Season 5, Episode 1:
The Dark Swan
With Emma missing, the Storybrooke team is forced to look to Zelena for help. Meanwhile, in a forest, Emma is being "tutored" by an aspect of the dagger in what it means to be the Dark One while running into a Scottish lass named Merida. And King Arthur and his knights are on a quest to find the group as well.
Tropes
- Adaptational Villainy: Sir Kay is typically depicted as a Jerkass, but not a traitor or a fiend. Here he tries to betray Arthur and take Excalibur for himself.
- Arrow Catch: Merida attempts to shoot Emma, but Emma manages to catch each one of her arrows.
- Bait-and-Switch: Immediately after Regina concludes that the first place Zelena will go following her escape is after Robin, the action cuts to Regina rushing into Mary Margaret's loft in a panic—only to find he's perfectly fine. Except...it isn't actually Regina, but Zelena using her Glamour again.
- Batman Gambit: Knowing Zelena will find a way to break out of jail, Regina tricks her into using the Apprentice's wand to open a portal to Oz, which Regina then uses to find Emma.
- Because Destiny Says So: Although the heroes go after Emma (and she goes after Merlin) thanks to the Apprentice's information on how to defeat the Darkness, their arrival at Camelot is expected because, according to Arthur, it was prophesied—as is them reuniting Arthur and his court with the missing Merlin.
- Black Humor: After Kay is killed by Excalibur, Lancelot turns to Arthur and deadpans: "Your turn."
- Call-Back: Dark Swan!Emma turning Sneezy into stone just because he annoyed her mirrors Regina turning a Gnome into stone for mocking her. Doubles as Establishing Character Moment because it shows just how petty and gratuitous the Dark Swan can be.
- Chekhov's Gun: It turns out the Dark One's dagger is actually the tip of Excalibur.
- Continuity Nod:
- When Emma reappears in the Enchanted Forest, it's out of the Vault of the Dark One first shown in Season 3B.
- Hook tries to use the same potion Regina gave him, way back in Season 2, to enchant his hook to tear out a heart—Zelena's this time rather than Cora's. And just like with Cora, he's thwarted.
- The reason Hook gets thwarted appears to be the result of the same kind of spell Regina put on Henry at the end of the Neverland arc.
- Henry's greeting to the Dark Swan, "Mom? What happened to you?" is the same as Baelfire's after Rumple first became the Dark One in "Desperate Souls."
- Couch Gag: The title card features Granny's Diner.
- Death by Adaptation: Merida's father King Fergus is said to have died, placing this a few years after the incident with the bear curse.
- Epunymous Title / Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: The episode title is a pun on Emma's last name, Swan. "Dark Swan" sounds like "Dark One." The season poster is also reminiscent of the poster for Black Swan (where the protagonist's dark Foil is also named Lily).
- Evil Is Petty / For the Evulz: Emma turns Sneezy into stone unprovoked, just because his sneezing annoyed her and she can.
- Exact Words: Emma accepts the darkness's help in finding Merlin under the condition that it doesn't use magic, but its instructions lead her into performing a magical teleportation. The darkness then points out that it didn't use magic, Emma did.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: Arthur and Percival's hair is shorter when they meet the protagonists, indicating that some time has passed since pulling the sword out. Additionally Emma's Evil Costume Switch has her hair tied up (when she usually wears it down) and it's turned white.
- Foreshadowing: At the end of the episode, when Emma declared that "they" will all be punished, she was not looking at Hook and was just looking at her family and Regina? After episode 8, it becomes clear why the subtle indication.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: The darkness of the dagger appears to Emma as Rumple because it's familiar to her; it proves it could appear otherwise by briefly manifesting as a bandersnatch called Gorgon the Invincible.
- Good is Not Nice: Invoked by Hook, who notes that Regina still has the fire to threaten unpleasant things but no longer has the blackhearted malice to motivate her.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Killian pleading with Emma not to crush Merida's heart (and insisting to Mary Margaret that she not order Emma to stop with the dagger, that it has to be her choice) is a milder form of this, since at the time she hadn't yet succumbed to the darkness. Unfortunately, after the six-week time jump, it looks like it didn't take.
- If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Merida comes to this conclusion on her own. She was intending to swear revenge on the people who kidnapped her brothers - but decides that it might be better to show them mercy instead.
- Irony: Regina has done too much good during her Heel–Face Turn to have the darkness necessary to activate the Apprentice's wand. Lampshaded by Hook.
- Karmic Death: A greedy Sir Kay tries to pull Excalibur out to be king himself. He ends up being judged unworthy by the sword and turned into dust.
- Kick the Dog: Zelena enjoys doing this to Robin, first taunting him by asking if he was making an excuse to see her, then calling him just an "unwilling pawn" in the making of their (or, as she says, her) child, then when he underlines the unwilling bit, she adds that she didn't enjoy their lovemaking, and mocks him a bit further.
- Know When to Fold Them: Zelena decides to just head back to Oz rather than continue revenge schemes against Regina after she gets free, deciding that as she is now pregnant she can just get as far away as possible so she can raise her child and have someone to love only her.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Leroy and the other dwarves show up and insist on coming along to help, their complaints about never getting to be part of the adventures and always being on the sidelines is very much a commentary on them (like so many other Storybrooke residents) becoming increasingly Out of Focus, something many fans have brought up.
- Light Is Not Good: Partial example. Although Emma as the Dark Swan is dressed in black, her hair has gone pure white and her skin is much paler.
- Loophole Abuse: Zelena can't use the wand to help Hook and Henry unless they take off the Power Nullifier cuff. When they won't take it off, she gets hold of Hook's knife and...cuts off her own hand, freeing her of the cuff. Which then lets her magically reattach her hand.
- Lousy Lovers Are Losers: Played for Drama when Zelena (who had raped Robin by pretending she was his wife Marian) deliberately taunts him in order to emasculate him further by reminding him of their sex and making sure he knows he never managed to give her any enjoyment.
- Missing Time: Just after arriving in Camelot, the Storybrooke residents find themselves back in town, dressed in strange clothing and six weeks having passed. They have no memory of what happened in that time...but Emma, now the Dark One, does, and claims that what they did to her means punishment is coming.
- Mythology Gag:
- Emma sneaks in to see The Sword in the Stone, where she encounters an usher who is Merlin in disguise.
- The Blue Fairy links Rumpelstiltskin's lifeforce to a rose.
- A Will-o'-the-Wisp leads Emma to Merida.
- Merida sympathizes with Emma being cursed and tells her to be glad she's not a bear. She also mentions having experience with witches.
- Zelena describes her plan to return to Oz as going "over the rainbow."
- No Body Left Behind: Kay's body was completely disintegrated when he attempted to pull Excalibur from the stone, because he was not worthy or chosen.
- Not Quite Dead: The Apprentice, it turns out. For now, anyway.
- Oh, Crap!: When Emma catches her arrow, Merida has one of these. It is the biggest anyone has ever given on this show.
- Out-Gambitted: Zelena tries to force Regina to hand over the wand so she can use it to open a portal to Oz. Regina, however, tricks Zelena into opening the portal, then uses it to find Emma.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": Regina uses Henry's birthday as the passcode to everything. He's used it to access her bank account several times and she still hasn't figured it out.
- Place of Power: The circle of standing stones from Brave, here described by Merida as the place where Will-o'-the-Wisps are "born" and where they must be taken to grant wishes.
- The Promise: When the others finally meet up with Emma, she refuses to take the Dark One's dagger because it's too much power for her to be trusted with. Instead, she gives it to Regina, trusting her to do what has to be done if she cannot be saved from the darkness. Unfortunately, it seems that somehow this promise was not kept during the missing six weeks, since not only is Emma fully the Dark One afterward, but she has the dagger back.
- Race Lift: Sir Kay is played by a Lebanese actor instead of an Englishman.
- Running Gag: Played with. When the tornado Zelena summoned is coming to Granny's Diner to carry everyone to Emma, Leroy (along with Doc and Happy) comes running in to announce its coming, the same as Grumpy had for the Dark Curse and several other magical phenomena before this. However, as soon as they find out what's going on, instead of just waiting on the sidelines for the main characters to save the day, Leroy insists on them coming along to be part of the adventure.
- Screw Destiny: Kay decries Merlin's prophecy and tries to take Excalibur from the stone in Arthur's place. It goes poorly for him.
- Shout-Out:
- The Blue Fairy gives Belle a rose in a glass bell jar to show Gold's health.
- Because the portal Zelena opens was meant to take her to Oz, it appears in the form of a green cyclone...so when Regina takes control of it to take them to Emma, it ends up picking up Granny's Diner and carrying it and all of its occupants to her, just like Dorothy and her farmhouse.
- When Henry and Killian break into the asylum to enlist Zelena's help, Henry calls the nurse on duty Nurse Ratched.
- The scene where Regina goes to an imprisoned Zelena for help with the wand is similar to a scene in Thor: The Dark World between Thor and Loki, down to Zelena commenting on how desperate Regina must be.
- Skewed Priorities: Upon arriving where Emma is, Granny notes that the generator is still working... but then that the fryer isn't. Which causes Leroy to complain about the lack of fried onions.
- Earlier, Granny's main concern before the twister hit was that her insurance did not cover it.
- Superpowered Evil Side: The darkness embodied in the dagger takes on Rumpelstiltskin's form in order to tempt Emma into embracing her power. Since no one else can see him, and in one scene Emma echoes his words, it seems less to be a separate entity and more her own dark side trying to take her over. Although it knows things that previous Dark Ones knew.
- Taken for Granite: Annoyed by Sneezy, Emma turns him to stone.
- Tempting Fate: Kay mocks Arthur and tries to take Excalibur for himself so he can be king, only to be disintegrated in a puff of magical smoke.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Kay dies in his first scene, although he later appears in a flashback to bully a young Arthur.
- Wham Shot: Excalibur is pulled from the stone only for it to be missing the tip... which is shown to be the dagger of the Dark One.
- Wrecked Weapon: Excalibur, as revealed above, although the reason why isn't revealed for many more episodes.
- Yin-Yang Bomb: Sort of; both light and dark magic are required to make the Apprentice's wand open a portal to another realm.
