Season 6, Episode 3:
The Other Shoe
Ashley is intent on settling unfinished business with her step-family; Regina tries to bribe Mr. Hyde for information on how to beat the Evil Queen; and David makes a deal with Gold for information about his father.
Tropes
- Bait-and-Switch:
- Regina is ready to question Hyde, taking a covered tray and promising something big. She pulls the sheet back to reveal...a plate of lasagna.
- David holds a note over a candle, seemingly ready to burn it...but instead just douses the candle.
- The Bus Came Back: Cinderella and Dr. Whale. Also Gus in flashback.
- Cardboard Prison: The Evil Queen is easily able to slip in and out of the asylum and lets Hyde get out by just waving her hand to open the door.
- Continuity Nod:
- We are reminded of how Emma helped out Cinderella before the curse was broken.
- It's revealed Snow met Cinderella at the ball. Snow also used her tracking skills to help the Prince track Ella down.
- Continuity Snarl: Once Upon a Time in Wonderland implied that Anastasia the Red Queen was one of Cinderella's stepsisters. Now she's not. Word of God from Adam Horowitz is that her story is still to be told. He also said it was deliberate that the Jabberwocky didn't explicitly name her stepsister as Cinderella when she was interrogating her.
- Couch Gag: The title card features Gus the mouse.
- Double-Meaning Title: It's both a reference to Cinderella's glass slipper (and her sneaker Emma uses to track her), and the phrase "dropping the other shoe" (since this is where we find out what the rest of the Evil Queen's plan is, to make everyone's stories play out in a way that unravels Emma's Savior role).
- Evil Stepmother: This is a Cinderella episode.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Regina tries to think on how the Queen would target her enemies by looking at "cracks in a family." This instantly makes her realize she needs to check with Zelena.
- Friend-or-Idol Decision: Lady Tremaine threatens to destroy the glass slipper, the only proof of Ella's identity at the ball, unless she reveals where Clorinda has gone to meet her lover. When Ella spills the beans, her stepmother of course breaks the slipper anyway, and it turns out Thomas can recognize her just fine without it so the whole dilemma was pointless and she ruined Clorinda's happiness for nothing. Naturally this is what Ashley wants to fix in Storybrooke—and does so, by intervening to take the bullet (or cane) instead of Jacob or Clorinda.
- Genre Savvy: When David brings Belle a recorded message from Rumple, she immediately realized that Rumple must have had something that David needed to make a deal for.
- Gilded Cage: The Evil Queen turns Hyde's cell into one of these, in order to butter him up for information. Later, she just outright breaks him out.
- Hidden Heart of Gold: Clorinda, Cinderella's older stepsister, reveals that she's not the bitch she appears, having fallen in love with the prince's footman and is sorry for what she's put Cinderella through for appearances. It briefly becomes genuine when she is rightfully angry for Ella having betrayed them to Lady Tremaine, but falls away again once she risks her life to protect Clorinda and her lover from their mother.
- Humanity Ensues: Cinderella's mouse friend is turned into her footman for the ball and talks of how odd it is. He literally scampers off to enjoy the free cheese.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Both Emma and Snow speak about wanting such a life; Emma fears hers is a lie and will never happen because of her visions, while Snow laments to Charming about their lives being nothing but facing and defeating evil, lather-rinse-repeat. In the end Emma decides to take a chance and enjoy her happiness while she has it by asking Hook to move in with her, while Snow wants to go back to teaching and hopes Whale and Jekyll can do the same after working out how to destroy the Evil Queen.
- It's All About Me: The Evil Stepmother is outraged that after all her years of wanting a better life, Cinderella gets the Prince. It becomes obvious that she doesn't give a damn about any of her daughters, just herself. The irony is, if she'd simply been capable of treating her stepdaughter decently, she might've gotten it.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The Evil Stepmother is reduced to picking up trash in Storybrooke under Grumpy's supervision.
- Manipulative Bitch: Lady Tremaine could give Cora a run for her money when it comes to getting into people's heads.
- Motive Misidentification: Emma at first worries Cinderella wants to kill Clorinda as revenge.
- Mythology Gag:
- Cinderella has a mouse helper who's turned into her human footman by Rumple's spell.
- Gus, the mouse in question, guides Cinderella to the key in her jewel box—but it's the key she found earlier in her mother's dress, not the key to her room as in the Disney film, and it opens doors to the Land of Untold Stories. When she is locked in by her stepmother later, he is however the one to escape under the door and bring Snow and Thomas to let Ella out.
- We learn how Ella got her nickname. Also, the stepmother has the same cane she used in the animated film, although here it is much more deadly. And her name is again the Lady Tremaine.
- Lady Tremaine mentions having a cat (Lucifer) and breaks the glass slipper with her cane (this time directly, rather than by tripping the Duke). Gus the mouse is wearing a little shirt just like in the animated film.
- Jacob the footman's farm in Storybrooke, where the showdown between Ella, Clorinda, and the stepmother takes place, is...a pumpkin farm.
- Lady Tremaine is punished with menial labor, just like in Ever After.
- The stepsisters are named Clorinda and Tisbe, as in the opera La Cenerentola. Presumably they didn't use "Anastasia and Drizella" because the Red Queen was already named Anastasia. However, Clorinda is wearing green like Anastasia in the animated Disney film and Tisbe is wearing yellow like Drizella.
- Noodle Incident: At some point, the other dwarves undid Dopey's transformation into a tree. And now he's apparently studying for a doctorate.
- Never Trust a Trailer: A season promo described Cinderella as one of the characters from the Land of Untold Stories, much to the confusion of many fans who wondered if the writing staff had actually forgotten they'd already used her.
- Out-Gambitted: Regina tries to butter up Hyde with a plate of lasagna. However, she finds the Evil Queen has gotten there first by making Hyde's cell into a lavish area complete with a fantastic meal.
- Pet the Dog: In another Continuity Nod to Season 1, Gold once again gives someone the name of a purchaser at his shop in exchange for something simple—before, it was Emma's forgiveness in exchange for Ava and Nicholas's father; here it is delivering a recording of an old Scottish lullaby verse for his and Belle's child in exchange for the story behind who found the coin and what really happened to David's father.
- Retcon: Back during the first Curse, we're told by Ruby that Ashley has "a stepmom and two stepsisters that she doesn't talk to", which is what tips Henry off that she is Cinderella. Here we find out said stepmother and one of the stepsisters were in the Land of Untold Stories all along. Granted, Ruby's could be fake memories implanted by the Curse.
- Revenge: Snow warns Charming that trying to find his father's killer would just be this, not justice, and could ruin their happiness. But it doesn't look like he's going to listen.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Finding out Ella is engaged to the Prince is the last straw for the Stepmother who uses the magic key to get to the Land of Untold Stories and declares "I'm coming back when the world makes sense."
- To Know Him, I Must Become Him: When neither Hyde nor Jekyll prove willing or able to help, respectively, Snow points out to Regina that her best bet in figuring out how to stop the Evil Queen is to think like her. Also, after the Evil Queen has sent Emma, Hook, and Henry to the town limits, Henry points out that Emma never needed magic to find people before and Hook asks her how she did it; she reveals her method was this trope, and uses it to track Ella down.
- The Unreveal: While Emma thinks like Ashley (wanting to protect someone she loved, her stepsister) to figure out where she would go, and Henry reveals the true story from the storybook so that they learn about Clorinda and Jacob, it is never revealed precisely how they found their way to the pumpkin farm. Since there wasn't time to look up Jacob's address, the answer is most likely that the address was in the list of denizens from the Land of Untold Stories that Henry collected (and which Ashley looked at) at the start of the episode, which they still had with them.
- Villain Ball: The Evil Queen claims to be just the same as her other half, only honest with herself, and that she knows everything Regina does, including everything about Henry from having raised him. And yet when she sends him away with Hook and Emma, she doesn't think to separate him from his backpack where he has the storybook that caused her so much trouble in Season 1.
- Villain Has a Point: When Regina confronts Zelena about the Evil Queen and says she wants to save her, Zelena rightfully points out neither she nor anyone else would be in danger if she hadn't taken Jekyll's formula.
- Villain Team-Up: The Evil Queen and Hyde at the end.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Clorinda pretends to have an injured leg to sucker Cinderella into putting down her gun.
