REVIEW: Once Upon A Time, Episode 703
Once Upon A Time continues its season with this third episode entitled “The Garden of Forking Paths”, and in it, Lucy decided to take a lip of faith, and dragged Henry to the old Seattle underneath Hyperion Heights.
In flashbacks, Cinderella finally met Tiana, and the two started teaming up. It really feels refreshing this new friendship, especially because we see it both in flashbacks and in present day. Tiana is the leader of the resistance against Tremaine and the royal family, who aren’t as charming as the King and Queen of a parallel world, and Cinderella really was happy to help.
In this episode, we found out why Tremaine hates Cinderella so much: she blames her for Anastasia’s death. In fact, Cinderella blames herself too. We still don’t know exactly what happened, but we realized that Anastasia isn’t really dead, there is still some life inside her. To restore it, Tremaine needs the Heart of the Truest Believer, a task she hires Cinderella to do.
These flashbacks also really had a lot of future mother-in-law/daughter-in-law bonding moments. It appears Regina did make her piece with Henry being in love with Cinderella (I am sure everyone knows that at this point), so Regina helps her make the right choice: forget about Tremaine’s threat, and fight beside them. Sacrificing an innocent, even when he wouldn’t mind be sacrificed if that kept bad things away, is never the right thing to do, so Ella realized she had to put her revenge and her own personal plans aside, because she is now part of a team. In many ways, even though Cinderella isn’t a villain, she did resemble the Evil Queen, at least in her early stage, because it usually is with small things like this that someone starts to be pulled to the dark side.
In present day, Tremaine gave the order to start destroying the community garden and that was when Lucy realized there had to be something underneath. Like I said it would on my last review, this episode did echoe episode 105, but I didn’t think it was a copy of that episode. It is always nice when a show echoes to its early stage, and Once Upon A Time did do that a lot of times throughout the past 6 seasons, so I don’t know why they should stop now. Below Hyperion Heights, Lucy found something she believes is a piece from one of her mother’s glass slippers. Maybe it really is, or maybe it could just be a piece of glass, but because she believes in it, she turned it into so much more than that.
When the bully doesn’t take a day off, the heroes can’t either so Jacinda started going around gathering signatures to make the garden impossible to be destroyed. After a meeting with Victoria, Jacinda was seduced to the dark side once again, but I loved that it was again the “Regular Queen” of Hyperion Heights who convinced her to do the right thing. I also loved the scene in the garden when Jacinda tells everyone she was weak, but she will then make a stand for them, and not let Victoria do anything to their garden. With everyone’s help, the garden remains safe.
Meanwhile, Rodgers started chasing a lead Roni gave him and he really saw Victoria bribe a man in the middle of the street. Rodgers went after him, arrested him, and a while after that, Weaver released him. He said the man now owns him a favor, so he will call him once he has something on Victoria, but I am not sure if I believe him. Rumple will always be Rumple, which means he doesn’t care about the bad guys, unless they go after him, and Victoria didn’t do that, yet. So, the way I see it, he is either working for her, or he doesn’t want Victoria behind bars for some reason.
The last scene of the episode was really a very illuminating one. We now know for sure that Victoria Belfrey does remember about everything, and also that what she was hiding underground wasn’t a piece of glass, but her daughter Anastasia. She is still trying to bring her back, and she now wants to use Lucy’s heart and belief to do so. Not to mention that Victoria also as a version of Maleficent trapped in one of her buildings: the one who was referred as The Witch in this episode’s press release. Who is she? No idea, but Tremaine did say in flashbacks she had a friend who could perform magic, and it was that friend who put Anastasia on the spell she is now, the spell which is keeping her alive. Maybe this new character is that “friend”. I guess we will just have to stay tuned to find out.
Overall, this was a good episode, field with many great moments and even reveals (like Anastasia’s). it just felt a bit off compared to the other two. I am giving it an 8.1/10.
Next episode is entitled “Beauty” and it really promises to be a great one because, not only we will see Emilie de Ravin as Belle one more time, but we will also find out a few things about the very mysterious Alice. Not to mention of course that, for the first time (in forever), Once Upon A Time is having a special Halloween episode, so you really can’t miss it.