Recap / Once Upon a Time S5 E11 "Swan Song"

Season 5, Episode 11:

Swan Song

Hook unleashes the Dark Ones upon Storybrooke as Emma must find a way to redeem her mistake. And in the Enchanted Forest of twenty-eight years ago, a test of Hook's strengths and weaknesses by the Evil Queen may prove key to saving everyone in the present, thanks to the untold story of his missing father.

Tropes

• Aborted Arc:
  • Merlin's message said Nimue was the key to defeating the Darkness; it didn't seem to pan out like that. But this may actually be sneaky sneakiness from Adam and Eddy; it is because Nimue strangles Emma that Hook comes to his senses and sucks them all into the sword before the events that lead to his death occur. That may have been what Merlin meant—Nimue needed to hurt the one Hook loved in a way that would stick with him...so that he would die and destroy the Darkness with him. Additionally, the previous episode reiterated that despite everything, Nimue's essence within Hook still loved Merlin; this could well be considered Foreshadowing that it would be by appealing to the love Hook still felt for Emma that they could encourage his Heroic Sacrifice and thus allow the Darkness to be destroyed. So Nimue was the key due to the example of her still-enduring love.
  • For the most part, the entire plotline of Camelot and Arthur going evil, as well as resolving matters for DunBroch, was shoved aside (something which very much upset Amy Manson at least). While we do find out later on about Mulan and Ruby's adventures, Arthur's fate is addressed in "Last Rites", and Merida does get to go home when everyone is sent back during the season finale, the rest truly was aborted.
• Arc Words:
  • "I will always find you" and giving someone their "best chance" return. The former is especially meaningful since this time it's Emma saying it about Hook.
  • "The kind of man you are" and its variants.
• The Atoner:
  • Emma has become this. Hook becoming it (again) is why he makes his Heroic Sacrifice.
    Emma: I'm not giving in to the darkness. I'm giving in to love. I'm going to do it right this time.
  • Also, this is the main reason Snow, Charming, Regina, and Robin want to go with Emma to the Underworld—to make up for not having helped her more in Camelot, and for trying to convince her to let Hook die so Excalibur could be reforged and the Darkness destroyed. Snow is the one, of course, to state it aloud.
• Bait-and-Switch: Belle comes back to the pawn shop, revealing Henry called her and told her everything, and seems about to lay into Gold for lying to her again...only to instead hug and kiss him, praising him for finally being a hero by being willing to sacrifice himself for her.
• Balancing Death's Books:
  • The only way that the Dark Ones can complete their resurrections is by having others (namely, all of Emma's loved ones) take their place. This was, of course, also already established back in "Quiet Minds" when Neal gave his life to resurrect Rumple.
  • Emma plans on getting around this with saving Hook's life by sharing her heart with him. (This is likely another reason Regina is coming along, since she's the only one Emma trusts who can remove hearts now.)
• Batman Gambit: Gold pulls off a truly brilliant one to ensure that when Hook is killed, Gold once again becomes the Dark One and more powerful than ever. Not to mention if the plan had gone as originally intended, it would have been Emma who died, not only giving all the darkness back to Gold but depriving Storybrooke of the Savior.
• Berserk Button: Brennan pushes Hook's by revealing he named his son with his second wife after Liam.
• Bring It: After everything she's been through, and having been the Dark One, Emma is no one Gold wants to cross, since she still has the Savior's light magic and has nothing left to lose at that point.
• Broken Pedestal: Young Killian Jones is more than rocked to learn his father traded him and his brother to the owner of the ship in exchange for his debts.
• Celestial Deadline: The heroes only have until the moon reaches its height to find some way to remove the marks of Charon or otherwise stop the Dark Ones. After that, they'll be exchanged to the underworld so the Dark Ones can truly live again.
• Chronic Villainy:
  • Gold again. Apparently because Belle dumped him in the previous episode, he decided he'd rather have all the power of the Dark One again than die and go back to the underworld. While it's understandable he'd feel this way, considering how he describes the place, it seems his selfish need to protect himself once more matters more than being brave or a hero.
  • Also, it seems trying to use the love she has for their daughter didn't work on Zelena after all, since she not only proclaims she's going to have sole custody (because she expects Robin and Regina to be dying soon) but that she will raise her baby to be wicked just like her.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: After Gold recreates the Dark One's dagger, its colors have been inverted to reflect the fact it (and he) now contains the powers of all the past Dark Ones—instead of silver with black lettering/designs, it's black with silver.
• Continuity Nod:
  • When Regina calls him by name, Hook notes the many dark nicknames she's used on him in the past.
  • When Killian's father asks about Liam, Hook alludes to his fate in "Good Form."
  • The tornado Regina summons to send Zelena back to Oz not only looks like the one from "The Dark Swan", but the one which brought her to Oz as a baby in the first place.
  • Emma's plan to save Hook is for them to share a heart, the same as Charming and Snow were revealed to have done in Season 3B.
• Couch Gag: The title card features all the past Dark Ones.
• Disappeared Dad: Hook's father not only abandoned him and his brother but sold them to slavery on a ship to get out of his debts. This was first referenced back in the Season 2 finale "And Straight On Till Morning" but it is gone into in more detail here.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • As something of a staple for them, when Belle is embracing Gold and praising him for being a hero, doing the right thing for a change and being selfless, this turns out to be the farthest thing from the truth—for while him sending her away was truly selfless, his plan with Excalibur to get the power back is his most selfish act to date.
  • Gold, thanks to Emma's blackmail, now is being forced to help rescue the man who's been trying to kill him for centuries, and who took his wife from him.
• Dying as Yourself: Hook pleads for this at the last, and gets it.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Gold tries to brush off the request for Excalibur as the only reason Emma would need it is...and Regina completes that it's Emma's plan to put the darkness in herself and destroy it, Gold stunned to realize she means it.
• Failed a Spot Check: Nobody notices that Gold broke off Excalibur's tip to reforge the dagger until it was too late. Although it's possible he used some of the Sands of Avalon to hide this, just as he had suggested to Guinevere.
• Foreshadowing: When Gold warns Emma that Excalibur may not work and that it "chooses who it considers worthy and what miracles it will provide", this hints that using it won't save everyone the way Emma thinks, thanks to his plan.
• Godzilla Threshold: Emma agrees with Regina that now that the Dark Ones have been summoned back, they actually do have to unleash "everything they've got" on Hook, even if it means killing him.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Emma is fully prepared to take all of the darkness into herself and then be slain by Excalibur to save everyone. Instead, once he is reminded of all he lost, of how his need for revenge had cost his half-brother a happy life, and that however he tried to deny it, he still loved Emma, Hook makes the sacrifice.
  • Belle believes Gold did this for her, sending her to safety across the town line (and letting her fulfill her dream of seeing the world) while he stayed behind to give his life to the Dark Ones. While this would have been the case if Killian hadn't had his change of heart, his backup plan with Excalibur negated the sacrifice, thus subverting the trope in the end.
• History Repeats: The show's theme of abandonment is emphasized again, since Hook (who had abandoned Baelfire) was himself abandoned by his father, and as part of his Evil Plan is also completely willing to abandon Henry (son of the woman he loved and whom he had taken under his wing to make up for abandoning Henry's father Baelfire) to the underworld.
• Hypocrisy Nod: When Regina tries to tell Hook he can't curse the town, he literally laughs at how she of all people has no room to talk on cursing the innocent. Although she does make the point that she's no longer that person any more (so it isn't as hypocritical if she's condemning him for doing something she herself did that she now knows was wrong).
• Idiot Ball: When Hook is doing his Teleport Spam to avoid being stabbed by Excalibur, only to suddenly turn into Henry. And Emma falls for it, lowering her guard so he can get the sword away from her. Granted, she may have thought it was really him, summoned by Hook as a hostage, but that's no excuse for not keeping her grip on the sword when he reaches for it. She really should have remembered he could use a Glamour just as easily as she or Gold could.
• It Has Been an Honor: When Gold gives Excalibur to Emma, he calls her a very brave woman, and clearly shows great respect for her being willing to do the thing he couldn't bring himself to do. How much of this is genuine is uncertain, though, since his Batman Gambit ends up proving how truly cowardly he still is, and her willingness to sacrifice herself (if it worked) would just give him the power he craved, and he'd be more likely to view this as more foolish heroic stupidity rather than something to respect.
• It Only Works Once: Excalibur being used to destroy the darkness, since after Emma stabs Hook with it, it dissolves into dust. This might have been Gold's doing though, since the result was to siphon the power into him and recreate the dagger.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: While his backup plan suggests otherwise, Gold trying to send Belle to safety, and giving her what she had always dreamed of, implies he truly did adhere to this trope, despite her having left him.
• The Last Dance: Rather than "spend their last hours with their noses in a book", Mary Margaret suggests they follow Gold's advice and use their time to say good-bye to their loved ones. Henry alters this to them spending one last good time together, a dinner at Granny's.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Hook and Regina apparently agreed to this in regards to him killing his father.
• Love Redeems: For Hook, in the end.
• Meaningful Echo: Not only does Hook's father's line about looking inside whenever you're scared and finding out "the kind of man you want to be/really are" get repeated by him to his new son, but Regina uses it on Hook, both in the past and the present, to the point of it becoming Arc Words for the episode. And at the end, when she discovers the truth about Gold, Emma gets him to give her what she wants by threatening to reveal "the kind of man he really is" to Belle.
• Mirror Character: Hook and Gold, again. Not only was he too abandoned by his father, but like Gold he ended up killing him. The man even dies in his embrace, the same way Malcolm did with Rumple; the difference is that Killian's father seems to have truly changed, become a better man, and pleads with Hook to do the same, while Malcolm was of course an unrepentant villain whose dying breath was spent on trying to tempt his son with a We Can Rule Together speech. Emma also draws the line between Hook and Gold by pointing out that if he goes through with his plan, Hook will be just like the monster he was hunting for hundreds of years.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The Dark Ones each mark a Storybrooke resident with the "mark of Charon" so they can take their places in the living world.
  • Regina retorts to Zelena, as she is sucked away by the tornado and proclaims she'll see her again, that it will be "somewhere over the rainbow."
• No Ontological Inertia: Stabbing Hook with Excalibur doesn't just kill him, it also brings back the wound it had dealt in Camelot which being tethered to it had healed.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Gold's description of what the underworld is like definitely partakes of this, and gives a good reason (besides selfishness and desire for power) for him to do anything he can to try and avoid being taken back there. Also displays some Horrifying the Horror, since from his words it really isn't about his being a coward (or at least not completely).
  Emma: Stop it, you're scaring Henry!
  Gold: He should be. We all should be scared.
• Not This One, That One: Hook thinks the huge belligerent bruiser in the tavern is the one Regina brought him to face. She cavalierly kills him with a Neck Snap and disgustedly reveals the one she brought him to face was the bartender: his missing father.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Because she can hold over him the knowledge of what he's done, and threaten to expose it all to Belle, Emma is able to make one of these to Gold: to open the portal to the underworld for her to rescue Killian, and also to come along for the ride. Whether it's simply to make a portal back possible or to act as insurance/protection remains to be seen.
• Oh, Crap!: Zelena's expression when she realizes Regina now has the power to fuel her magic wand.
• Patricide: Killian on his own father.
• The Promise: Emma calls on the one Regina made back in "The Dark Swan" to get her to agree to her Heroic Sacrifice plan. Although clearly very unhappy, Regina doesn't go back on her word, though it ends up being unnecessary. (And a case could be made that appealing to Hook one last time to have a change of heart may have been her way to try and save everyone without having to keep her promise.)
• Prophecies Are Always Right: It's indirect and roundabout, and happened by the unlikeliest of methods since it was the Dark One(s) themselves who did the deed, but if Arthur hadn't worked against the heroes and specifically did everything he did to Hook and Emma, they never would have been able to destroy the Darkness, just as Merlin foretold. (In fact he was the one who wounded Hook with Excalibur.) By the same token, though, because of the way it came about, the Darkness ends up not fully destroyed after all; the implication is that it was only their darkness he was prophesied to destroy, and evil itself could not be defeated until the next two seasons.^* And/or that it was the darkness of the Underworld he would destroy, since it's the aid he provides Hook which lets the heroes destroy Hades and afterward he will be the one to restore the Underworld to a place of true repentance and forgiveness.
• Pun: In the flashback, when Regina describes what Cora is like, Hook has this to say about the Evil Queen.
  Hook: She sounds charming. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
• Put on a Bus: Zelena, although the bus is actually a green tornado whisking her back to Oz.
• Rescued from the Underworld: Emma forces Gold into granting her the ability to embark on a rescue for Killian. As a variation, not only is her whole family (plus Regina and Robin) going along, she compels Gold to join them, too.
• Secret Test of Character: In flashback, before she sends him after Cora, Regina tests Hook's mettle by having him face his long-lost father. At first he seems to pass, when after hearing what happened to the man he decides he doesn't deserve to lose any more. But once he finds out his father named his new son after his dead brother Liam (and used the same line about bravery and always being there for him that he had on him), he fails, destroying the letters of passage and killing his father. (Of course from Regina's POV it was passing.)
• Shout-Out: Emma kisses Hook right before driving a sword into him thus sending him to a place of torment. Where have we seen this before?
• Spanner in the Works: Gold didn't count on Emma being able to hear the whispers from the dagger and know that the darkness still existed because, as he said, "most ex-Dark Ones are dead."
• Spotting the Thread: In retrospect, it really should have been a red flag that he was up to something underhanded when Gold gave Excalibur to Emma, no questions asked and no deal required, when he'd been completely unwilling to trust her in the previous episode. Not to mention how long he took before bringing the sword to her.
• That Man Is Dead: Emma quotes this, saying Hook died back in Camelot.
• Villain Ball: Zelena announcing to Regina and Robin that she will take full custody of their child after the Dark Ones kill them. She could just as easily have waited quietly for it to happen instead of rubbing it in their faces, and then they wouldn't have banished her to Oz.
• Wham Episode: Let's see...not only does Hook end up sacrificing himself to destroy the Darkness and save Emma's loved ones, but it all turns out to have been for nothing, because Gold enchanted Excalibur so that instead the Darkness would be siphoned into him. So now not only is he the Dark One again, he has the power of all the Dark Ones, including Emma herself. Which means that unless his heart having been purified, and his brief stint as a hero, means he can be that person Merlin mentioned who could hold the Darkness at bay and not succumb to it again, he's now become the most powerful and dangerous Big Bad of the show. And now he's been forced into being a guide for Emma and the others as they go to the underworld to rescue Hook.
• We Will Meet Again: While the Twister takes her back to Oz, Zelena screams at Regina that she hasn't seen the last of her. Given how Zelena managed to escape death, Regina should probably be more worried.
• What Happened to the Mice?:
  • Even though the dwarves were marked for the underworld, they disappear from the episode midway through and are not present when the Dark Ones transport everyone else to await the arrival of the ferry.
  • Also, the fate of Killian's half-brother after he killed their father. This is eventually answered in the first half of Season 6.
  • And Lancelot, still off seeking the Lady of the Lake's help.
    • This one is partly answered in a deleted scene, where he is shown watching the curse engulf Camelot from a distance. What happens to him afterward, however, remains a mystery.^* Although Arthur's death, especially if it did break the spell of the Sands of Avalon, might mean he finally got together with Guinevere, after she and the other Camelot refugees return home in the season finale.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Although he mocks her for it, the fact Regina finally calls Killian by his first name instead of Hook or one of her various nicknames shows not only how dire things have become, but that she finally sees him as a person and is willing to try and save him, for Emma.