Recap / Once Upon a Time S7 E20 Is This Henry Mills?

Season 7, Episode 20:

Is This Henry Mills?

Roni enlists Lucy’s help to wake Henry and stop Gothel, but things don’t go as planned. Meanwhile, Rogers and Weaver go to Margot in hopes of freeing Tilly before her magic can be used to power the spell. In a flashback, Young Henry struggles to decide what path to follow until a mysterious phone call helps put him on track.

Tropes

• Aborted Arc: And surprisingly close to the end, too—after going for almost the entire second half of the season seeing him manipulate from the shadows, using Drew, breaking Sabine's trust, and attempting to claim the Dark One's dagger, Samdi/Facilier gets his magic back, has voodoo dolls to control Drew and Sabine (and from the number, others as well—everyone in Hyperion Heights?), and seems poised to defeat Rumple when the latter can't bring himself to fight back and lose any chance of reuniting with Belle. And then... he is abruptly killed by Wish Rumple. So we never get to find out what he was planning to do with Sabine and Jacinda (presumably he was holding Drew to lure Sabine or compel compliance), how he planned to use the dagger, or anything. Also this leaves his romance with Regina unresolved. (Apparently his Tarot reading for her was quite wrong — although it could have referred to her choosing between Henry and Rumple two episodes ago, or what takes place in the finale...) This is related to the show not being picked up for an eighth season despite there being plans for one.
• Arc Words: "Home isn't a place, it's the people you love." Also acts as an oblique echo of Snow's words to the Blue Fairy way back when (in "Heartless") and which Snow had also told to David in "Tiny": "Home is where your family is."
• The Atoner: Rumple again. After Regina read him the riot act for taking Samdi's potion to find the dagger, and thus dooming Henry to his poisoned heart, it seems Rumple was indeed deeply affected by her severing of ties — because he shows up at Regina's cauldron with a memory potion made from Nick's blood (i.e. the blood of someone who had had their memories awakened) and begs her to let him help, make amends. Because he's certain he won't get back to Belle and therefore he needs to "try and help the family I've still got here."
• Bait-and-Switch: Near the end, Weaver enters his vault, and opens a safe... to find it empty. He suspects Facilier, so it's easy to assume the dagger has gone missing again. It hasn't: the safe contained the photo album of Belle and Rumple's travels.
• Beam-O-War: Briefly between Alice and Gothel. The latter loses.
• Big Damn Kiss: Alice and Robin, after the curse is broken.
• Bring It: Three times, from Regina to Gothel — when she initially refuses her offer of protection, when she goes after her with her trusty baseball bat, and when she attacks with fireballs once her magic is back.
• The Bus Came Back: Young Henry and Granny appear in Storybrooke (and Grumpy and Tiny receive offscreen references).
• Call-Back: Back when the curse was first cast, Alice promised Robin that they'd always know each other even if they don't remember. She reminds her of this when the curse is broken and they're reunited.
• Chekhov's Gun: The adoption file for Henry that Roni found earlier in the season contains Regina's home phone number in Storybrooke. This allows the adult Henry to call his younger self.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Wish Rumple. Ever since he was released from prison back in Season Six, he's been even more of a wild card than the original Rumple, with many speculating what he would do or if he would ever become a major threat, but other than being consulted by Wish Hook to find a way to release Alice from the tower, he had yet to appear in any capacity. Cue the final moments of the episode where, thanks to the breaking of the curse restoring magic and the death of Gothel, he's able to appear in Hyperion Heights and kill Facilier... and now he's ready to reclaim the dagger and (presumably) get revenge on both Hook and Regina.
• Cliffhanger: See the trope above, with Wish Rumple sweeping in to clear the board of the last pieces in his way, and setting up a confrontation not only with our heroes, but his counterpart in the Rumple we've come to know so well.
• Coffin Contraband: When seeking a way to restore Henry's memories, Roni summons Lucy to the cemetery... because she's concluded the only way to do so is with the original storybook. Lucy points out she hasn't seen the book since Victoria used it to break her belief and restore Anastasia, to which Roni explains that just as she kept her vault in Storybrooke in a cemetery so that no-one would dare disturb it, Victoria "would never let it out of her cold, dead heads." One scene break later and there's the book, still with a bit of dirt clinging to it.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The bean which took Henry from Storybrooke to the New Enchanted Forest was a gift from Tiny.
  • Henry's TRON lunchbox appears once again in the Storybrooke segments — first for Regina to give him the key to her car as a graduation present, then to once again (or for the first time) hold the mechanics' tools while he and Granny work on fixing said car.
  • Once again, it's Henry kissing his mom that saves her life and breaks a Dark Curse, except this time it's Regina (and mirroring her kiss to him that broke the curse in Season 3B).
• Contrived Coincidence: Right when Lucy is receiving a text from Roni, Jacinda wants her to finish packing for their island trip. In comes Sabine, wondering where Drew is... and then Lucy finds one of Samdi's Tarot cards in Drew's bag, sending the women off to Samdi's office and allowing her to meet up with Roni and, eventually, Henry.
• Couch Gag: The title card features Regina's car.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Twice over. Not only does Alice prove to have the strength of heart and magic to bring down Gothel and end her destructive storm once the curse is broken, but in the last moments of the episode Facilier is done away with so that Wish Rumple can take center stage.
• Double-Meaning Title: It's literally what Henry asks on the phone when speaking to his younger self, but in a more metaphorical sense it's also what Regina and Lucy are thinking as they try to break through his block of stubborn non-belief — is this the Henry Mills they know and love, is he still in there and can he be restored, or will he remain this hurt, bitter soul forever?
• Growing Up Sucks:
  • In the present this is essentially what Henry continues to use as his deflection against everything Roni and Lucy say to try and get through to him, that becoming an adult who has to deal with the real world and all of its tragedies and pain is why he won't believe in fairy tales or have hope again. While Roni sadly understands (even as she refuses to give up), this leads to Lucy actually storming into her bedroom while agreeing with him — that his growing up sucks, and they'd all be better off if he never had.
  • In the past (but also still in the present), Henry still has his idealism, so he ascribes to a much more wistful version of the trope in that growing up does require you to face change and the unknown, to leave home and the people you love, but that doesn't mean it has to be bad — and you don't have to truly let go, since they'll always be with you. Unsurprisingly, Henry has to reconcile the two views to get his belief back.
• Heroic Willpower: Rogers discovers when trying to free Tilly from the ritual circle that he can't touch her due to the return of the poison on his heart; once the curse is broken and he has his memories back, however, he refuses to accept this, fighting to overcome the magic enough to be able to stand by his daughter's side and lend her his strength. In a realistic touch, however, this didn't cure the poison nor did it leave him without side-effects, since afterward he's shown being wheeled away to the hospital on a stretcher.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: It's taken this long to see the true ramifications, but Gothel taking Victoria's life to restore Lucy (which she did both to increase Anastasia's power and give her the magic she would need for her ritual) ends up coming back to haunt her now — as it's Lucy who was able to get Samdi to cure Henry's heart, without which he could never have kissed Regina to break the curse, and it's this happening which breaks the ritual and enables Alice to stop her mother.
• Hostile Weather: How Gothel's magic from the ritual manifests, creating an increasingly more deadly and apocalyptic storm with which she plans to eliminate humanity. (As Regina puts it, "How biblical.")
• How We Got Here: The Storybrooke segments help finally catch us up to where we saw Regina and Henry at the start of the season — not only explaining how he got the magic bean to leave town with, but why he would leave at all when he could apparently go to college right there. It also connects his wanting to stay true to who he is with his desire to find other fairy tale lands and make his own story, and his "essay" note to Regina even calls forward to him eventually writing the story of the first six seasons as the book he published this season.
• Internal Reveal: This time it's Weaver's turn to confirm to Rogers that magic is real, as is everything in Henry's book. Despite thinking it's mad, after seeing what he did in the previous episode, Rogers is finally willing to take a leap of faith.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Fittingly for having abandoned Alice to starve to death in her tower, Gothel ends up being defeated by Alice and is transformed into a tree.
• Last Chance to Quit: Amazingly, Gothel actually offers this to Regina, the chance for her and her family/loved ones to be spared the coming destruction on the basis of her once having been the Eighth Witch. Considering Regina (as well as everyone else) has no magic, Gothel fully believes Henry can never regain his belief so as to break the curse and change this, and the only one who could threaten her (Tilly) is fully under her control at this point, it's pretty clear this is just the Evil Gloating version of the trope.
• Make Way for the New Villains: Or in this case, old villain, since as soon as Alice has defeated Gothel, Wish Rumple shows up to kill Facilier and take over as the true threat.
• My Greatest Failure: Regina theorizes that this is another reason why Henry has such a hard time believing again — because on the day the curse was cast, his kidnapping had led to his entire family also being captured so that he blames himself for said curse, and the memories of this carried over into the cursed memories of his family's death in the fire. As a result, the pain of his loss was real, making it something no amount of magic could undo.
• Mythology Gag: When Margot, Weaver, and Rogers attempt to break through to Tilly, and she sends them flying with a magical blast, what else does she do? Shrink them, of course.
• Oh, Crap!: Gothel's reaction when she sees her legs turning into roots, knowing she is about to be turned into a tree.
• Omnicidal Maniac: What was implied in the previous episode is confirmed here — Gothel intends to once again purge all human life from the Land Without Magic.
• Place of Power: Unsurprisingly, when the magic from the ritual blasts up for Gothel to use, it emerges from the well in the community garden, and the garden itself only enhances her powers.
• The Power of Love: How Alice overcomes her mother in the end — because she realizes that unlike her, she isn't alone or an outcast but has friends and family, especially Hook and Robin, to stand by her and accept her for who she is, "madness" and all. Considering her Guardian powers are light magic, something which has already been shown before this to be fueled by love (particularly True Love), this only makes sense.
• The Reveal: Gothel's curse didn't just bring everyone from the New Enchanted Forest to the Land Without Magic. It also sent them back in time to shortly before Henry left Storybrooke. This explains both why none of their heroic family members have come to save them (because they don't know they're missing, since they aren't yet and won't be for ten years) and why it's so difficult to snap Henry out of his cynicism — because his idealistic self, with a fully powered Heart of the Truest Believer untainted by failure and loss, exists in the same timeframe.
• Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: When each of the witches are turned into a sapling, their empty cloaks fall over, initially masking what happened exactly. (Averted for Gothel, though.)
• Stable Time Loop: When Henry calls his younger self, it turns out he creates one of these — not only is the call itself something he remembered even under the curse (albeit as something very weird and unexplainable), but it turns out his advice is what inspires his younger self to go on his journey of self-discovery across the realms in the first place, and that he also told him where to find the package from Tiny with the magic bean that enabled him to do this. So this (plus the fact he never gave his name) enabled him to keep from changing history except in ways he already had all along.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Tilly sympathizes with her mother after turning her into a tree, and promises to do better than she.
• This Is Reality: After True Love's Kiss didn't work, Henry has fallen back into this mindset with a vengeance — thinking he'd only been swayed by psychopath Nick's crazy claims, he abandons his String Theory and insists that what he knows now is that he and Jacinda are in love and should be together, but as "real" people in the "real" world.
• Throat Light: Just before each of the witches' Transflormation, light pours out from their mouth and eyes.
• Tragic Keepsake: Gold's scrapbook from his time with Belle at the Edge of Realms appears again, this time taken by Facilier (surely to taunt and mock him with). It also acts as the reminder of his beloved which keeps Gold from doing anything truly evil or final to Facilier... until his darker (alternate) half steps in.
• Transflormation:
  • The result of the Coven members completing their part of the ritual is to turn into a tree.
  • Later forced onto Gothel when she loses her Beam-O-War with Alice.
• True Love's Kiss: Continuing the tradition one last time, it's a familial version that breaks the curse, Henry kissing Regina's forehead in the same way he did Emma's (and she did his, way back when).
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Despite appearing fairly prominently last episode and getting a name and something of a backstory, Seraphina does nothing this episode and simply becomes a tree sprout with all the other Coven members.
• Wham Line: Regina when Henry asks why the other heroes haven't found them: "You can't find someone you don't even know is missing."
• Wham Shot: Facilier, seemingly set up as the Final Boss of the season now that Gothel is gone, is suddenly stabbed In the Back... by the Wish-Verse version of Rumple.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: We never see what happens to the sergeant after Rogers gets out of his bonds and punches him out to escape.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!:
  • Three times this happens with Henry — Rumple's memory potion doesn't work, holding the storybook doesn't work, and looking at the adoption papers proving he's Regina's son doesn't work. It takes the call to his younger self (both recognizing his own voice and remembering the call took place) to finally restore his memories and belief.
  • Rogers can't get through to Tilly thanks to Gothel's spell, and when he tries to actually drag her out, the magic re-activates the poison in his heart.
  • Weaver thinks Margot, as Tilly's love, is the only one who can get through to her. This also fails, resulting in Weaver, Margot, and Rogers getting shrunk.
  • Samdi has Drew held captive, and this plus some judicial voodoo doll usage nets him Sabine and Jacinda as well. But then the breaking of the curse restores everyone's memories so that all three unite against him... until he teleports away.
  • After Henry's kiss to Regina breaks the curse, the spell controlling Alice is broken as well, allowing her to leave the circle and break the ritual. However, while this does end the storm summoning, the magic already released by the other six witches is still available for Gothel to use against them all — though that isn't enough to save her in the end.
  • Gothel is defeated and the curse is broken. But then Wish Rumple shows up, with his own plans, and eliminates Facilier.

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