Nothing Was the Same After This ‘Once Upon a Time’ Episode

In a pre-streaming era, there were few shows as ambitious as ABC’s fairy tale drama, Once Upon a Time. The initial premise followed Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison), a lonely orphan who is brought to the town of Storybrooke, Maine by the son she gave up for adoption, Henry (Jared S. Gilmore). Emma discovers that Storybrooke is a town inhabited by fairy tale characters who can’t remember who they are after they were banished there via a curse cast by the Evil Queen, Regina (Lana Parrilla). The daughter of Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Prince Charming (Josh Dallas), Emma is the savior, destined to break the curse.

The first season finale resets the show with a surprising twist. Emma is able to break the curse, and Mr. Gold, a.k.a. Rumpelstiltskin (Robert Carlyle) brings magic to the town. Shaking up the show with massive changes became a yearly Once Upon a Time tradition, with new characters, settings, and conditions coming with each finale. Even the show’s original big bad, Regina, went from evil queen to one of the most beloved characters in the cast. Out of all the resets, setting shifts, and popular character invasions, there is one episode that forever changed the series the most, from a mythological and character standpoint, as well as a production one: Season 3’s midseason finale, Episode 11, «Going Home.» It began the «half-season» tradition that Once Upon a Time would employ through Season 5. «Going Home» can also be seen as the series midpoint (for its original «Swan saga» anyway), serving as the peak for the larger story, and setting up the eventual endgame.

Once Upon A Time

A young woman with a troubled past is drawn to a small town in Maine where fairy tales are to be believed.

Release Date

October 23, 2011

Creator

Edward Kitsis, Adam Horowitz

Cast

Lana Parrilla , Colin O’Donoghue , Robert Carlyle , Gabrielle Anwar , Dania Ramirez , Mekia Cox

Seasons

7

Studio

ABC

‘Once Upon a Time’s Season 3 Midseason Finale Set Up a Series Tradition

When Once Upon a Time premiered in October 2011, it was an immediate hit. At the time, the premiere was ABC’s best performance in the 18-49 demographic since 2008, according to TVLine, and consistently remained successful throughout its early years. Before Season 3 dropped, ABC announced that the third season would air in two volumes, with the first half airing in the fall and the season half airing in the spring. Series creators Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz talked about their plans when they spoke with Collider during an interview at 2013’s San Diego Comic Con, acknowledging that the show is best viewed uninterrupted, which was one of the selling points for a split season.

«Going Home» aired on December 15, 2013, the last episode before a more than two month hiatus. However, the episode was more like a season finale than the show’s typical midseason bookend. Not only did it end on a cliffhanger, designed to bring viewers back in March, it went for a full Once reset, wrapping up the Neverland story that started in the season opener. After spending the first nine episodes on the show’s dark version of Neverland, where Emma, Regina, the Charming’s, Hook (Colin O’Donoghue), and Rumple venture to save Henry from the clutches of an evil Peter Pan (Robbie Kay), the heroes return to Storybrooke, where Pan plans to cast his own version of the Dark Curse. The action-packed hour ended with the show’s biggest reset at the time, and set up a new adventure for Once‘s March return.

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“All magic comes with a price.”

This began a formula that Once Upon a Time would follow for two more seasons. Treating half a season as its own arc allowed the show to be a bit more focused than it had been in its first two seasons, with a new condition introduced that would further the main cast, as well as introduce new fairy tales and Disney characters, that would exit by either the winter finale, or season closer. Season 6 ended the format, with the show’s final two years going back to full season arcs, but «Going Home» set the standard that helped make the show flow more evenly for a number of years.

«Going Home» Concludes Many Original Character Arcs

«Going Home» serves as a massive turning point that forever changes the journey of many main characters. Throughout the show’s first season, viewers learn the finer details around Regina’s curse. Emma’s savior status is explained pretty early on in the pilot, while Regina’s hatred for Snow White, her protection of Henry, and Rumple’s ulterior motives for giving the Evil Queen the curse are also revealed.

Emma is very much the reluctant hero. From the beginning, she has issues with allowing Henry to get too close, and denies the possibility of being the savior, or that the curse is even real. Of course, by the first season finale, she must face the truth and break the curse. Season 2 explores her relationship with Henry closer, though she is still reluctant regarding her role and the family that came along with breaking the curse. That all changed with «Going Home.» As Peter Pan’s curse approaches, Regina reveals the only way to save everyone from becoming a slave to Pan is to undo the original Dark Curse. Everyone would have to go back to the Enchanted Forest… except for Henry. To undo the curse, Regina must give up the thing she loves most, but to ensure that he won’t be alone, Regina finds a loophole: because Emma was born to break the curse, she can once again escape it. While she and Henry won’t be able to remember their time in Storybrooke, Emma accepts what she must do as the savior. She is forced to leave the family she spent so many years looking for and fully accept her role as Henry’s mother. As she and Henry drive away from the Storybrooke town line, the Emma viewers knew from the first episode is gone and what has emerged is a brave, new Emma who has accepted the characteristics about herself that she spent so long denying.

Regina and Rumple are also forced to make big sacrifices in «Going Home.» In the first season, Regina is a full-fledged villain viewers love to despise. Her hatred for Snow White permeates her actions, and her fierce protection of Henry leads to her Season 1 feud with Emma. Though she spends Season 2 struggling with redemption and is more or less the show’s primary antihero for the first 10 episodes of Season 3, «Going Home» serves as the true turning point for the former Evil Queen. Regina selflessly undoes her past mistakes and gives up everything to save her former enemies. It’s from this point on that she becomes a true hero and the mentor character that she would remain for the rest of the show’s run.

For Rumple, «Going Home» marks the end of the journey he’s been on as well. He originally gave Regina the curse so that he could find his long-lost son, Baelfire (Dylan Schmid). Though the two are reunited in Season 2, Rumple and Baelfire (or Neal as he is known in the Land without Magic) still have a long road to forgiveness. The two continue to struggle throughout the second and third season, until Rumple makes the ultimate sacrifice, giving up his own life to kill Pan. Rumple gives Neal a heartfelt message before using his dagger to destroy both Pan and himself. It is the last proper interaction that the two share, before Neal is killed off in the second half of the season. With Rumple’s grand stand, the motivating action that started the series truly came to an end, and signified to viewers that the show was about to change forever.

«Going Home» Sets Up the Swan Saga’s Endgame

The subject of Once Upon a Time‘s ending is an interesting topic, as the show technically ended twice! Kitsis and Horowitz executed their originally planned endgame with the Season 6 finale, but the show returned for a seventh season with a massive creative reboot. While Once lore can be complex, with various characters from fairy tales and beyond coming in and out of the show, it was always building toward Emma facing the ultimate villain, the Black Fairy (Jaime Murray). The earliest episodes did indeed foreshadow this, with Rumple referring to «the Final Battle» in the series premiere, Maleficent asking Regina who the corrupt soul was that created the Dark Curse in the second episode, and Snow revealing she’d purchased dark fairy dust (a creation of the Black Fairy’s) in the third. However, «Going Home» is the first time the Black Fairy is mentioned by name.

As Pan’s curse approaches, Rumple tells the heroes that they need a powerful weapon to undo one of Pan’s spells. Tinker Bell (Rose McIver) identifies the tool as the Black Fairy’s wand. Tink tells the heroes that the Black Fairy is one of the most powerful fairies who ever lived and that the Blue Fairy banished her. Rumple doesn’t seem pleased with having to employ the tactic, which is not surprising considering the malevolent being is later revealed to be his mother. The wand plays a pivotal part for the heroes, a further mythological foreshadow as the Black Fairy would later be revealed as the person who created the curse.

Most drawn out mythological writing spends about half of its run building up the mythos and mystery of the world in which it is set, and the second half tearing it down as it approaches the endgame. Though Once had its aforementioned additional season, the larger story of Emma Swan (or the Swan Saga) reaches its literal midpoint with «Going Home.» After the episode aired, the series began to set up what would be the end of Emma’s journey, finally culminating in the two-hour Season 6 finale, «The Final Battle.»

«Going Home» was a pivotal episode for Once Upon a Time. It set the structure the show would follow for most of its run, and wrapped up a lot of the stories viewers had been attached to since the series’ pilot episode. The episode was also a venture into the Swan Saga’s endgame, forever changing the show’s direction. In addition to being an action-packed hour of television, it truly defined Once Upon a Time‘s mythology and reinvigorated its characters.

Once Upon a Time is available to stream on Disney+ in the U.S.

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