Recap / Once Upon a Time S5 E6 "The Bear and the Bow"

Season 5, Episode 6:

The Bear and the Bow

Six weeks earlier in Camelot, Merida, struggling with her quest to save her brothers, brings Belle with her to find the magic she thinks will help her kingdom. In the present, Emma forces Merida to try and kill Belle so that Gold will prove himself and become a hero by defending his love from danger.

Tropes

• Adaptational Attractiveness: The members of the Three Clans are less cartoon-ishly ugly than the animated version by necessity
• Adaptational Villainy: The Three Clans are full out villains here, not only exiling Merida's mum but fully willing to kill her three brothers as well.
• Ambiguous Situation: Even as one is resolved (Hook states that the Apprentice did in fact die), another is introduced, since it is not clear yet what happened to Merlin (or even who did the deed).
• Back-to-Back Badasses: The opening has Hook, Charming and Merlin taking down a slew of guards to free Lancelot and Merida.
• Badass Boast:
  • After taking out three arrows with one of her own to save her brothers.
    Merida: You saw what I can do with an arrow, do you really want to see what I can do with a sword?
  • Also, Rumplestiltskin gives Emma one after he finally finds the courage and selflessness to be a hero and pulls Excalibur from the stone.
    Rumple: Now you may have Excalibur, but you've made one mistake in all of this. One terrible mistake. You've turned me into a hero.
    Emma: There are heroes all over this town and none of them have been able to stop me yet.
    Rumple: Well that's because none of them are me.
• Big "NO!": Merida does one when the three lords shoot at her brothers.
• Black Humor: When Gold is about to draw Excalibur, Belle intervenes out of worry for what will happen if he's not the one chosen to do so. Emma's response is to say "then you will be sweeping his remains from the floor, you were his maid once."
• Call-Back: Gold using the shards of teacup to cut through his bonds is a reference to Emma doing the same thing when she was being held captive by Jefferson in "Hat Trick."
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Despite how he hates to do it, Gold shatters Belle's teacup in order to use the broken pieces to slice his ropes.
  • Gold shows Belle a bag of powder meant to protect them from any magical effects leaving the town line. He ends up using it on Merida to transform her from a monster bear back to her human form.
  • When the time comes to use the mushroom to communicate with Merlin, Regina reveals they need someone Merlin had chosen to cast the spell. At first they think the only one in town who fits this description is Arthur, but then Regina remembers another: the Author...who despite his breaking the quill is still Henry.
• Continuity Nod: When Emma visits Zelena in her cell, she notes that she knows what it's like to be pregnant behind bars, referencing her having Henry in jail.
• Couch Gag: The title card features an arrow shooting at the logo.
• Dead Man Writing: The gang manage to reach Merlin only it's a message he's left warning them things have gone bad.
  Regina: I don't believe it. We've reached Merlin's voicemail?
• Deal with the Devil: The scene with Emma and Zelena, and the one with her and Gold when he bargains Merida's heart for him pulling Excalibur from the stone, reveals (in direct dialogue, in Gold's case) that the penchant for making deals is something of a tendency with all Dark Ones.^* And like so many of Gold's deals, the one she sets before Zelena turns out to be a Batman Gambit, since while she offers Zelena her freedom and protection in return for her using the Apprentice's wand for her, this isn't her true purpose at all—she really wants Zelena to pour the Darkness into so she can free herself and Hook, for that she needs to safely get the baby out of her, and that's what the magic in the onion rings she gives her is meant to accomplish.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • In retrospect. Hook is the one who questions what the hell did Emma (as the Dark One) do to Merlin.
  • After using the wisps to find out where her brothers were taken, Merida stole a boat. Turns out the boat belonged to Arthur, which is how she ended up captured by his men and put in Camelot's dungeon.^* This is made even more ironic in three episodes, when it's revealed who it was that killed Fergus, thus leading to the clans turning on Merida and taking her brothers prisoner in the first place. There she was, in the dungeon of the man who killed her father without even knowing it...and facing him down could also have gotten the clans back on her side and freed her brothers, had she but known.
  • Also, when they part ways in the flashback, Belle tells Merida she hopes their paths will cross again...little knowing it will happen as seen in the rest of the episode, where Merida is forced to try and kill her both with her bow and as a bear.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Gold and Belle are confused as to why Emma would let Gold go free when she can track him easily, then realize Merida is being sent after Belle.
• Guile Hero: Unsurprisingly, this is the kind of hero Gold turns out to be, for after throwing a rock to get the bear's attention, then letting it attack and pin him to save Belle, he stops the bear, not with a sword or any other weapon, but with the magic anti-transformation powder, restoring it to its true form. Not only did he not even know the powder was there until practically the last second, but when Belle asks him, "How did you know it would work?" he answers quite honestly, "I didn't."
• Hand Wave: For now at least, Merlin refuses to explain how he could appear to young Emma as an usher when he was still trapped in the tree at the time; the implication seems to be "magic".
• I Lied: Rumple claims to Belle that he broke his leg during the Ogre Wars not because he wanted to get back to Bae, but because he saw the wounded coming back from the front and was afraid. Whether this is Self-Serving Memory on his part (because he was convinced he would always be a coward and not the hero who could save Belle) or a Half-Truth depends on how one interprets the original flashback from "Manhattan"; the wounded did seem to disturb him greatly, and it's possible the Seer's prophecy just gave him the excuse to do what he secretly wanted.
• Idiot Ball: The gang believe Arthur's claim that he can only use the mushroom to talk to Merlin by himself as Merlin only delivered his prophecies alone. They leave Arthur alone so he throws the mushroom into the fire and comes out, claiming the spell didn't work. (Although to be fair, thanks to the memory loss they still had no idea he couldn't be trusted.)
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Although Zelena claims Henry will never forgive Emma for what she did to him and Violet, when he comes to the vault to cast the spell for Merlin he states he knows the one who did that wasn't really his mother, that "Emma's still in there somewhere", and he'd do anything to save her.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Merida is able to cut through three arrows flying toward her brothers with a single shot of her own in mid-air.
• It's All My Fault: Merida blames herself for not preventing her father's death in battle. That guilt drives her on despite Belle using her own experiences to say Merida isn't to blame.
• Kick the Dog: Zelena brings up how Neal died because of her, just to hurt Emma. Emma doesn't take the bait.
• Killed By The Adaptation: In Once, King Fergus has been slain in battle defending DunBroch, as Merida tells Belle in this episode.
• Killed Offscreen: The Apprentice apparently died from injuries offscreen after the premiere.
• Kneel Before Frodo: After Merida proves her worth to them as queen by shooting the arrows meant to execute her brothers, the members of the Three Clans all kneel to her, followed by Young MacGuffin, then Young Dingwall, and finally (with great reluctance) Young Macintosh.
• Look Behind You: Merida pretends to hear something to get Belle to turn around (and hang back from the others) long enough to knock her out.
• Moral Myopia: In-Universe, Belle calls the others out on the fact that they're so focused on Merlin they aren't even thinking about what she revealed to them last episode, that Emma had kidnapped Gold for some nefarious purpose. Yes, he was the one who brought darkness to Storybrooke (in multiple senses, but mostly referring to the Queens, the Author, and the actual Darkness that Emma ended up absorbing), but Emma has given in to the darkness too; they are fighting to save her (and have given Regina chance after chance to redeem herself) but aren't doing the same for Gold. She's even more right than she knows, since Emma wants Gold to remove Excalibur for her; if they were to save him, Emma's plan would be blocked, and if he were to remove the sword during said rescue, they'd have the way to get rid of the Darkness and save Emma without having to deal with either Merlin or Arthur.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Merida and Belle visit the Witch's Cottage from Brave to use her cauldron.
  • Young MacGuffin, Macintosh, and Dingwall are near spitting images of their animated counterparts.
  • When Belle is trying to convince Merida she can save her brothers without magic, she speaks of "changing their fate". Not only was this the tagline for Brave, it was the very thing Merida had asked the Witch for to help her with her mother; naturally this gives her the idea to use the same potion again.
  • Not only is the potion called the Spell of Mor'du, but when Merida takes it she transforms into the same one-eyed bear from the film.
  • Her three brothers, though much older now, still don't get any lines.
  • Also the episode title is a Shout-Out to the original title for Brave.
  • Merida repeats the legend of the prince from Brave and mentions having seen the spell of Mor'du in action before.
  • Merida repeats her feat of splitting arrows from Brave...several times.
  • Attempting to contact Merlin with the Crimson Crown, the main cast reaches the magical equivalent of an answering machine, just as Merida did with the witch.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Rumple says that Emma making him into a hero was a mistake, as he's confident that he'll be the one to stop her.
  • Arthur's attempt to destroy the mushroom so that the heroes can't communicate with Merlin fails, and just reveals to them that he's untrustworthy.
• Posthumous Character: Merida informs Belle that her father's death sparked another war among the clans.
• Revealing Cover-Up: Arthur tries to burn the Crimson Crown mushroom so that the heroes can't communicate with Merlin (and potentially discover his own deceptions), but it turns out magic mushrooms don't burn, so they find it later and realize that Arthur lied to them.
• The Smart Guy: Belle is once again back in this role in Camelot, as it is she who deciphers a book of magic well enough to aid Merlin in his spellwork. He lampshades this by calling her clever. It is because she witnesses this that Merida ends up kidnapping Belle so she can be her own personal Smart Guy/source of magic.
• Stolen Macguffin Reveal: Well it isn't a MacGuffin since it actually does something, but Belle reveals at the clans' camp that she switched the potion for water so as to give Merida the courage to face her fears and win on her own, without magic.
• There Is Another: Aside from Henry turning out to be another "chosen by Merlin" who can speak to him via spell, the message Merlin leaves for them in turn tells them they must seek another to save Emma from the Darkness—Nimue.
• Tired of Running: Rumple almost flees town, but comes back to save Belle, cementing his Heel–Face Turn.
  Gold, to Bear!Merida as she pins him to the ground: Do your worst!
• *Twang* Hello: Merida is quite fond of this, firing an arrow into Gold's shop before she enters.
• Villain Team-Up: Subverted. Emma makes an offer of one to Zelena (her assistance with the Apprentice's wand in exchange for her freedom and protection), but is refused.
• The Voiceless: Somewhat subverted as Zelena claims the silent mopper at the asylum is actually a talkative sort and shares gossip on the town.
• What the Hell, Hero?: A minor one, but Belle points out to Merida that rather than knocking her out and kidnapping her, she could have simply asked her for help.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: While Emma tries to brush it off, it's clear she's affected when Zelena compliments her for using Violet to crush Henry's spirits. Emma says Henry will understand but Zelena laughs and says that she knows how much anger and resentment can grow in a child betrayed by their mother.