter posts. I understand that the character is supposed to be an evil siren, yes. But the same device was used with Regina/Graham and Zelena/Robin, and it was basically swept under the carpet.  Emma/Neal was statutory rape and it didn't help that MRJ seemed so much older than Emma. It's just gross, and it isn't portrayed as wrong or harmful.

Edited November 18, 2017 by OnceUponAJen

[Souris]

24 minutes ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

Ew, I just thought of a terrible name for this "ship". Rape-punzel.

OMG. Sadly perfect. 

[Rumsy4]

There's also Emma and Walsh. The writers have some pretty weird fixations.

[VoicePlaya]

They actually went there. It doesn't surprise me that they would do another rape by deception, but man I was hoping they would resist. But of course they couldn't. It's disgusting. And Ivy's comment about him being her one night stand. Ivy, the term you were looking for was rape victim.

Gothel does make for a believable villain, which is something. Seeing her with Rogers made my skin crawl.

Colin was fantastic tonight. I loved getting to hear him sing again and seeing his interactions with Alice. The scene with him holding her as a baby was too sweet. I'd given up on ever learning anything about his mother and was pleasantly surprised when we did. I enjoyed seeing Smee more than I thought I would. I've always been kind of indifferent towards him, but it was nice seeing him.

Edited November 18, 2017 by VoicePlaya
put Victoria when I was actually talking about Ivy

[Camera One]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around how Whook had an elaborate backstory where he had a baby before he was Wished into existence by The Evil Queen in Season 7.  It would have worked better if this was an Alt Reality Realm instead of a Wish Realm.  Was Gothel also in the Wish Realm?  I'd assume she would have to be.  

So that would mean the Original Enchanted Forest had two Rapunzels trapped in a Tower?  If that were the case, why create a new Realm of Story in the first place?  The Enchanted Forest could have had two Cinderellas, then.  I seriously wonder if the Writers in the Room actually hashed this all out.  

Are we supposed to give props to A&E for using something from the original Rapunzel story?  That the man who climbed the Tower had sex with her and she had a baby?

Edited November 18, 2017 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

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 I'd assume she would have to be.  

It's fairly ambiguous. Wish Queen said it was "in a distant realm".

[Camera One]

The dilapidated tower (if it's the same one) was seen in last week's episode, so it suggests Gothel and the "distant realm" was in Tremaine/Cinderella/Drizella's realm.  But Aladdin created the Wish Realm in Season 6 when Emma was already 30 something years old, while Wish Hook went to this Tower right after Wish EQ failed to cast the Curse, so he couldn't have gone to this realm before he actually came into existence.

[KingOfHearts]

30 minutes ago, Camera One said:

The dilapidated tower (if it's the same one) was seen in last week's episode, so it suggests Gothel and the "distant realm" was in Tremaine/Cinderella/Drizella's realm.  But Aladdin created the Wish Realm in Season 6 when Emma was already 30 something years old, while Wish Hook went to this Tower right after Wish EQ failed to cast the Curse, so he couldn't have gone to this realm before he actually came into existence.

This episode seems to imply Aladdin didn't actually create the realm. Emma just replaced Princess Emma.

[AnimeMania]

3 hours ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

Just imagine if a woman had found a man imprisoned in the tower, they had slept together, and the next morning the man had revealed he was in disguise and there was a magic baby there to take his place as the prisoner of the tower. Do we only honestly think that would have passed?

So you are saying that WHook can not find his true love with his current appearance, because he magically altered himself from old and fat. That would be rape, even if he never changed back.

[KingOfHearts]

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The dilapidated tower (if it's the same one) was seen in last week's episode, so it suggests Gothel and the "distant realm" was in Tremaine/Cinderella/Drizella's realm. 

It's strange that the Wish Realm and New Realm are somehow connected outside of Henry. It's not like Henry just went to someone random alternate universe that just so happened to be Jacinda's. If what you're saying turns out to be true, WHook would have already been there. Does the New Realm have any significance? How is it connected to everything else? It would be boring it was just another grain of sand in the vast multiverse, made relevant only out of pure luck.

Edited November 18, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[cappoe]

3 hours ago, AnimeMania said:

So you are saying that WHook can not find his true love with his current appearance, because he magically altered himself from old and fat. That would be rape, even if he never changed back.

Wish Hook's TL is his daughter. And Emma of course which is why he tries to find her across all the realms.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

6 hours ago, AnimeMania said:

So you are saying that WHook can not find his true love with his current appearance, because he magically altered himself from old and fat. That would be rape, even if he never changed back.

Not in the least. He's not pretending to be someone else. It would have been rape if he had had sex with Emma who thought he was the other Hook.

[Lady Calypso]

So, I ended up missing the first half of this episode. Not because I was busy, but because I really didn't want to watch two full hours live. My mother was watching it, though, and was asking me to watch with her so I finally relented. It seems like I missed nothing of importance for the first half anyway....and the second half of this first hour. Again, being someone who cares very little about Prime Hook, let alone Wish Hook (I missed the entirety of last season anyway so the whole Wish Realm thing is lost on me, besides the three or four clips of the arc I watched online), I thought this was just ok. One of the better episodes this season, mind you, but it was just ok.

Of course there's the issue with the rape and lack of consent that this show loves to do, because apparently it's a fun twist. Except it's not fun at all and very disturbing. However, with a show that has several characters who are centuries old and constantly using magic for one reason or another, I'm not surprised that this show has a different mindset. 

I do like Alice so her presence here was fine, and it worked. And I don't hate Rogers; I find his storyline very, very boring and predictable and didn't care for his search for Eloise, but the ending with Gothel was not bad. They've done worse reveals before. 

[StaceyNotStacie]

3 hours ago, cappoe said:

Wish Hook's TL is his daughter. And Emma of course which is why he tries to find her across all the realms.

With all of the talk about Henry and Jacinda kissing to break the curse, I wonder if it will be Wish Hook and Alice that break the curse, similar to Emma and Henry in Season 1. 

[sharky]

4 minutes ago, Stacey1014 said:

With all of the talk about Henry and Jacinda kissing to break the curse, I wonder if it will be Wish Hook and Alice that break the curse, similar to Emma and Henry in Season 1. 

I was thinking the same thing and I really hope this is the case. Maybe something happens to Tilly -- she gets caught in the cross fire of something with Weaver and Victoria -- and he goes to the hospital to see her etc.

Considering the lack of chemistry between Henry and Jacinda, I would actually prefer the father/daughter solution instead.

[Lady Calypso]

19 minutes ago, Stacey1014 said:

With all of the talk about Henry and Jacinda kissing to break the curse, I wonder if it will be Wish Hook and Alice that break the curse, similar to Emma and Henry in Season 1. 

Well, this show DOES like doing parallels and repeating storylines, so I wouldn't be surprised if their twist was that Alice/Whook could also break the curse, something Ivy wouldn't be anticipating. 

Surprisingly, I really wouldn't mind them reusing this storyline. 

[CCTC]

If they do a child-parent kiss, it will probably be Regina and Henry --- with Regina back-lit so she looks esp. saintly.

[Shanna Marie]

8 hours ago, AnimeMania said:

So you are saying that WHook can not find his true love with his current appearance, because he magically altered himself from old and fat. That would be rape, even if he never changed back.

No, not as long as he's not lying about his identity in order to get someone to have sex with him. Hook altering his appearance from being old to young is more on a par with someone who had plastic surgery or wearing makeup. As long as WHook is open about being Wish Hook and not Hook Prime -- and therefore not sleeping with Emma by pretending to be her husband -- and isn't having sex for some agenda he doesn't share with the other person, it's not rape, as long as the other party consents. Gothel didn't rape Hook because she made herself young and beautiful. It was because she only slept with him to have a baby to leave behind in her place after conning him into helping her by pretending to be an innocent victim instead of someone imprisoned for a reason. If he had known the facts, he wouldn't have had sex with her, regardless of how she looked.

The timeline of this is bugging me. In the "present day" of the fairytale land flashbacks , it's probably about 40 years since the curse was cast -- 28 years of the curse, plus about 4 years of the original run of the show, plus three years before Henry left home, and regardless of how much time has passed in Storybrooke, in the world where the tower is, Henry has aged about five years. It seemed like the flashback took place soon after the curse would have been cast, which would mean Alice should be about 40 now. Or, if we're going by Alice's apparent age of early 20s, say 22, then the flashback should have taken place about 18 years into what would have been the curse, which would have made flashback Hook, Regina, and Smee significantly older. I can kind of handwave not appearing to age much in five years, but 18 years? It's possible that the spell on the tower stunted Alice's growth, so she aged more slowly, but that needs to be addressed.

In case anyone's interested in Hook's lullaby, here's a full version by an Irish choir. It's an old Irish folk song, which makes me wonder if the specific song was written into the script or if they just told Colin to sing something old enough to be in public domain. It's an interesting choice as a song an apparently dying mother sang to her child as a lullaby, since it's about a couple looking forward to getting married, and then the girl dies before the wedding (as tends to happen in Irish love songs), and then the would-be groom sees her ghost. The ghost tells him it won't be long until their wedding day, implying that he'll die soon and they'll be reunited. Poor Mama Jones, it's been centuries and she's still not reunited with her baby. I guess she didn't have any unfinished business.

Didn't Hook Prime learn about the curse from Cora? Regina coerced him into going to Wonderland to kill Cora, then Cora flipped him by telling him about the curse, and they faked her death. That happened right before the curse. So, does that mean that Wish Cora is in the Wishverse? When did the Charmings strip Wish Regina of her powers? I assume after she threatened them with the curse, so they still had her and let her go.

[Rumsy4]

9 hours ago, Camera One said:

The dilapidated tower (if it's the same one) was seen in last week's episode, so it suggests Gothel and the "distant realm" was in Tremaine/Cinderella/Drizella's realm.  But Aladdin created the Wish Realm in Season 6 when Emma was already 30 something years old, while Wish Hook went to this Tower right after Wish EQ failed to cast the Curse, so he couldn't have gone to this realm before he actually came into existence.

I was thinking of this too. It makes no sense. If the dilapidated Tower is in Alt EF, that means Wish Hook left his Realm and went to another Realm while he technically should not have existed. Maybe the Genie Wish retroactively made the Wish Realm to have existed all along, including events that affected other Realms. One Genie is apparently more powerful than all the Dark Ones and Merlin combined. 

1 hour ago, CCTC said:

If they do a child-parent kiss, it will probably be Regina and Henry --- with Regina back-lit so she looks esp. saintly.

I agree. No way would the writers give a Dark Curse-breaking TLK to Whook. It will be either St. Regina and Henry, or Lucy and Henry. OR even Lucy and Regina.

Edited November 18, 2017 by Rumsy4

[Curio]

The writer of the episode tweeted a justification for why they chose to go down the sketchy consent issue path again:

Quote

Gothel comes from a long line of temptress villains who glamour and seduce. Mythology is full of them. That is their breed of evil.

Mythology is the justification? If we're going to go down the mythology path...how about Oedipus? Why not use that as inspiration for Henry and Regina to get together? (They have more chemistry than Henry and Jacinda anyways.) Wait, does that cross a line in the OUAT writers' room? Ah, so there are lines they won't cross. Interesting.

A follow-up tweet:

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Gothel is a villain. Evil. Bad. She does terrible things, which is what makes her a villain.

I can't wait for Gothel to eventually be adored by all of Hyperion Heights, shoot white magic out of nowhere to save the day, gain Alice's unconditional love, go on a bike ride with Zeus, and then maybe Roland can pop over and give her a feather. Being a villain on this show doesn't carry weight anymore. In fact, most of the time, it's your meal ticket to getting a happy ending.

TS;TW never cease to amaze me with how out of touch they are with their audience. They seem to know about certain things we like—for example, Colin singing—and they wove that into this episode's plot. They also seem to know about things we don't like—Hook fans haven't been too keen about how much brooding he's been doing lately, so they have Gothel drop the line, "Don't brood for too long." They seem to know Regina is a fan favorite and they've shifted the show over the seasons to make her the protagonist. So how can they be in tune with all of that but still ignore the backlash that happens every single time they attempt to write a sexual situation? It's depressing that nearly every time a sex scene is portrayed on this show, it is shown as something evil.

Before the episode aired, when I was attempting to speculate how Rapunzel and Whook hooked up to make Alice, I figured this episode would follow the traditional "Hook does something bad in the flashback because he chose revenge over helping someone out" formula. So, in a sense, I'm actually very thankful the writers chose to make Whook more heroic in a flashback for once instead of writing him out of character like they did many times in Season 5 and 6. Whook said, "abandoning people just isn't my thing." Cool, but what about when he abandoned Liam 2.0 in that terrible out of character flashback in Season 5? Whook also had a change of heart in 7x02 when he couldn't go through with swapping lives with Real Hook because he couldn't separate a father from his child. If that's the case, how do the writers justify the out of character Hook flashbacks where he killed his father and killed Charming's father? Is this season's Whook flashbacks an attempt to course correct their past Hook flashback mistakes? If so, then why must it come at the cost of yet another terrible non-consensual sexual encounter?

Ignoring all of that, this episode was actually one of the strongest episodes of the season, and it managed to keep me interested in both the fairy tale plot and the Hyperion Heights plot. I don't think I've enjoyed both a flashback and a current plot since Season 5.

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how did WHook take care of his baby? He had to have climbed up and down to get supplies almost every day. How did he pay for stuff? Did he empty the coffers of the JR before he handed it over to Smee?

Now this is a flashback I can get on board with. Can you imagine the arm strength Whook must have built up over the years climbing that tower every day? Or did he eventually make a pully system or discover hidden stairs? Did he become a land pirate stealing supplies to take care of Alice? Was young Alice bored in the tower and begged her father to buy her a board game? Which street market did he buy the chess board at? I'd love to see some of those kinds of flashbacks, but I doubt we'll get them.

The show needs to keep giving Colin good material. The show elevates to a much higher quality when he gets to have a decent plot to work with.