Once Upon a Time: The Snow Queen Review

Things have certainly gotten interesting on Once Upon a Time, if slightly farcical. At times this week it seemed as though every major character was racing through town to try and talk to Emma. Seriously, wasn’t there a mob of roughly 50 people present by the time she nearly accidentally killed her dad? Farce aside, the episode managed to finally give up The Snow Queen’s full origin story. It was pretty straight-forward — accidental sister murder, other sister entraps her, deal struck with Gold, all the usual.

It was made slightly strange by the fact that the “young sisters” all looked to be past child-bearing years. Look, Elizabeth Mitchell is beautiful, but wouldn’t it have been better to futz with the timeline rather than try to dress up mutton as lamb? That sounds hater-ish of me. I don’t mean it to. But when something majorly shoulder-bumps me out of story the way this did, I figure it’s worth mentioning.

I’m chomping at the bit to know about what happened between Emma and Elsa back in the foster home situation, so clearly the writers are doing something very right. I do still have a bit of a hard time reconciling the intensely naive girl with superpowers with the smooth collected villain who emerged from that urn. Mitchell has instilled her Elsa with a sort of wisdom that you don’t normally associate with power-hungry villains.

Emma and Snow’s relationship has hit a major bump. Let’s be honest, they hit a major bump the minute Snow and David got pregnant. No wait, it was before that – it was when Snow and David realized that they were Emma’s parents…and no one really did any of the emotional unpacking of that very hard truth. It looks like we’re getting that payoff now. Snow has handled the birth of her second child gracelessly where her firstborn is concerned, and Emma’s finally starting to realize (thanks to her uncontrollable spurts of magic) that her mother’s behavior is actually pretty psychologically distressing. Guess what, Emma? THAT IS TOTALLY ALLOWED. 

That said it was very much out of character for Snow to lash out at Emma when she nearly squishes David with her fire magic (the best sentence I’ve written in weeks). It’s not as though they think Emma is experienced with magic, and she was in a full on panic admitting that she didn’t understand what was happening when her family and friends arrived at the police station.

What did Snow think would happen when she yelled at Emma, that it would make the situation better? I’d give my eyeteeth for David to step up and have an opinion about their child separate from whatever Snow might be thinking or feeling. He’s come across as more and more whipped with each passing week. If I was Emma, I’d be looking for a new parental figure too. 

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