Recap / Once Upon a Time S5 E22 "Only You"

Season 5, Episode 22:

Only You

Regina reels from the death of Robin Hood. When the heroes discover Gold has stolen Hades' Olympian Crystal and tethered all of Storybrooke's magic to it, they set out to stop him. In a bold move, Henry decides he no longer can stand all the pain magic has caused his family, so he goes rogue, with Violet in tow. Meanwhile, Zelena, Snow, David, and Hook attempt to open a portal that will return Merida and the other Storybrooke guests to their homes, with unforeseen consequences.

Tropes

• All Stories Are Real Somewhere: Taken to its logical conclusion when Henry discovers multiple storybooks at the library, containing all the stories, legends, and fables that (either due to being minor, unimportant, or of more recent origin) are not in the main one...thus proving that they are true as well. In fact as is revealed by the end of the episode, all these characters have been forced into another dimension, the Land of Untold Stories...and some, like Hyde, are quite resentful of this and want a land of their own.
• Artistic License: Finding a book about Robin Hood, Regina talks of how she shared the stories with him and Robin laughing on "how much they got wrong."
• Backstory: When he first captures Snow and the others, it is very clear that Hyde has a history with the Dark One, and his sentiment that you "put the things that worry you in a cage...it's when you let them out that the trouble starts," while applicable to Jekyll, could just as easily refer to Rumple. But just how they know each other and why Hyde is so incensed at the idea of the Dark One sending someone after him has yet to be revealed.
• Body Horror: Jekyll's transformation into Hyde is extremely agonizing and disturbing.
• Call-Back: Once again, Henry's solution to the chaos and danger in his loved ones' lives is to destroy magic.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Illustrating how bad magic can be to Violet, Henry cites things in Gold's shop like the puppets of Geppetto's parents and the needle from the cursed spinning wheel.
  • Emma makes use of her search utility software from the pilot.
  • When his hotel room starts rumbling and he realizes a portal is about to open, Gold has to choose between power (the magic contained in the Olympian crystal) and someone he loves (Belle and his unborn child inside Pandora's Box). Once again, he makes the wrong choice.
• Cosmic Keystone: Of a sort. Once Gold casts his spell upon the piece of the Olympian crystal, tying all of Storybrooke's magic to it, its presence (and existence) are necessary for the town to retain its magic, and for anyone from it to have their personal magic. Once Henry takes it out of town, the town's magic becomes unstable (leading to the Diabolus ex Machina below) and Emma and Regina can do magic across the town line—until Gold gets hold of it. It's therefore necessary (and needs to be recharged, after Henry uses the Dark Grail) before they can restore magic to Storybrooke.
• Couch Gag: The title card features a dirigible.
• Crazy-Prepared: Emma reveals that after he's been kidnapped or gone missing so many times, she put a GPS tracker on Henry's phone. Of course, Henry was prepared for this to leave the phone on the bus.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Right after sending Merida, the Merry Men and the people of Camelot home, Zelena, Hook, Snow, and Charming get sucked through to another realm. Henry even lampshades the pattern of this happening throughout the show.
• Didn't Think This Through: In his desire to destroy magic, Henry fails to consider what happens to those in the town created by magic.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: After Zelena, Hook, Snow, and Charming are taken prisoner in Hyde's asylum, they find themselves in a magical cage, which normally they could break out of...except the Apprentice's wand has been broken during their capture, so that they need to get it repaired before they can escape.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: While she is giving her litany of suffering and loss she's gone through while trying to be good, Regina seems to forget that this trope was the lesson taught to her in the Author arc—not just that the only way to change and achieve happiness is by working hard for it, but that the work itself is going to be all about pain and suffering. The only way for that to end is to make it through to the reward at the end of the story—and Regina hasn't reached hers yet.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • Dr. Jekyll's serum is all about creating (and eventually destroying) one of these.
  • When Henry is on his father's trail of destroying magic, he discovers that there is a "Dark Grail" kept in a display case in the New York Public Library—and just as the Grail was the source of all magic, its twin can destroy it.
• History Repeats: Emma's key concern over Regina, as the last time she lost her true love, it drove her to curse an entire kingdom...and she is worried it can happen again.
• Hypocrisy Nod: Regina notes this when Emma is worried about her actions leading to darkness.
  Regina: When you're upset, we all follow you to Hell; when I get upset, I get a time out.
• I Am What I Am: Regina gets a major speech on how the Evil Queen is always inside her and still fighting to get out no matter the good she does and openly cites the trope.
• I Have Your Wife: Using the Apprentice's wand, Hyde summons a portal to steal Pandora's Box with Belle and her unborn child inside—and won't release them unless Gold does everything he says.
• Jekyll & Hyde: Literally, this is who the doctor and the warden are.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Henry stating that magic is the source of all Storybrooke's problems is actually perfectly accurate. Most villains have magic and several have turned evil as a direct result of magic (Greg, Tamara, Ingrid, Isaac and anyone who has become the Dark One). Even villains that do not have magic often have an ally that does.
• Magic Is Evil: Henry openly cites this as "realizing" all magic just leads to pain and has to be destroyed. And while he is overgeneralizing, he has some points considering what it has done to his mothers, his father, his grandfather, and many of his other loved ones.
• Never Trust a Trailer: Played with. The trailers had implied that Regina would revert to villainy thanks to Robin Hood's death, and that the danger to Storybrooke would result from this. Emma does worry about this possibility, but other than getting angry at her for thinking such a thing this late in the game, Regina doesn't seem in true danger of it, and once the episode's plot gets going (which is due to Henry and Gold, not her) this is quickly dispensed with. Although it does lurk in the background in scenes like the one at Neal's apartment where Regina reflects on the turmoil inside her. But then in the end it does come true in a roundabout way—since it is Regina's distress over Robin's death and how this stirs the darkness up in her that leads her to purge and try to destroy her Evil Queen self...which is what creates one of the big dangers to Storybrooke in the next season.
• Oh, Crap!: Emma and Regina realizing magic works in the real world and that means Gold can use his own on Henry.
• Operation: [Blank]: Henry calls his road trip with Violet "Operation Mixtape."
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: Although she completed her Heel–Face Turn in the previous episode, it's quite clear in both this and the next one that Zelena has not lost any of her snark and still retains some nastiness and selfishness.
• Retcon: Of the Revision subtype. It turns out that while Neal was living in New York, he wanted to make sure his father could never find him and that the magic which had separated them could never ruin his life again, and so he tried to learn how to destroy it—and he made Henry promise never to tell this to Emma or anyone else. This is perfectly in keeping with his character and contradicts nothing already revealed, but it only becomes relevant when Henry needs to find a way to destroy magic.
• The Reveal:
  • The doctor and the warden are the same man, aka Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
  • Also, the fact that all the characters of the stories which are not in the main storybook are forced to be refugees in another world together, desperate to find a home of their own.
• Shout-Out: Among the stories illustrated in the storybooks Henry finds are Gulliver's Travels, Paul Bunyan, Don Quixote and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
• Tragic Keepsake: Just before going through the portal to the Enchanted Forest, Roland gives the fletching from one of his father's arrows to Zelena, to give to Regina.
• Visual Pun: When Rumplestiltskin dismisses the room orderly, he closes the door and the "Do Not Disturb" sign shows the name of the hotel: "Hotel L'Or" or "Gold Hotel."
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: How Henry sees his actions, attempting to destroy magic after all the pain it's caused.
• Wham Shot: Hyde declaring "we'll all be going to Storybrooke" as the camera shows him in a world that appears based on a steampunk Victorian-era London.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • When Zelena opens the portal for Merida, the Merry Men, and the people of Camelot to go home, it is never revealed whether Guinevere is still under the power of the Sands of Avalon—or for that matter, if they actually have a Camelot to go back to. There is one Freeze-Frame Bonus shot, while Zelena is saying good-bye to Roland, where it appears Charming is hugging Guinevere just before she goes through the portal. While it's possible this is because Dark Hook's curse which took everyone's memories was never broken (the main characters got theirs back via the dreamcatchers), it's also possible Arthur's death broke the Sands' power over her, explaining why she'd be parting with Charming and Snow in such a friendly fashion.
  • Nowhere in the episode is the spell that means people who leave Storybrooke for the outside world can't come back without some kind of magic mentioned; nor is it mentioned in the next episode. Although it is possible said spell was eliminated when Henry left with the crystal, and restored (or not) when Regina returns the town's magic in the next episode. Considering the Evil Queen ends up putting up a new barrier, this probably implies Ingrid's spell vanished with the crystal (and for that matter, so did the Dark Swan's, assuming that wasn't eliminated along with the darkness when Emma killed Hook with Excalibur).