Once Upon a Time 5.08: Birth

I think we’ve all been feeling Killian’s frustration for the past few episodes. Emma’s plan has been cloaked in so much secrecy that it’s made it hard to follow all of her plotting and scheming. ‘Birth’ finally pulled back the curtain on what happened in Camelot to turn her into the Dark One, and gave us some insight into what’s been motivating her to pull all these strings in the present. We can really get invested from here on out.


Now we know what was bad enough to get Emma to use her dark magic, and cement her transformation into the Dark Swan. It makes sense that it was Killian’s death that sent her over the edge. The relationship between them has been a huge part of the Dark Swan arc, and Emma has gone out of her way to protect him and to carve out a future for them to share, despite all of his protests against her current form. It’s easy to believe that watching him die would be more than enough for Emma to give up on her fight against the power inside of her, despite how well she was able to stand up to it last week.

Organising a pre-mature birth to get her hands on Zelena was clever on Emma’s part. With Regina and everyone else concerned with protecting the baby, they never stopped to think that it would be the sarcastic mother to be that was in Emma’s sights the whole time. I like that Zelena is being included in the central arc, and is playing a role at such an important time. She hasn’t really had much to do, other than tease Regina. At least here she serves another purpose, and gets some fun banter with Killian in the process.

‘Birth’ touches on some grey areas where Zelena is concerned. You could almost agree that Emma’s plan to use her as a way of destroying the darkness by killing her was a good one. But pre-meditated murder is still applicable here, even if the murder is of a horrible and selfish person. The episode touched on both sides of this debate quite well. Emma’s reasons for committing something so dark hit home in a way that her pleas for her previous few actions haven’t.

I’m curious as to how the rest of the characters will react to the news that we have another Dark One in town. Will they fight for Killian as hard as they’re fighting to save Emma? Then there’s also his much closer proximity to the dark side. He did a lot of bad, back in the day. Will that play a huge part in how he handles the power of the Dark One?

Plus

Dr Whale! “What’s with the dye job?” - A nice nod to David Anders’ appearance for his current role in iZombie.

He Said, She Said

Regina: “This is not the way, Miss Swan, and you know it.”
Emma: “We're back to Miss Swan?”
Regina: “Well, start acting like Emma again and we'll talk.”
Emma: “I am Emma.”

Killian: “You just wanted to keep me from the truth”
Emma: “I wanted to fix it first to make up for what I had done.”
Zelena: “By killing me? How sweet.”

Emma: “Everything I've done since we got back to Storybrooke was to try to save you, Killian.”

Removing the secrecy of Emma’s plan and what happened in Camelot is the right move to make right now. It’s understandable that the writers would want to hold back on divulging too much to keep us invested in what happens in both timelines, but it had gotten to the point where there was so few hints as to what Emma was up to that I was starting to lose interest. With the development of the Dark One mythology in ‘Nimue’, and this week’s big twist of Killian becoming a Dark One himself, there’s a lot more to this plot to keep me interested enough to see where it goes next.

8/10

Also posted at Doux Reviews.

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