Recap / Once Upon a Time S6 E15 "A Wondrous Place"

Season 6, Episode 15:

A Wondrous Place

Hook and Nemo are stuck on board the Nautilus as it takes a trip to a deadly realm, and while racing to get back to Emma they instead encounter Jasmine and Aladdin on their quest to save Agrabah, who may offer another way back. In Storybrooke, Hook's disappearance leads Regina and Snow to try and ease the mind of a heartbroken Emma, who is unaware that Gideon is hunting her. And in the Enchanted Forest of many years past, Jasmine befriends Ariel and finds out whether she has the heroic mettle to take on Jafar herself.

Tropes:

• And I Must Scream: Jafar turns one would-be suitor into a wooden staff whose head is captured in a scream of agony and clearly alive to know it. Later, Jafar himself meets the same fate.
• And Now You Must Marry Me: As in the Disney film, Jafar pulls this on Jasmine in flashback as the only way to stop him from destroying Agrabah. It turns out to have been a bluff, and something he does only to get the ring that is the only thing protecting the city from him.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Twice, and both times with wishes.
    • Jasmine's first wish, to take her and Aladdin to Agrabah, seems to fail as they end up in the Enchanted Forest in an empty field. Aside from the fact this isn't far from the sea where they encounter the Kraken and the Nautilus (which can in turn lead them to Jafar and Agrabah), the ring that appeared in her pocket actually holds Agrabah...so it was with her all along.
    • The second wish gets them, Hook, Liam, and Nemo off the sinking Nautilus to the island where the compass tells them Jafar would be. They find a hut inhabited by Ariel (and Eric, though he is off-screen the entire time), but it turns out her collection there includes the lamp that holds Jafar.
  • Jasmine throws the potion bottle at Jafar's feet...but it does not break. Then, when he approaches her menacingly, it turns out she had poured some of its contents into her hand.
  • At the end of the episode it appears that Emma, having given up on Hook and planning to move on, is going to take his things to the Jolly Roger and never get his message—but the shell is inside the box and she hears his voice in time, allowing her to know he didn't leave her intentionally. But then Gideon shows up to cut off the connection...
• Beware the Nice Ones: Ariel and Eric are living in a hut. As a defence weapon, Ariel has a ball with forks in it. Big, sharp, pointy forks. Which swing down to kill you.
• Buffy Speak: Given this was co-written by Jane Espenson, probably inevitable.
  Ariel: Son of a fish! [on seeing Jafar, once let out of the lamp, freeing himself from being the lamp's slave]
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Aladdin and Jasmine end up joining Hook on his quest.
  • In flashbacks, Jasmine meets Ariel. They reunite in the present.
  • After the Anticlimax battle in the first half of the season, Jafar shows up again — and this time, because Aladdin has worn himself out in countless battles against evil (to end up where we saw him at the start of the season), Agrabah is at his mercy and it's up to Jasmine to stop him. Her failure to do this means she must set right her mistake in the present.
• Call-Back:
  • Hook uses the compass that can find those with revenge in their hearts to locate Jafar.
  • Hook is able to speak to Emma across worlds through a seashell Ariel gives him, hearkening back to when we first learned mermaids could cross realms in Season 3, and the shell Hook had courtesy of Ursula from Season 4.
• Canon Welding: Jafar turning out to be a genie in a lamp in the present, and a comment he makes regarding who put him there, finally links this show more clearly with the Wonderland spinoff.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Apparently turning people into staffs is a thing for Jafar, since after doing it to Amara in the spinoff he does it to Achmed here. And then it gets done to him by Jasmine.
  • Mistaking Ariel for a thief, a shopkeeper pulls off the necklace that allows her to transform her tail into legs (and retain her voice).
  • It's explained Ariel was searching for Eric after their first meeting (when she left Snow back in Season 3, it was to follow Eric's trail after he had said he was sailing to Agrabah). Jafar ends up sending her back to the seas to continue her search.
  • Jafar is still trapped in the lamp by Nix's genie curse, although somehow, he manages to break free of the curse shortly after being freed.
  • When Jafar is freed, he no longer has his staff, due to Amara having been freed from it, and the water Cyrus stole for her returned to Nix.
  • Jafar is willing to let Jasmine go as he's more interested in getting revenge on Alice and Cyrus for trapping him in the lamp in the Wonderland spinoff.
  • Once again, tears become an important component of a spell — this time those of the Savior.
  • When a drunk Snow reveals that the Vikings in the bar didn't pay for their drinks, Regina quips, "Do you ever not tattle?" referencing the original secret-spilling that caused her vendetta against Snow.
• Couch Gag: The title card features the flying carpet.
• Did You Actually Believe...?: Jafar pulls this on Jasmine in the past, and tries again in the present. The first time he succeeds in demoralizing her. The second time, not so much.
• Drunken Master: A drunk Snow challenges some Vikings to a game of darts (using knives) to see who pays for drinks. We see the end result on a board to the left of the screen before Emma talks with Aesop. Snow's scores are 50 and 50, a total of 100. The Vikings are — in order — 7, 19, 1 and 19 — a total of 56, showing that Show thrashed them. While utterly hammered.
• Enemy Mine: After discovering that trying to kill Emma and steal her powers won't work (and, presumably, listening to Gold two episodes ago), Gideon enforces one of these—help him kill the Black Fairy, or Hook will never be able to get through a portal to Emma again.
• Girl's Night Out Episode: Regina and Snow insist Emma join them drinking to get over Hook being gone.
• Halfway Plot Switch: The episode sets things up to look like it will involve Hook, Nemo, and the crew of the Nautilus hunting down the Kraken for the blood to make the portal home. Instead after a brief attack accidentally thwarted by Jasmine and Aladdin, Hook realizes he can get home if he can make Jafar open a portal for him, and so the episode becomes using the compass to track Jafar down—and incidentally, help Jasmine defeat him and restore Agrabah.
• Hell Is That Noise: Emma hears Hook's shellphone ringing and calling her name. The look on her face just screams: "I am drunker than I thought. Now I'm hearing a box talk to me."
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Jafar ends up being hit by one of his own potions to transform him into a staff.
• Internal Reveal:
  • David discovers Hook killed his father. He takes it surprisingly well, being more miffed at Hook's "cowardice" in not telling him himself than the actual killing.
  • Aladdin learns Jafar is the reason Agrabah has vanished. Meanwhile, Jasmine discovers that Agrabah is in the diamond ring she gave Jafar for her hand in marriage (thus explaining how it "vanished in a sandstorm"—the way the magical effect appeared to anyone outside it).
  • Emma finds out Hook didn't leave her intentionally.
• In the End, You Are on Your Own: The first time Jasmine faces Jafar, he sends Ariel away so she must face him alone. The second time, when he turns out not to be trapped into obedience by the genie spell, he knocks out Hook, Ariel, and Aladdin so it is again only the two of them.
• I Shall Taunt You: Jafar is in rare form this episode, particularly with Jasmine.
  Jafar: [in regards to where Agrabah is] I shall only tell you because the answer so greatly amuses me.
• Lie to the Beholder:
  • Jafar disguises himself as Eric to lure in Ariel and Jasmine. Where the real Eric was is unknown, other than "not Agrabah" since it has been shrunken in the diamond all this time, but presumably it still allowed him to be caught up in the first curse.
  • Gideon disguises himself as Aesop to obtain Emma's tears, thereby keeping Hook from her and forcing her to go along with his plans. Again it is unknown whether the real Aesop was among those from the Land of Untold Stories or not.
• Motive Misidentification: Jafar reveals he never wanted to marry Jasmine or rule Agrabah, he just wants to wipe the place out for dismissing him for so long, which, in retrospect, fits much better with his established M.O. in Wonderland of seeking to punish those who he feels shunned by.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The title of the episode, which references a line from "A Whole New World" in Disney's Aladdin.
  • The Nautilus comes under attack by a giant squid.
  • The prince who dares to stand up to Jafar for threatening Agrabah (and, admittedly, trying to take Jasmine from him in his mind) is Achmed. He comes off a bit more heroic, though still smarmy and entitled, than his animated counterpart.
  • In the flashbacks, Jasmine is wearing the blue harem-girl garb from the Disney film.
  • The club the girls go to is called "Aesop's Tables". Aesop himself is the bartender explaining he went to the Land of Untold Stories as he was too used to everyone knowing his tales. Subverted in that he turns out to be Gideon all along.
  • At an Agrabah market, Ariel takes a fork (once more mistaking it for a "dinglehopper").
  • The ring that holds ancient magic protecting Agrabah seems to be modeled very much off the Mystic Blue Diamond Jafar used to find Aladdin in the Disney film.
  • When Agrabah is restored, Jasmine tells Aladdin "I can show you my world."
  • In the marketplace, we see what looks like a stuffed version of Jasmine's tiger, Rajah.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • After Jasmine gives him a ring for a marriage, Jafar reveals that the ring was a spell that prevented him from attacking Agrabah... but now he can send the entire kingdom away and shrunken into the ring.
  • Emma leaves behind her tear-stained napkin at Aesop's Tables so Gideon could take possession of it and use it against her.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Gideon to Emma — help him kill the Black Fairy, or Hook will never make it home to her. Why he didn't just do this to begin with instead of trying to kill her and steal her powers (since she'd hardly be averse to doing so) would seem to be a case of either The Easy Way or the Hard Way, his Blue-and-Orange Morality, Well-Intentioned Extremist nature, or thinking she wouldn't have believed him.
• Oh, Crap!: A rather sloshed off her head Snow insults some Vikings - immediately, Emma and Regina are trying to interfere.
• Retcon:
  • Jafar is revealed to still be in the lamp, as he was at the end of the Wonderland spinoff... except he is somehow no longer a genie. How he could do this, let alone abrogate Nyx's powers, is unknown — but thankfully moot in the end.
  • After being told for so long that the only means of crossing between worlds (outside of powerful magic like that of Merlin and his Apprentice) was the enchanted tree, magic beans, and mermaids, it turns out Kraken's blood will also allow for this. ^note Since Krakens are a sea creature like mermaids, this may fall under a blanket ability granted by Poseidon, and the danger in trying to kill one would explain why no-one ever thought to mention them as a means of travel before. It may also be something known to only a small few, like Nemo.
• Shown Their Work: Aesop is depicted as black, as he has often been considered since Byzantine times.^note Scholars still aren't certain; according to earliest writings he was a native of either Thrace or Phrygia, while later works claimed he was an Ethiopian and former slave. The only appearances given for him in artistry and writing are based entirely on a fictional biography, but the tradition has lasted to modern times in order to provide links between his fables and Uncle Remus's "Br'er Rabbit" stories.
• Shout-Out: The title, "A Wondrous Place", may be a shout-out to Wonderland, where Jafar was the primary villain, and the events of which drive the episode, as Jasmine and Aladdin are trying to find him, and the events of Wonderland led to his then-entrapment in the Genie bottle at the time they were searching.
• Swiss-Army Tears: Gideon uses the tears Emma cries on a napkin to ensure that Hook doesn't come back to Storybrooke unless Emma does what he wishes. Gideon even says that the tears of a Savior contain powerful magic.
• Trojan Prisoner: As soon as he's freed from the lamp, Jafar starts the "your wish is my command..." routine until he sees Aladdin and Jasmine. He then smiles, drops his bracelets and reveals that while he was trapped in the lamp, he was no longer truly a genie and thus not held to grant wishes.
• True Love's Kiss: After finally getting over her fears of inadequacy and unworthiness, and proving she is a hero, Jasmine gives this to Aladdin — not only freeing Agrabah from the ring but also breaking the genie spell on Aladdin.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Ariel, Aladdin, and (in his own way) Hook all give this advice to Jasmine. It isn't until she hears her own defeatist and dismissive thinking coming from Jafar that she rebels against it and him.

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