Recap / Once Upon a Time S7 E19 Flower Child

Season 7, Episode 19:

Flower Child

Tilly and Rogers find themselves in danger after an encounter with Eloise, forcing Tilly to make a life-altering decision when Rogers’s life is threatened. Meanwhile, Henry and Jacinda’s relationship takes a step forward, but despite Lucy’s efforts, their union doesn’t provide the answers she’s seeking. And in a flashback, young Gothel seeks revenge after her home is destroyed.

Tropes

• Aborted Arc: Played with. After Gothel had stated Anastasia would help her find the other members of her Coven back in the mid-season finale, this plot had seemed to be forgotten or at least displaced, first by the need to trade either Victoria or Drizella's life for Lucy's (and Anastasia running away), then by the Candy Killer attacking the hidden witches, and finally by the drama between Drizella and Anastasia that led to both of them escaping back to the New Enchanted Forest, which would seem to render the plot moot. But come this episode, with Nick no longer a threat and Anastasia gone, Gothel simply enchants the police sergeant to find and awaken the witches for her; apparently Anastasia was not required to do so, instead being needed for her Guardian powers to fuel the ritual, and naturally Alice can simply take her place. So the arc was not truly aborted, just resolved in an unexpected way after being on the backburner.
• Affably Evil: Samdi again, although with far more emphasis on the affability this time. Not only is he genuinely amused and impressed by Lucy making it into his office, revealing all she knows, making him an offer he can't refuse, and even blackmailing him (as sweetly as possible, of course), but he is clearly willing and able to give her the help she asks for. While there's obviously something in it for him even beyond the blackmail (getting back in Roni's good books, making it so the curse can be safely broken and magic returned, stopping Gothel), it appears Facilier really does want to help in this instance — and eventually does so.
• Arc Words: "Find/remember your roots" and its variations.
• Backstory: We finally get to learn Gothel's, as well as how and why she formed the Coven of the Eight, starting with a magical human named Seraphina who wasn't like the others.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Lucy. She's as charming, funny, and sweet about it as can be, but when she makes her way past Samdi's secretary, reveals she knows Roni has been avoiding him (to focus on curing Henry), and offers him a deal — help her save Henry and he'll earn Roni's gratitude, refuse to do so and she'll tell Roni all about it — she shows she means business when it comes to getting her parents together and breaking the curse. It's no surprise Samdi agrees to help.
  • In a twisted way, this also applies to Gothel herself in the distant past — when she was simply one of many nymphs in the grove, she was as sweet, kind, and nurturing as could be. But after what the humans did to her and her family...
• Blood Magic: As part of her spell to reawaken the magic of nature, Gothel needs blood from two sources — Alice/Tilly's father, and her current Love Interest, Margot/Robin.
• Call-Back:
  • Gothel invokes a call-back when using her Compelling Voice power on Margot, noting that she might not remember, but "they've met before" — which they did back when Margot, as Robin, was eighteen during "Secret Garden". She says that Robin wasn't helpful (which puts it mildly, as she wasn't powerful enough to join the Coven and she prevented Zelena from being sacrificed to awaken the more powerful Leota), and seems to particularly enjoy the action of stabbing Margot's hand to get a sample of her blood.
  • When Samdi tells Lucy they need an object associated with her parents' love to cure Henry's heart, she immediately gets her mother to start going through her old things from before she was born. Not only do they find a jacket Henry brought with him from Granny's Diner in Storybrooke, but just like when Snow White and Henry needed the storybook to appear, she suddenly finds a sack from the diner... with her mother's broken glass slipper inside.
• Cliffhanger: Quite the example, with a rather dark and unsettling incantation, swelling and terrifying music, and a fiery release of magic from the Coven's circle right at the camera.
• Compelling Voice: Gothel proves to have this ability too, using it first on the police sergeant, then on Margot.
• Continuity Nod: It turns out the moment when Gothel was making a golden flower grow from a pot, while she was being held prisoner by Victoria, was her remembering/dwelling on her long-ago demonstration of magic for Isla and her friends, just before everything went south.
• Couch Gag: The title card features Cinderella's carriage.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Granted, she had no idea how powerful Gothel really was, but after not only humiliating her but directing her guards to destroy the magic grove (and thus kill all of Gothel's family), Isla really should have known better than to mock her furious party crasher. She comes to regret it.
• Double-Meaning Title: Not only does it reference Alice (since she is Gothel's daughter and was conceived with the aid of a magical flower), it also references Gothel herself as a nymph and daughter of Flora.
• Dramatic Irony: Gothel acknowledges in-story the irony revealed last episode—that if she hadn't been so eager to escape her tower, and so selfish, as to leave Alice behind, she would have had both the Guardian and the magical power she needed to cast her spell, without having to waste time with the Tremaine family.
• Enemy Mine: He's not much of an enemy at the moment, since he's set aside his pursuit of the dagger for now and certainly doesn't want Gothel to win, but technically this still applies in Lucy going to Samdi for help in curing Henry so the curse can be broken. And once she brings him her mother's glass slipper, Samdi does prove able to remove the poison with his voodoo doll.
• Eye of Newt: All over the place. Samdi needs something connected to Henry and Cinderella's love to heal his heart so the curse can be broken; Lucy finds the rest of the broken glass slipper. Meanwhile in order to cast her spell and restore magic to Earth, Gothel not only needs all of her coven (including Tilly and her Guardian magic to replace either Drizella or Anastasia), she needs blood from both Hook and Robin, plus the key to her old grove.
• Find the Cure!: Since Weaver used Samdi's potion last episode, Lucy is now pursuing the cure by appealing to Samdi for aid. Thanks to his voodoo magic and the appearance of an item among her mother's things right when she needs it, the cure is finally applied.
• Freudian Excuse: Holy hell. Forget the Humiliation Conga of the mockery, insults, and bucket of mud dumped on her head — the fact the humans Gothel trusted, after they lied about being interested in magic, not only destroyed her grove but slaughtered her entire family and thus wiped out almost all nature magic other than Gothel's own, and it's no wonder she hated humans, fell to evil, and is now determined to wipe out all life on Earth to reign supreme.
• Gaia's Vengeance: Literally, in the scene when Gothel takes revenge for what was done to her grove and family by calling upon roots, vines, and poisonous flower pollen to ensnare, crush, and murder Isla and all the other noble guests at the ball, since at this point she has assumed her mother's mantle and thus become Gaia. But after this we also learn she slaughtered all human life on the planet, and in the present this is her plan again after restoring nature magic to the world. Ironically, Flora's dying words to Gothel were not to take vengeance. Gothel paid no heed.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Initially Mother Flora warns Gothel that humans are, to put it mildly, mercurial and unreliable, but while she also tells her her curiosity about them (while commendable) is a bad idea because they are too different, she certainly does not hate them and urges Gothel to remain true to her duties of providing nature's magic for all life — including the humans. But after Gothel learns the humans she thought had genuinely accepted her and her magic were only leading her on so they could reject and humiliate her, calling her an "abomination" who did not belong in the world (yes, a nymph who enables all life to flourish and has the power to make plants grow is so unnatural and horrible!), and discovers they destroyed her grove and so slaughtered her entire family, you can't really blame her at all for believing in this trope instead.
  Gothel: I've been a gardener all my life, and in my experience, humans are the worst pest of all.
• I Have Your Wife: In order to procure Tilly's aid (when appealing to her as her mother doesn't work), Gothel uses the sergeant to lure her and Rogers to the old shutdown theatre, and then threatens to have her coven kill him unless she helps.
• Internal Reveal: Tons more. Gothel reveals to Tilly that she is her mother, which Tilly senses is the truth despite noting that "Eloise" doesn't look much older than she does. Drew reveals the existence of magic to Rogers, who of course remains skeptical — until Tilly takes him to Henry for help against Gothel (since he helped them catch the Candy Killer and prove her innocence), only to discover him in the process of plotting out just how his story, if real, connects to everyone in Hyperion Heights. (Examples: the picture of Regina and him as a boy, the piece of glass slipper, and Weaver's chipped tea cup.) Then, after they are both lured in and captured, Gothel reveals to both Tilly and Rogers that he is her father.
• Irony: While planning to betray and humiliate her, Isla claims to Gothel that she always dreamed of being special. Her later actions in destroying the grove cause her to become a massive Small Role, Big Impact character that was responsible for making the Land Without Magic the way it was, which results in the meaningful creation of the Dark Curse as well. She sure became special, even after her death...
• Last of Their Kind: While in one sense Gothel is actually the first witch (both of her world and the other realms), after the actions of Isla's soldiers she is also the last wood nymph and last Mother to the world.
• Manipulative Bitch: Gothel again. While to some degree the emotion she displays to Tilly seems genuine, the simple fact is that she did abandon her daughter to die as a baby and the only reason she cares now is finding out she has magic/is the Guardian, and thus she and the Coven need her since they no longer have Drizella or Anastasia. This doesn't stop her from manipulating Tilly by claiming to want to give her a life of acceptance and love with the family she was meant to have, or using threats to Rogers's life to procure her cooperation when this doesn't work. She also, naturally enough, is manipulative of both the sergeant and Margot, and not just with her Compelling Voice—the conversations she has with them beforehand, particularly Margot, seem geared to get them in the right emotional and mental place before she strikes magically.
• Meaningful Name: It's finally revealed just what it means that she is called Mother Gothel, and what she meant when she said the word mother "means different things to different people" and that she "tends to people's needs" — having inherited the mantle from Flora, Gothel is (or was) our world's Mother Nature herself, rather than simply being called that as a pseudonym in the Enchanted Forest.
• Papa Wolf: Even without remembering their familial connection, Rogers swears that his badge won't stop him from killing Gothel if she hurts Tilly.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: After everything she did to Gothel, her grove, and her family, and how after this she continues to taunt, mock, and disparage her, Gothel gets her revenge on Isla and the other nobles — including when Isla desperately begs and pleads for her life while trapped in the vines before finally having her neck snapped.
• Place of Power: It turns out that, like the Clock Tower library in Storybrooke, the derelict, closed-down theatre in the middle of Hyperion Heights has important magical significance: it's the place where Gothel and her Coven need to cast their ritual spell, because it's built above where her ruined grove once stood.
• The Reveal: Damn.
  • Gothel's identity and backstory — she's a former wood nymph, daughter of Flora, and heir to the mantle of Mother Nature, essentially.
  • She isn't from the original Enchanted Forest, the alternate realm we've seen, or any other — she's from our world. Because she's our Mother Earth, and it was the destruction of her grove and family (and her subsequent vengeful genocide of humanity instead of regrowing the grove) that made Earth the Land Without Magic.
  • Her plan? To use the Coven of the Eight (now including Alice/Tilly) to cast a ritual spell that will restore nature's magic "from its roots" to Earth... so she can once more rule over it and again wipe out humanity.
  • Less monumental than all of these, we find out the first witch in the Coven was one of the humans from thousands of years ago, a noble named Seraphina who secretly had magic too but hid it out of justifiable fear; her not joining on the Humiliation Conga, the reveal of her magic, and her pleading for her life is why Gothel spared her and offered her training instead.
• Room Full of Crazy: To some degree, Henry's apartment has become this when Rogers and Tilly drop by, since after believing the paternity test results and sharing them with Jacinda, Henry has started looking at his book in a new light and trying to connect it to everyone and everything in Hyperion Heights. (Literally, with a String Theory that practically covers every wall of the room.) While Rogers seems ready for any excuse to beat a hasty retreat, Tilly of course takes it all in stride, seeing it as vindicating her "crazy" senses and beliefs she's had all along.
• Sadistic Choice: Gothel puts Tilly in one after she and Rogers are captured — let her take a small bit of Rogers's blood, then join the Coven and help her cast her spell, or refuse and watch the witches slay the man who's just been revealed to be her long-lost father (which would, according to Gothel, enable her to cast the spell anyway). Unsurprisingly, despite Rogers's pleas that everyone else matters more than his life, Tilly joins Gothel.
• Shout-Out: Gothel's humiliation by Isla and the other noblewomen (complete with a bucket of mud dumped over her head), leading to a terrifying Revenge wherein she murders all the guests at the ball, has more than a few similarities to the climax of Carrie.
• Start of Darkness: For Gothel, and as enumerated above, it's dark, painful, and tragic as anything, completely understandable — and still doesn't justify what she did in the past or plans to do now.
• Time Abyss: Gothel turns out to be older than Rumpelstiltskin, Merlin, humanity itself...
• True Love's Kiss: After Samdi cures Henry's heart, he and Jacinda finally get to attempt this (from Jacinda's instigation, no less). However...
• The Unreveal:
  • We never find out just why Gothel needed the sergeant's help specifically, or exactly how he woke Seraphina and the other five witches.^note Most likely his blood or some other personal attribute could break the curse and restore individual memories. Possible reasons why could be a) because he's from a land without magic b) because he's from the world to which the curse sent everyone, and the Coven are the ones who provided the power to cast it along with Drizella and Regina or c) because he's from the world that was originally Gothel's charge and the source of her magic. Or for that matter, how there can still be five others, after the deaths of Dr. Sage and the Blind Witch. Apparently her Coven had more than eight members despite the name? Another possibility is that the sergeant found replacements for Dr. Sage, the Blind Witch, and Drizella.
  • We never find out who the one Gothel mentioned to Anastasia "helped her thrive" is, though we can assume that it's either Isla or Seraphina, or perhaps Madame Leota.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: In a tradition for the show's villains, Gothel, thousands of years ago.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Mother Flora obliquely implies this when she warns Gothel not to punish the humans for what they did to the grove. "Only goodness can bear sweet fruit."
• Wham Shot: The last shot of the episode, naturally, as the ritual takes effect.
• You Have to Believe Me!: Henry tries this on Jacinda, but she's still cynical and uncertain; it isn't until Lucy convinces her to look through her old things, and they find both something which proves Henry came from Storybrooke and something she'd never seen before (a sack holding the rest of the broken glass slipper) that she starts to believe. Meanwhile, Drew tries this on Rogers, who is also unwilling despite being unable to explain Nick's death, and when he and Tilly go to Henry's apartment, the latter's own desperate attempts to connect his book to everyone in Hyperion Heights also make Rogers extremely wary and dismissive. It does convince Tilly she was right, however, and the more she works on Rogers, the more he starts to believe.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!:
  • After Gothel not only reveals she is Tilly's mother, but claims she regrets abandoning her (due to the cruel world making her cruel) and now wants to offer her love and a family with her Coven, it looks as if Tilly will be swayed and accept. But then she coldly and furiously throws the offer back in her face: "Whatever you might be, you're no mother to me." Which leads Gothel to a different tactic.
  • Samdi uses the glass slipper and his voodoo doll to cure Henry's poisoned heart. Immediately after this, Jacinda appears with the news about the slipper, and that she thinks she believes now, too. He starts to kiss her... she stops him, only to say she wants to be the one to kiss him, with her memories as Jacinda... and then right as Lucy bursts in, they pull apart... but nothing happened, no restored memories, no True Love's Kiss ripple to wipe out the curse. Because, apparently, Henry still doesn't believe. He takes after Emma far more than we realized.

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