Once Upon A Time: The Snow Queen Recap

Synopsis of 4×07: Flashback to the Snow Queen’s start, Emma loses control, and Snow Queen manipulates everyone.

Rating:  ★★★★

This episode. Let me tell you, it was a mess of OUAT proportions. I’m going to break this down into just two parts – Snow Queen’s flashbacks, and Present Storybrooke.

Snow Queen Flashback

Remember how all season the Snow Queen has been saying how terrible, hurtful, mean, and fearful her family was? Well, that’s not exactly the truth. We find out that the three girls – Helga, Gerda, and Ingrid – were pretty close. When Ingrid (Snow Queen) first showed her powers while protecting her sisters from a very not nice man, she freaks out but her sisters surround her with love and understanding. To remind themselves of how they will always be there for each other, they tie yellow ribbons around their wrists and vow to never forget their love for one another.

Flash forward a few years and there is a ball going on in honor of their father, the King of Arendelle. Ingrid sequesters herself away from the ball, while encouraging her sisters to have fun and meet a duke worthy of them. Gerda and Helga do their best to convince Ingrid that nothing bad would happen if she would just come and have fun, but she refuses. Later Ingrid does go and sneak a peek of the action in the ball room. The overwhelming sadness of not being normal and included causes her to create a small flurry of snowflakes, which promptly freaks her out and causes her to run away. Her way of dealing with everything? Packing and running away of course.

Helga and Gerda are not down with Ingrid running away as a solution to her problems, so they tell her that they have heard rumors of a great and powerful wizard in a magical place called Misthaven. As we learned a few episodes ago, this could only mean one thing. Rumple. So the girls pack up, and head off to find Rumple. Ingrid begs him to take away her powers, and he points out what is very obvious to her sisters that true, sisterly love is the key to controling her powers. Still, this isn’t enough for Ingrid so he gives her a set of enchanted gloves, and an urn that will trap her, as a fail safe. All they have to do is give up their yellow ribbons that they have worn for years. Against the wishes of her sisters Ingrid agrees and gives up the ribbons.

Back in Arendelle, everything is going as well as it can. Ingrid is out at the gazebo, when a duke (yes the Duke of Weselton) approaches. He

has been courting Helga, but is infatuated with the never seen sister that is soon to be queen. The Duke makes several uncomfortable passes towards Ingrid, and finds himself blasted back by her powers. Helga appears and he tries to tell her that Ingrid had been the one to kiss him and do all sorts of unsavory things. Helga doesn’t believe this for a second, as she knows her dear sister would never do anything of that kind. In a flurry of confusion, Ingrid tries to push the Duke back with her powers again, but ends up striking Helga right in the heart. The Duke runs off, while Helga freezes to ice and crumbles in front of a distraught Ingrid. Gerda appears just after Helga finishes crumbling into a million pieces. She does what any shocked, scared and confused person does; she opens the urn and sucks Ingrid in. After doing so, Gerda treks to the rock trolls and asks Grand Pabbie to erase the memories of all people within Arendelle’s boarders of Helga and Ingrid in order to protect the kingdom and it’s future. He tells her that this won’t solve all of the family’s problems and the past has a way of coming back. For Gerda however, this is the only way to protect the family and people she loves.

Present Storybrooke

A lot is happening in this quaint little town. Emma and Elsa have been working on their magic, Mary Margret and baby Neal have been attending Mommy and Me classes, Robin and Regina have serious sexual tension, and Harry has been manipulating Gold. It was a night of many sub plots for sure. Here are the highlights:

With the help of Elsa, Emma has been working on her powers and controlling them. However, they don’t take into account Emma’s residual jealousy over not being able to experience having her parents there for her childhood like baby Neal will. This manifests itself in boiling the baby’s bottle, but luckily it doesn’t get much farther because she gets the call to go capture the Snow Queen. So after causing a sitr at the Mommy and Me class, Emma rushes over to the clock tower to meet Elsa. Together they capture the Snow Queen pretty effortlessly. and take her to the sheriff’s office.

Once in the interrogation room, Emma lays into the Snow Queen. Instead of just arresting her and tossing her into a cell, Emma has to know why the Snow Queen is destroying the town and trying to recreate a family with her and Elsa as her sisters. While Emma gets super riled up, the Snow Queen is as cool as ever while she explains that she just wants a family that accepts her for who she is and what her powers can do. She never wants Emma or Elsa to know what is it like having a family that fears them. Through much manipulation, she wears Emma down into believing that the Charming Parents and all her friends are really afraid of Emma and what she can do. This causes Emma to have a break in the control of her powers and bust a hole in the wall. Emma freaks out, which gives the Snow Queen a bit of time to escape. Meanwhile, the Charming Parents and friends realize what has been going on and rush over to help Emma any way they can, but she’s too far gone into her freakout. After another accidental burst of power that leaves David mildly injured, Emma jumps in her bug and runs off.

On the other side of town, Regina ties Henry’s tie so he can head off to work with Grandpa Gold. Henry reassures her that he is doing his best to

get information from Gold about the author of the Story Book. While he trots off to work, Regina goes back to fretting over the book, and finding a cure for Marian’s icy affliction. She’s tried everything she can think of, scoured every book and told Robin to go back to loving his wife like he is supposed to. Unfortunately, Robin realizes that Regina is his true love and with the encouragement of a friend, he goes on to pursue her. It looks like we are going to be seeing a bit more of this OutlawQueen pairing as they sort out their feelings, and how to bring Marian back.

Next week’s episode is two hours long! Are you ready for this story line to be wrapped up, or do you want more of the Ice Queen? What do you think is the future for the OutlawQueen pairing? Will Emma ever come back to  Storybrooke? Is Anna ever going to be found? Will Olaf make an appearance? Hopefully a few of these questions will be answered next week!

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Asvub7zjB3c]