Recap / Once Upon a Time S7 E6 Wake Up Call

Season 7, Episode 6:

Wake Up Call

Feeling like a third wheel as Henry and Cinderella’s relationship strengthens, Regina is surprised to find herself needed by Drizella, who is searching for magic to overthrow her dismissive and neglectful mother. But when a brutal truth is revealed, it could lead Drizella down a dangerous path. In Hyperion Heights, Roni seeks Weaver’s help in finding answers, and Tilly offers Rogers some intriguing advice concerning Eloise Gardener.

Tropes

• Adaptational Badass: This incarnation of Drizella was born with magic and even more powerful than her mother.
• Adaptational Villainy: Drizella/Ivy turns out to be even crueller and more vindictive than her mother, to the point of killing someone just to make a point, as well as casting the Dark Curse to make her mother suffer while causing multiple other innocents to get caught up in it.
• Always a Child to Parent: Downplayed example with Regina and Henry. Because it's been so long since she's seen him (and she really wasn't ready for him to leave Storybrooke when he did anyway), Regina can't help leaping in to try and save him when danger threatens...only to find he doesn't need her help any more. This gets subverted a bit when he reveals he does still need her, just as a loving mother and ally, rather than as someone to protect and take care of him. But in the end, she does realize she needs to cut the apron strings, and that this was as much about her loneliness as anything else...and so as Roni, once she gets her memories back, she confines herself to just giving advice and being there when he needs her.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Roni has no magic. However, she does have a very handy baseball bat - with which she intends to beat Victoria.
• Big Bad Ensemble: As it turns out, Drizella was the one who cast the Dark Curse, meaning her magic is far more powerful than her mother's. And the way things are developing, it appears she has far darker plans than Victoria's "crush hope" plot.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Lucy relates to Roni the story of how the storybook appeared in Snow White's closet when Henry needed it most.
  • Lucy also relates the story of how Regina adopted Henry from Boston, and this is confirmed by Weaver.
  • Henry still has his TRON lunchbox (except now he uses it to hold mechanic's tools...and to assault brigands).
  • Rumple and Regina have a long talk about his past tutelage of her, and of her experiences with Cora, in order to make comparisons with Drizella.
  • Regina references a number of things she did as the Evil Queen when warning Drizella away from the dark path; some of them are also shown during the rush of memories when Roni remembers who she is.
  • Roni speaking of how she almost did adopt, but was denied for being an "unfit mother" at the last minute, is something of an in-story What Could Have Been, considering how close she came to taking Henry back to the adoption center and how John and Michael Darling would have obtained him for Pan if she had.
  • Henry says that his birth mother had him in jail just like with "my character in the book", except that (in his cursed memories) he wasn't adopted, instead remaining in the system, and this is why he changed the story in his book and gave himself not one but two involved mothers (Regina and Emma). Regina lampshades that being in the system for all of childhood and adolescence is actually what happened to Emma (since Regina has her memories back at this point).
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Lady Tremaine continues to be this to Regina with the reveal she did not actually cast the Dark Curse, only profit from it. She also ends up being one to Cora; it is quite clear Tremaine is nowhere near as dangerous as her daughter while Cora was always much worse than Regina. Additionally, while Cora wanted to use Regina to get power and influence, Tremaine is more concerned with using Drizella to revive Anastasia.
• Couch Gag: The title card features Gothel's tower.
• Cutting the Knot: Drizella is caught between her mother and Regina (she feels)—if she doesn't learn magic, she'll stay trapped under Tremaine's thumb forever, but if she does, the belief necessary for this will make her heart capable of restoring Anastasia to life, so Tremaine will take it and kill her. How does she solve this? Using magic to kill her princely betrothed. This act deprives her mother of any riches and power which would have come from the marriage, darkens her heart so it is no longer of any use in raising Anastasia, gets back at Regina for (as she sees it) refusing to stand by her and help her get free of her mother, and it will enable her to cast the Dark Curse.
• Dark Secret: Whatever Drizella did to cast the Dark Curse so that heroes can't break it, it means that something terrible will happen to everyone Regina loves if it is broken. The fact she tacitly agrees to help keep it from breaking so this won't happen is bad enough, but the look on her face...
• Die or Fly: As usual for Regina, she uses this method in training Drizella—making a portion of the ruined tower fall on herself, so that Drizella has to instinctively use her magic to save her.
• Evil Is Petty: Drizella kills her fiancé simply so she can rub it in Tremaine's face that she cannot use Drizella's now-tainted heart to revive Anastasia, with the added bonus of making Regina suffer for failing to prevent it.
• Fate Worse than Death: What Drizella has planned for Lady Tremaine and why she doesn't simply kill her. She would rather see her mother suffer.
• Failed a Spot Check: Rogers has been obsessing over the Eloise Gardener case for a decade, yet he still somehow failed to notice that the mook he arrested in the previous episode was from the case files until Tilly suggested he check them again. The Dark Curse is probably the reason.
• For the Evulz: While she notes that restoring Regina's memories was necessary in order to get her help in stopping her mother from raising Anastasia from the dead (and to keep the curse from being broken), Drizella also admits that she does enjoy getting to see Regina suffer once she remembers everything—presumably because she still blames her for not helping her get rid of her mother.
• Freudian Excuse: Finding out your mother cares so little for you that your only usefulness in her eyes comes from having a heart that could be used to bring your dead sister back to life? Yeah, that's pretty traumatic. As Drizella herself says, she would never be able to escape her mother. Unfortunately, the only way out she sees is down a dark path.
• History Repeats: A young woman learns how to use magic so as to escape her mother's manipulative, controlling clutches, only to instead become just as dark as she is. The difference this time is that the teacher, rather than using her for their own ends as Rumple did with Regina, is genuinely trying to help her break free and live a better life.
  Regina: I should have known better than to let a girl with that much pain get anywhere near magic.
• Internal Reveal: Rumple tells Regina everything that happened in his life with Belle, and also of his new quest to pass on the Darkness in the right way so he can be reunited with her in death. Regina commends him for his Heel–Face Turn sticking.
• Mythology Gag: The title card's Couch Gag shows an exact replica of Rapunzel's tower from Tangled, and the ruins where Regina finds Drizella are clearly the same tower; a number of the items Drizella picks up while looking for magic to use against her mother are also recognizable from the film.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Regina's attempts to help Drizella and steer her away from the dark path are what ends up encouraging her to do so. It's from Regina that Drizella gets the idea to cast a Dark Curse. To top it all off, Regina's caution that "Heroes always break curses" simply prompts Drizella to account for that when casting her own.
• The Reveal: This episode confirms that it was Drizella who cast the curse and not Lady Tremaine.
• Shout-Out: While walking down the street in Hyperion Heights, Henry says to Roni, "I wasn't sure with the dogs in the alley, but Bella Notte does have great pizza." A reference to Lady and the Tramp.
  • In another scene with Henry and Roni, he says "we should at least look into it before it's clobberin' time". The phrase "It's Clobberin' Time" is the catch phrase of The Thing from the Fantastic Four.
  • Regina teaching Drizella to use her magic by levitating moss-covered rocks harkens back to Yoda teaching Luke how to use the Force in The Empire Strikes Back.
• Something Only They Would Say:
  • Implied, but when Roni asks Weaver's help in proving whether Lucy's story is true, and says she would owe him one, the look on Weaver's face is vintage Rumple...after which he says, "You've got yourself a deal."
    • Even cleverer? Rumple is awake and knows Regina is awake. Regina is awake and is fairly certain that Weaver is awake - she's probably thinking that Rumple's Heel–Face Turn has been successful and that he always carries out his deals - mainly because she's known him for so goddamn long.
  • Regina accidentally gives herself away when Henry tells his story about his being born in jail, by identifying Emma by name, and quickly has to cover for it by claiming she'd bought and read his book.
• Start of Darkness: For Drizella. Learning how little she actually does mean to Lady Tremaine, and that in fact her only value to her mother at all was in how her heart could bring Anastasia back, is enough to convince her that she needs to become as dark as she can, both to stop Tremaine's plan and to get revenge upon her. The actual start comes when she kills the prince she was to marry.
• Visual Metaphor: Tilly literally turns the chessboard around to get Rogers to look at it from another perspective (so he can see "what he has and what he doesn't have"). She also makes a meta-comment on how he (like the viewer) is coming into the game (the show) "right in the middle" and that this is half the fun.