Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Once Upon A Time 6x09 Review: “The Changelings” (Mother Dearest) [Contributor: Julia Siegel]


“The Changelings”
Original Airdate: November 27, 2016

This week’s episode is all about mind games and who’s playing whom. Rumple has gone off the deep end and appears willing to do whatever it takes to change his unborn son’s fate. In the other storyline, another vision has Emma wondering if she can get ahead of her own fate and find a way to change it. As the mid-season finale nears, there’s a lot of fate up in the air just waiting to play out.


MAMMA 


The main focus of the episode is Rumple’s obsession with winning Belle back and cutting their unborn son’s fate. As if that’s not twisted enough, the story plays out in typical dual timeline fashion with some past Beauty and the Beast-esque Rumbelle scenes and present day scenes. The past reveals not only how Belle can save her child from Rumple, but also a dirty little secret about Rumple. It turns out that the source of Rumple’s true bitterness is from being abandoned as a newborn without a name. In the flashbacks, he tracks down the Dark Fairy, who happens to be his mother, and tries to show her up by abandoning a child that he stole. There wasn’t an indicator as to whether this is going to have any effect in the present storyline, but there’s rarely a big revelation without later consequences.

Meanwhile, in present day, Rumple tries to use a rapid aging spell on Belle to speed up her pregnancy. Belle uses her superpower of poetic speeches to momentarily convince Rumple that he could change and start anew without harming the unborn child or her. Rumple, however, reveals that he feels that the only way he could ever be loved is by his new child, which is why he has been going to such extremes — not that that’s super rational. Rumple is eventually swayed by the Evil Queen and goes through with his dark magic-laced plan, which leads to the birth of baby Gideon. Belle realizes that the only way to protect her newborn son is to send him far away from Rumple, so she enlists the help of the Blue Fairy to protect her son. Rumple arrives a moment too late and is super upset upon finding out that Belle abandoned their son.

Rumple’s speech about how he would never harm Belle is slightly moving considering the real emotion that he emits. Rumple was caught in a rare moment of his true self, which is actually quite kind. He still doesn’t believe that he can strip away his darkness and be the man that Belle wants him to be, but it’s obvious that that person probably exists under all the darkness. Belle also denies Rumple the name of their son. There will probably be a huge cat-and-mouse game coming up to find and protect the child.

VISIONS 


The other big storyline of the episode was Emma’s visions of her death. Emma is struck by a newer version of her death vision, and it reveals the exact weapon that is used to kill her. She winds up seeing the same newer vision when she and Hook go to stun Rumple in his pawn shop. Emma thinks that something in the shop might have answers as to how to change her fate, and upon some sifting, she finds her own murder weapon.

Emma feels that by having the weapon, she can track down who is going to kill her and why. How she thinks that is going to work is beyond me, but the best option is to just destroy or get rid of the sword! If she destroys it, then it can’t kill her. This seems like the obvious thing to do, but I’m sure she will do something way more complicated. Having the sword won’t simply unlock her visions or change her fate, but what she does with the sword is what will have the biggest impact.

What did you all think of this week's Once Upon A Time? Sound off in the comments below!

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