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Tear Jerker / Once Upon The End

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  • Jack's death, and the entire sequence of events that leads up to it may just be the best example in the entire series. Just as Jack successfully steals the harp from the giant that his father had to deal with, he lands in the Wicked Queen's throne room, where Phillip and Penelope are about to take a bite out of two poisoned apples each, but drop them when they see Jack. An angry Phillip, thinking that Jack has betrayed him and that he has to die, steps forward and confronts Jack over his betrayal. The Wicked Queen offers Jack the choice of leaving his world behind for one with no magic or princes and the chance to free his friends, as Jillian comes out and offers to kill Phillip. The Queen makes the offer again, when Phillip shuts her up and challenges Jack to a fight. And as the Mirror predicted, they fight, with Jack easily beating Phillip and kicking him in the stomach, sending him flying. Phillip, being the perfect royal, dares Jack to kill him and lose anything good and noble he has left in his life. What follows is quite possibly the most awesome, impactful, and hearbreaking sequence of events in the series, as Jack hangs his sword over Phillip's head, and drives the sword down...right onto May's chains, snapping them in half and freeing her, as he becomes a hero once again and triggers a fight in the throne room. The goblins attack Jack, but he wins, and and yells at Phillip to go and get the others out of the place, as part of the plan he's pulled the entire time. A goblin knocks out May, and when Jack expects the Queen to spare May's life, the goblin swings, and Jack fires his sword right at the Wicked Queen's heart, forcing her to stop the sword and drop the goblins, saying May's life. The Queen taunts him about having accomplished nothing, but Jack, seeing Phillip running toward the door with Penelope and May's unconscious body in his hands, decides it did something after all, and as the Queen reverses Jack's sword right at him, he turns and looks right at May, knowing what's about to happen. And just like she did to the Charmed One, the Queen impales Jack with his own sword, and he dies to save the girl he loves.
    • The duel itself is a heartbreaker, as all the while the angry Phillip yells at Jack for betraying May and his friends all for his gains, Jack responding the way any traitor does, and May looking horrified and begging Jack to not do this. Jack may have been planning the whole thing, but Phillip meant everything he said, and all the emotion is real.
    • Even after three months of training as an Eye, it's clear that Jack still cares a lot for May, as he has to grit his teeth and deliberately ignore her when he tells the Queen they're not his friends. Any time he looks at her, he still has to make an effort to control himself.
    • And Phillip's reaction to it only makes it worse. He truly believed that Jack had betrayed them and that he was going to die fighting his friend, but he still never wanted Jack to die. He knew one of them was going to betray May and the other would die for her, but Jack doing the one thing he never considered he would hits him out of nowhere.
    • What's even worse than that, however, is May's reaction to it when she wakes up, alone with the Wicked Queen, and in the room that Jack's father was caged in. The Queen tells her that Phillip just betrayed her for his own freedom, and May is confused by this at first, but when she realizes what happened to Jack, she is utterly horrified.
  • Phillip having to give up May to the Wicked Queen to give himself a tiny chance to save his kingdom from the hands of the same giant that Jack's father stole from. All this time, he was fully convinced that he would die to save her rather than betray her, but when the Queen takes advantage of his status as a prince to force him to do the one thing he promised he never would, he can do nothing but despise himself and the Queen for stooping to this level.
    • One of the main things that makes this whole scene, starting from Jack and Phillip's fight, hit so hard is that throughout the entire series, everyone thought that Jack would betray May for the Wicked Queen and Phillip would die fighting Jack for her, and true to form, it almost happens. But in a remarkable unfolding of events, it is Phillip who is forced to betray May to save his kingdom, and Jack who dies saving her from the Queen.

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