Once Upon a Time Season Six is packed with a lot of characters, storylines and loose ends. Thankfully, and tragically in a sense, the sixth season ties it all up and ends in a refreshing way. It’s a season that rates up their with the first two, at least for me, and is far and away better than the fifth. In short, pick this one up, if you love the show. It does the show’s overall concept proper story justice.
While season five floundered a bit with Disney properties and disjointed storytelling, season six of Once Upon a Time brings it all back together with little fluff and more guff. Let’s get right into this, shall we?
Official Synopsis
After Regina crushes the heart of her Dark Half, it appears Storybrooke will finally enjoy an era of tranquility. But this reprieve is short-lived when the Evil Queen reemerges and wreaks a level of havoc and terror that makes her previous cruelties pale by comparison. Desperate to right her counterpart’s wrongs, Regina fights the ultimate battle against her nemesis, but can one survive if the other is destroyed?
Meanwhile, Gold’s attempt to win back Belle before their child is born has heartbreaking consequences; Snow and David face a new, even more insidious curse; and just as Emma begins to envision a happy ending with Hook, she discovers she’s destined, as the Savior, to die at the hands of a sword-wielding assassin – unless she can somehow change her fate.
There’s so much going on here in seasons six, but it is a well-crafted tale that breathes new life into the series, just as its life is expiring inside the story. The involvement of so many different Disney entities, but purposeful ones (not just for marketing) and the wrapping up of old storylines is what makes this season incredibly special and entertaining. Prepare yourselves, folks, this season isn’t going to end well, though in a sense it does end right.
The season starts out where it left off in five with the introduction of Aladdin and Jafar. Aladdin, who is destined to be a Savior, despite his hesitancy, goes up against Jafar, which doesn’t turn out well. Jafar ends up offering Aladdin a way out of his destiny, but Aladdin rejects his offer of some magical golden scissors that would disconnect his fate, which come back to visit the story of season six later. Instead, Aladdin ends up saving Princess Jasmine from Jafar, but also ends up losing the city of Agrabah in the process (through other means), which puts him and Jasmine without a home.
Jumping over to the old familiar, Storybrooke ends up getting its own refugees, who are in need of help, and the town, especially Regina, offer up help with open arms. Along with the emergence of the refugees, Emma begins to have visions, along with some tremors that make her magic uncontrollable at times, which disturb her. The visions show Emma her impending death at the hands of a cloaked figure, whom she doesn’t recognize. She seeks counsel with Dr. Jekyll in order to figure these things out, as well as the Cricket to help ease her family into the visions. Anyway, Jekyll tells her that no matter what she might want in life, no matter how she feels or what she does that she can’t escape her ultimate fate as a Savior.
Soon after Emma’s conversation with Jekyll, he eventually escapes from his imprisonment, turns to help out the Evil Queen (she’s back) and he begins to plan for revenge against Gold for a past tragedy that Gold caused, all of which goes to pot. all go to pot.
Up to this point in the show, there’s a lot of story in a short amount of time with Jekyll, Gold, the Evil Queen, Aladdin, Jafar and Emma. For the first half of the season we’re introduced to some loose ends that need resolving, and some get their proper end by mid-season. There’s so much thrown at you at the beginning of season six that it can be difficult to keep up with at times, but each storyline is a thread preparing and padding the impending second half of the show. When the second half begins all of the stories start to slow down a bit, especially once Gold and Belle have their child, Gideon, whom is shortly thereafter kidnapped by the Black Fairy. That part is a looming plot point over the second half of the season.
The beginning of the second half sees Gideon, Gold and Belle’s son, return in adult form and who is dead set on killing Emma to take over the role of the Savior in hopes of defeating the Black Fairy (who imprisoned him). Gold, not keen on seeing his son fall down a dark path, like he watched his last son do, does everything within his power to stop Gideon, even going as far as to try to change his memory of the situation with a potion and taking on some dark elements for him instead of watching him do it.
On the side, Captain Hook helps out Prince Charming in investigating the death of Charming’s actual father. Charming ends up being more hellbent on revenge, rather than putting the bad memory to rest. In the process, Captain Hook ends up also finding that he had something to do with Charming’s father’s death, unbeknown to Charming, which is a bit awkward after Charming granted Hook permission to ask for Emma’s hand in marriage. Eventually Hook tells Emma of his terrible deed and Emma encourages him to tell Charming and Snow White. Sadly, Hook never gets the chance.
From this point on, Gideon eventually starts to clear the path towards preparation of killing Emma by pushing away her future husband, Captain Hook, and sending him far away from her, though she misinterprets his absence as running away from the Charming situation. Hook, desperately wanting to get back to Emma to marry and protect her, ends up meeting Aladdin, Jafar, Princess Jasmine and a certain mermaid to help wrap up the Aladdin storyline, which ends properly.
As the sixth season begins to come to a close, one in which I won’t give too many details of because we don’t like spoiling the third act, we get a nice wrap on the Evil Queen’s storyline, which ends up being tamed by Regina. We also get the re-introduction to Robin Hood, from another realm, and a chapter that Regina has to close out with the end of the Evil Queen.
As for what happens with Emma and her fate, well you’ll just have to watch the sixth season to find out. I will say that everything ends well, even when it doesn’t, and the sixth season, which is packed with storylines, is one of the better seasons of the show since the first and second aired. The writers this time out seemed incredibly focused on what they wanted from this season and how they were going to complete their fairytale(s) opus. It’s worth your time and adventure, good folks.
On the special features side of things here’s what you should expect:
– The Storybooke Songbook: Inside the Musical Episode
– Audio Commentary (The Other Shoe Commentary)
– The Fairest Bloopers of Them All
– Deleted Scenes
A good set of features for a solid season of entertainment.
