#i think lucy should be able to have girls night with a cursed pendant. if she wants

[clonerightsagenda]

I feel like Lockwood and Lucy's dramatically opposing moral and philosophical perspectives on the major issue affecting their lives would continue to be a point of contention in their working and personal relationship but also if they had computers Lockwood would post 'AITA for hating my gf's friends (they are evil ghosts)' and get shredded by reddit for being another guy who can't appreciate the weird queen he somehow pulled.

[tomeandflickcorner]

OUAT Episode Analysis- Hyperion Heights.

Well, here it is.  The start of the new chapter in OUAT.  Not sure how well it’s going to go with most of the original cast gone.  But I’m willing to give it a chance.  So let’s go, Season 7.  Impress me.

We open with Henry, who apparently managed to graduate high school, in spite of the horrendous education system in Storybrooke.  His plan is now to go on some kind of soul searching journey.  See, he went to the Sorcerer’s old mansion after completing his Authorial task of writing about everything that happened throughout the past 6 seasons.  While there, he found hundreds of other books that revealed the existence of parallel worlds. Each of these parallel worlds had their own version of Snow White or Rapunzel.  But he’s feeling a bit weirded out that there wasn’t a parallel version of himself.  For some reason, this doesn’t sit well with him, so he’s now wanting to live his own story. And now that he’s out of high school, he feels now is the time to set out and do that.  Regina’s not too keen on this idea, since she was hoping he’d go on to college.  But let’s be real.  Even though Henry managed to get through high school, it was the high school in Storybrooke. They probably let you graduate if you could recite the alphabet.  I seriously doubt he could get through a single semester at college.

But in the end, Regina agrees to let Henry live his life, and he drives off on a motorcycle I’m assuming August gave him, using a magic bean to open up a portal to one of the previously mentioned parallel worlds.  I guess this means Anton’s bean field is flourishing again.  It struck me as odd, though, that only Regina was seeing Henry off.  You’d think Snowing, Emma and Killian would want to be there, too.

Regardless, we then flash forward a few years.  Henry is now a full-grown adult, and is still traveling around the parallel worlds. This is how he quite literally runs into Parallel!Cinderella.  The run-in causes Parallel!Cinder’s carriage to get damaged, preventing her to get to the famous ball.  Henry, wanting to help Parallel!Cinder finish her story, offers to drive her there on his motorcycle.  But after a bit of back and forth, Parallel!Cinder manages to steal the motorcycle, punching Henry to the ground in the process.  I do wonder why Henry didn’t see that coming, as Parallel!Cinder was making her intent rather obvious, what with her over-interest in how to operate the motorcycle.  But he doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest.  Maybe he was remembering the story of how his grandparents met, and how Emma met Killian, and suspected the tradition was continuing?

 Either way, Henry manages to follow Parallel!Cinder to the ball.  There, the story comes out that Parallel!Cinder isn’t here to meet the prince in the way the tale usually goes.  In this world, the prince somehow brought about the death of Parallel!Cinder’s father, leading to her becoming a scullery maid for her evil stepmother. Who’s even nastier in this version. She even kidnapped Parallel!Cinder’s fairy godmother and killed her with her own wand.  So, anyway, Parallel!Cinder’s plan is to kill the prince in revenge.  Henry, possibly remembering the lessons about revenge he’d learned from his stepfather, tries to stop her, but he’s held up by a woman who claims to be Alice of Wonderland fame.  Not sure if she has any connection to the Alice of the Wonderland spinoff.  Maybe she’s a Parallel!Alice?  I don’t know. Either way, she drugs Henry’s drink to send him to this weird hallucinogenic place where she tells Henry to not interfere with the events unfolding in this Parallel World, and that he should just go back home.  She also reveals she’s in cahoots with Rumpelstiltskin somehow.  At this point, I have no idea what Rumpelstiltskin and New!Alice’s plan is. But whatever it is, I doubt it’s good. In any event, Henry refuses to heed New!Alice’s demand, because he feels called to help people, no matter what.

While Henry was being detained by New!Alice, Parallel!Cinder manages to approach the prince.  But she’s ultimately unable to kill him, because he conscience kicks in.  But that’s when Parallel!Evil Stepmother steps in, killing the prince herself.  She goes off on a monologue about how she wanted the prince dead because he rejected Drizella, one of the Parallel!Stepsisters.  But she was hoping Parallel!Cinder would do her dirty work for her.  Parallel!Evil Stepmother then tries to frame Parallel!Cinder for the prince’s murder, but she eventually manages to fight off the guards and escape, with Henry’s assistance.

Sometime later, Henry arrives at the site where a portal has been scheduled to open up at midnight, allowing him to return home to Storybrooke.  I can’t remember if they ever explained how Henry knew this portal would open at this time.  If they did, I completely missed it.  Maybe New!Alice told him?  Maybe, but Henry seemed to know about the portal even before his acid trip conversation with New!Alice.  So I’m not really sure how Henry knew about the portal.

However, Henry is visibly disappointed.  During the ball, when he was trying to talk Parallel!Cinder out of her revenge plan, he offered to bring her back to Storybrooke with him, so she could start a new life in a new land.  But Parallel!Cinder doesn’t seem to be showing up, making Henry feel she decided to reject the offer.  Before Henry could go through the portal, however, he notices Parallel!Cinder’s glass slipper lying nearby, and he realizes that she was there.  But for some reason, she didn’t stick around.  I’m not sure if she left of her own accord or she was captured before Henry could arrive.  Either way, Henry decides that ‘Operation Glass Slipper’ isn’t finished, and he decides to let the portal to Storybrooke close so he could stay and continue assisting Parallel!Cinder.  While some might feel that Henry should have given up on naming those operations of his, since he’s no longer a kid, I really don’t mind it that much.  I just chalk it up to Henry being Henry.

That’s about all we see of the backstory for this new season in this episode.  The rest of the episode focuses on Present Day Seattle, where Henry is working as an Uber Driver.  He returns home after a typical night and tries once again to start to write a new book. As we learn throughout the episode, there’s a new curse in effect, and Henry is one of the people who were affected by it.  Because of his new cursed memories, he believes all his adventures throughout the first 6 seasons were just part of a novel he wrote.  But after he completed that, he’s been experiencing a prolonged writer’s block.  Though there are some small aspects that pop out at you in this scene.  For instance, we see briefly that the swan pendant that Emma gave him in a deleted scene set during the Wizard of Oz arc now resides on his keychain.  And I spotted a small painting of a pirate ship on his wall.  I’m guessing this was his subconscious mind remembering the Jolly Roger?

Anyway, this is the part when Lucy appears at his door, announcing that she’s his daughter, her mother is his True Love, and that she wants him to help her break the curse.  But Henry, because of his cursed memories, doesn’t believe her, because he thinks all his past experiences was just the book he wrote.

However, Lucy isn’t deterred, and somehow manages to steal Henry’s laptop, leaving him a note that if he wants it back, he has to come to Hyperion Heights, which is apparently the new Storybrooke.  Henry drives out to Hyperion Heights to get his laptop back.  As he drives into town, he passes by a stone troll statue, which is apparently a real sculpture in Seattle.  But I have a feeling that the stone troll will be important later somehow. I think I noticed something unusual about the troll’s eye.  After a rather weird encounter with New!Alice, who goes by Tillie in this world, Henry follows the instructions on Lucy’s note and enters a bar called Roni’s.  Turns out, the bar owner, Roni is actually cursed!Regina. Naturally, they don’t recognize each other.  But Roni/Regina tells Henry about Victoria Belfry, the alter ego of Parallel!Evil stepmother.  Victoria is the new big bad of S7, and possibly the one who cast this new curse. After all, we saw in the flashback portion that she has possession of a fairy wand.

In Hyperion Heights, Victoria is this powerful businesswoman who pretty much owns everything in town.  And she’s planning to buy Roni/Regina’s bar, too.  She also has Parallel!Cinder under strict observation.  Though in this world, Parallel!Cinder goes by Jacinda.  She works at a fried chicken restaurant, but her boss is a major jerk, and she ends up quitting after a confrontation with him, in which she tried to stand up to him in defense of a fellow employee.  At the start of the episode, Jacinda lives with Lucy and their roommate, Sabine (the cursed identity of Tiana from Princess and the Frog).  But when it’s discovered Lucy ran away to find Henry, Victoria swoops in and announces her intention to take permanent custody of the girl, stating that Jacinda is proving she’s not capable of properly providing for her daughter.

Meanwhile, Henry and Jacinda meet when Jacinda shows up at Roni/Regina’s bar to return the stolen laptop. Even though the curse prevents them from remembering each other, Henry and Jacinda still are able to have an instant connection.  As they talk, Jacinda mentions a dream she has to start a new life on this small island just outside Hyperion Heights.

Sometime later, Henry finds that his car has turned up stolen, which prevents him from leaving Hyperion Heights and returning to his Seattle apartment.  He goes to the local police station, but the cop at the front desk proves to be unwilling to help in anyway.  But they’re overheard by Officer Rogers, aka Cursed!Killian.  Rogers/Killian, even when cursed, is a good man, and probably the only one in the police department who is willing to help.  While he’s working on helping locate Henry’s stolen car, Victoria storms in, announcing Lucy is once again missing.  And Jacinda is also nowhere to be found.  Right away, Henry suspects, correctly, that Jacinda is planning to run away with Lucy and start over on the island she told him about, but he tries to stay silent, wanting to do right by both mother and daughter.  But Victoria manages to coerce him into spilling the beans.  As a result, Jacinda and Lucy are prevented from leaving, and are subsequently separated.  And Victoria manages to locate Henry’s stolen car.  Though, there’s a part of me that thinks Victoria was the one who took Henry’s car in the first place, planning to use it to trick him into betraying Jacinda’s confidence.

As the episode wraps up, we revisit the cast of characters.  Henry, whose cursed memories have led him to believe his wife and child were killed in a fire, journeys to the cemetery where they were buried.  But when he arrives at the site where he believed the cemetery was, he finds nothing but an empty lot.  And a random passerby informs him that there was never a cemetery there. So Henry’s probably realizing that something isn’t adding up.  Jacinda is forced to go back to the fried chicken restaurant with her tail between her legs.  Which admittedly bothered me.  Yeah, I know, Jacinda probably felt that she needed the job to try and earn custody of her daughter again, but it rubs me the wrong way that she had to go back to such a horrible boss.  I say she should go work at Roni/Regina’s bar.  As much as I don’t particularly like Regina, I’d rather have her for a boss than a guy like that. As for Rogers/Killian, because he ended up helping them track down Jacinda and Lucy, Victoria used her influence to get him promoted to the rank of detective.  But as a result of that, he’s now partnered to Detective Weaver, the new identity of Rumpelstiltskin.  I cannot see this as a good thing.  Because I just KNOW that Rumpelstiltskin is awake and knows full well who he is.  And it’s clear that he’s just as sadistic and cruel as ever.  We saw him earlier in this episode, waterboarding some poor slob.  So I’m really worried what he’ll do to Killian, considering Killian clearly doesn’t remember who Weaver is.

However, because this is OUAT, we are given a few crumbs of hope.  Roni/Regina, who clearly didn’t like how Victoria handled things with Jacinda and Lucy, decides to stand up to her by refusing to sell her bar. Rogers/Killian was given the new copy of the Storybook  that Lucy was carrying around, with the instructions to get rid of it.  But he has seemingly decided to hold on to it, instead.  Because he caught sight of an illustration of Emma within the book. And it’s clear from his expression that he recognizes her.  But of course, he can’t understand why because his cursed memories is preventing him from remembering.  As for Jacinda, she finds a coin while sweeping the restaurant floor and uses it to make a wish at a wishing well Lucy was visiting earlier in the episode.  This wish, I guess, helps weaken the curse a bit, as Henry starts to break through his writer’s block, and this flower garden, which I guess was rendered dead by the curse, starts to grow again.

So, that’s how this new chapter is starting out.  I admit, I’m a bit curious about how this all happened.  I’m wondering how Henry and Parallel!Cinder got from their first meeting to their current predicament. I’m curious as to what started this curse. So yeah, I’m sorta interested in where they go with this.  But it’s a bit convoluted.  They just push all these new characters on you, making it slightly hard to figure out who’s who.  So I’d say the jury’s still out on this one.  We’ll see what next week brings.

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