Once Upon a Time - 'The Garden of Forking Paths' and 'Beauty'

Once Upon a Time, where the wicked rule and the good meet in woodland
camps.

Season seven digs in, literally, as Victoria Belfry sets out to transform the community garden that Lucy loves into a luxury condo block. The excavation reveals a void and Lucy is in there, determining that this is just like when Henry went searching in the mine for Snow White’s glass coffin. And… she’s right. It is. To the point that I am seriously starting to worry that they’re just trying to retread their whole plot.

Anyway, Lucy finds the broken toe of Cinderella’s glass slipper, while in flashback we see that Cinderella ditched her rendezvous with Henry to join a resistance against Lady Tremaine led by Tiana (whose Seattle persona is Jacinda’s bestie, Sabine,) with Henry, Regina and Hook2 quickly following. They plan to attack Tremaine’s manor, where she is hoarding magical goodies, but Cinderella recognises a recent addition and makes an early scouting run. The item is the coffin of Tremaine’s second daughter, Anastasia, who died in an incident for which she blames Cinderella and her father, which is of course entirely unlike Regina blaming Snow White for her lover’s death.

Also, what was really under the garden – which Jacinda saves through community action – is the same coffin, along with the body of Anastasia, whom Victoria thinks she can resurrect using the heart of the truest believer.

 

And then they dance to 'Tale as Old as Time' and I completely lose my shit.

And so, to ‘Beauty’, which mirrors… absolutely nothing in the previous seasons. Henry tries to work up the courage to ask Jacinda out, helps find Lucy after she ducks out on trick or treating with a disinterested Ivy (Belfry’s put-upon still living daughter,) and ends up drinking heavily with Ivy in a move which bodes ill for both the progression of the arc plot and the redemption which is hinted at for Ivy. This is all by the by, however. What really signifies, begins in Storybrooke.

Rumplestiltskin buys a travel book for Belle, and they set out to see the world, and at the same time seek for a means to make him mortal again. This quest leads them to a place on the edge of the enchanted realms, to wait for a sunset decades in the waiting, where they build a house and share their lives and OH DEAR MERCIFUL LORD THEY’RE DOING UP! Yes, Belle having realised that it is her death that will give Rumple the key to mortality has come here to live their life, and finally die.

In Hyperion Heights, Tilly goes off her meds and begins to remember. Weaver tries to protect her from Belfry, but when he doesn’t recognise Belle’s chipped cup she shoots him, telling him that he told her to and calling him Rumplestiltskin. When he recovers in hospital, he covers for Tilly and warns Belfry that she might not want to push him, ‘dearie’.

And it is with ‘Beauty’ that season 7 has landed. It’s new, it’s punchy, and it takes the story in interesting directions, as well as hinting that we’re not just going to be stuck with the same old shit in a different town.