Once Upon a Time Review: Awake (Season 6 Episode 17)

The battle against the Black Fairy is kicking into high gear. Once Upon a Time Season 6 Episode 17 finds Emma and Snow coming face-to-face with the woman who is destined to fight the Savior in the Final Battle.

“Awake” is one of the show’s best episodes in several seasons. Why? Because it’s chock full of everything that makes this show great: hopefulness, teamwork, and, naturally, true love. Those are all things that the show more consistently got right way back during its first two (best) seasons.

Buoyed by fantastic performances by Ginnifer Goodwin and Josh Dallas, the hour centers largely on Snow and Charming figuring out a way in the present to break the sleeping curse so that they can both be with Emma during her fight against the Black Fairy. The flashback sequences also focus on Snowing, to heartbreaking effect.

The flashbacks on “Awake” reveal some brand-new information about Snow and Charming (aka, the best flavor of Once Upon a Time flashback)— that they actually woke up (accidentally) 18 years before the curse was prophesied to be broken by Emma, when their daughter was only 10.

They had the opportunity to abandon Storybrooke’s other residents and be with Emma. Instead, they did what heroes do, putting themselves back under the curse’s power purposefully, so that Emma could eventually become the Savior and lift the curse from everyone.

It’s perfectly in character for Snow’s and Charming’s selfless, heroic natures, but still completely heartbreaking. The scene in the woods, as they look on at 10 year old Emma in her bedroom, is easily one of the show’s best ever.

This reveal also contextualizes a lot of the guilt we’ve seen from both Charming and Snow when it comes to the fact that Emma was left on her own for so long — they had the chance to change her destiny, to prevent her from potentially having to sacrifice herself as the Savior.

But they didn’t take it. They did the right thing, for the greater good, instead, possibly harming their daughter in the process.

On top of that, the chemistry between Ginny and Josh is so palpable on-screen. It’s one of those cases where it’s so obvious that they’re a real-life couple. Even when Snow and Charming aren’t the most dramatic or interesting pair on the show, they’re always watchable because they’re just so damn good together.

That doesn’t prevent Charming from being a total doofus yet again — and this time, Snow goes right along with his doofus plan. They effectively force Regina to give them an untested antidote to the sleeping curse, in the off-chance that it’ll work to allow both of them to be awake to support Emma during the battle against the Black Fairy.

Obviously, this is an idiotic, desperate plan, but it’s believable that these two would do anything in their power to make up for the years they missed out on being there for Emma. Especially when her life is literally on the line. You can really feel Snow’s desperation, especially during the scene where the Black Fairy has Gideon destroy the pixie dust flowers.

In a classic Once Upon a Time twist, Regina’s attempt to break the curse obviously fails and makes things worse — the curse speeds up, threatening to put both Charming and Snow to sleep permanently. The pixie dust petals end up being both a quick-fix and a foreboding omen — they only appear when there’s a great evil (aka, the Black Fairy) on the horizon.

They can save the day, but they’re also a portent of doom, basically. On the bright side, the appearance of the pixie petals give our heroes the heads-up that Rumple’s mama is in town. So that’s sort of a plus, I guess.

I still find it kind of hilarious how all of these random magic loopholes and rules come up as plot dictates. Have we ever encountered pixie petals before? I don’t think so.

Speaking of Rumple’s horrible mother — yep, she’s still awful. But that outfit!

And I mean that in the very best way possible. I’m continuing to love Jaime Murray in this role. She’s legitimately menacing without being goofy and over-the-top, as other Once Upon a Time villains have had a tendency to be in the past.

I’m also very curious to know what her plan is with Rumple and why she’s so sure that he’ll join her in the end. Is she after some kind of effed up family reunion? Or does she have something far more maniacal up her sleeve?

The one good thing that comes from her appearance on “Awake” is that Rumple finally figures out that she’s in control of his son’s heart, effectively forcing him to do her bidding. It’s about time, Rumple!

Rumple also (correctly, I think) figures out that Gideon is slyly resisting the Black Fairy’s control. He leaves just one pixie flower, just enough for Emma to use on waking Snow and Charming (of course, that doesn’t end up happening, but we’ll get to that in a minute).

Now that I think of it, Gideon re-routing Hook to Neverland, of all places, could also have been a way of subtly trying to help the heroes defeat his “adoptive mother.”

Because while everything is going down in Storybrooke, Hook is working with Tiger Lily in Neverland to get back to Emma with the piece of the wand that Tiger Lily conveniently has that can defeat the Black Fairy. That Hook winds up in the one place with the one person who knows how to defeat their foe can’t be a coincidence. It has to be Gideon working behind the scenes to do good.

Rumple is right — there’s still at least a small bit of Belle’s influence still in their son, keeping him on the path of good. Here’s hoping Gideon doesn’t wind up having to sacrifice himself to defeat the Black Fairy before the season’s end.

Once again, Snow makes the selfless choice, handing over the last bit of pixie petal for Emma to use in saving Killian, rather than breaking the sleeping curse on herself and Charming. That act gives us two of the season’s most powerful scenes.

The first is Hook’s re-proposal, which is definitely far more satisfying than the original one. Don’t get me wrong, I liked that one just fine, but there’s something so much better about a declaration of love and proposal of marriage when all of the secrets about one person having killed the other’s grandfather have been cleared and everything’s out in the open.

Hook and Emma can start fresh — once the Black Fairy is out of the way, of course.

The second is Regina’s emotional speech to the residents of Storybrooke, easily convincing them all to risk their own lives for the chance to save Snow and Charming.

Again, this is an objectively bad and dangerous plan — Emma, the only person who can possibly defeat the Black Fairy, definitely shouldn’t have been dabbling in sleeping curses — but we don’t really need to dwell on that because, hey, it works out perfectly so yay!

Everyone ends on a happy, uplifted note, confident that they can triumph against the Black Fairy. Which of course means that something is going to go terribly wrong, very soon.

Stray thoughts:

• It just occurred to me that I have no idea where baby Neal is?! I realize that Snow and Charming have been under a sleeping curse and busy with other things, but I feel like we haven’t seen (or even heard mention of) their youngest in a really long time.
• I’m so looking forward to the musical wedding episode, I can hardly stand it. My heart is already aflutter.
• It appears that Henry only has two variations of the same line on “Awake” — “It’ll be okay, Mom.” Thanks, Henry, for your priceless and valuable input as always.
• As always, you can tell how much Lana Parrilla loves having the opportunity to play Regina’s bad side here and there — she’s positively wicked during her brief appearances as the pre-reformed Mayor of Storybrooke in the flashbacks.
• Oh, hey, Zelena! Nice to see you having something to do there for a second. Of course, I don’t think Zelena appears in the scene where everyone else in the town splits the sleeping curse potion to wake Snow and Charming. Not that I’d have expected her to.

What did you think of this episode of Once Upon a Time? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

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Once Upon a Time airs Sundays at 9/8c on ABC.

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