ONCE UPON A TIME: Hansel & Gretel Search “True North”

The theme of parents and children continued this week on Once Upon a Time as the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale gets the Storybrooke treatment.

Hansel and Gretel are out helping their father, a woodcutter, when an excursion to collect kindling has them losing him. He gave Gretel his compass, so they could always find each other, but suddenly it no longer works. Enter the Evil Queen. The children encounter her on the road and tell her that they’re searching for their father. The Queen offers to help find their father if they steal something from the Blind Witch for her, with the warning that “No matter how tempting, don’t eat anything.”

The witch’s house is indeed the gingerbread house of legend and it looks delicious. The pair sneak in and Gretel tiptoes over to the fireplace to snatch the satchel that the Queen wants. But Hansel can’t resist an enormous, blue-frosted cupcake. With just one bite the Blind Witch (Emma Caulfield) wakes up and captures them. And she is CREEPY. She locks the children in a cell and asks if they want to be basted with “Gravy or butter. GRAVY or BUTTER.” Gave me the shivers. Gretel keeps her wits about her, though (she obviously got the brains), and tricks the witch, allowing Hansel to escape the cell. The boy almost mucks it up again, but they manage to throw her into the oven instead and get away. Watching through her Magic Mirror, the Queen throws a firebolt through the mirror, into the oven, and burns the Blind Witch to a crisp. I know she deserved a fate like the one she visited on countless children, but EW.

Back at the castle, the children give the satchel to the Queen, who reveals that prize inside: a poisoned apple. In her glee over obtaining the weapon she needs to wield against her enemy, she offers to adopt Hansel and Gretel instead of finding their father. Gretel refuses and the Evil Queen is both angry and confused. With the children banished to who-knows-where, the Queen awaits a prisoner while watching Snow White in the Magic Mirror. Snow is now surrounded by Dwarves. The moment is cut off when the prisoner arrives: Hansel & Gretel’s father. She took him in order to manipulate the children into sneaking into the Blind Witch’s cottage. Confused and hurt, the Queen wants to know why they turned her down in favor of their “blind faith” in him. “Because we’re family,” he says. “Family always finds each other.” She releases him so they can find each other…but as with everything the Evil Queen does, they don’t get a happy ending. We don’t see where the father is placed, but the kids wake up to find that they are in the middle of a huge forest.

Twins Ava and Nicholas Zimmer – homeless and having recently lost their mother to cancer – use Henry to shoplift candy, cereal, and toothpaste, which, unfortunately, gets Regina involved in their situation. Without a father (his name is not listed on their birth certificates), Regina wants to ship them to Boston to go into the foster care system, presumably lifting the curse long enough for them to leave Storybrooke. On the other hand, Emma is determined to find their father. As she explains to Mary Margaret, she is intimately familiar with the foster care system and will do whatever she can to keep them together.

In light of Ava and Nicholas’ situation, Henry asks for info about his own father. Emma tells him that his father was a firefighter who died saving a family from an apartment fire. Of course those are lies, but given the chance to recant, she decides to let Henry think his father was a hero. Henry quite helpfully reminds Emma that Ava and Nicholas’ father must still be around because no one can leave Storybrooke, and no strangers (other than Emma) have ever come to Storybrooke. Good call, little man.

Acting on a hunch, Emma shows the children her blanket, the one we saw back in the pilot when the Prince placed his baby daughter in the wardrobe. She held on to it through all the children’s homes and foster families, and she asks if they have anything of their father’s. Ava has a compass that their mother said was their father’s. Emma uses the compass to track down their father, a local mechanic played by Nicholas Lea. Emma gives him minimal information, and somehow he still doesn’t want to claim the children. I don’t know, it seems like pretty slim “evidence” to prove that he’s their dad, but let’s give the show the benefit of the doubt. His reason for not taking the children is that he didn’t know they existed, that he doesn’t know “how to be a father.”

Emma is devastated at the turn of events, and when Regina comes to check that she’s doing her job and taking the kids to Boston, she reluctantly loads them up into the car. Right at the city limits, the car stalls. This has to be a coincidence or part of the curse, but as a result, Emma calls the local mechanic – the children’s father. One encounter, and he’s ready to take on the role as their dad.

It’s a tidy resolution, but it gave us a chance to get some backstory on Emma without the convenient flashbacks to Fairytale Land. It also gives Emma the opportunity to tell Mary Margaret that Henry thinks they are mother and daughter. I’m kind of surprised that she revealed that so soon, but it was a cute scene as the two joked about the possibility: “I have a kid! You’d think I’d remember that.”

And just when it seems that the revelations are over, as Emma and Henry chat out by her patrol car, a mysterious man pulls up on a motorcycle. A stranger. Now who could that be?

New characters: Hansel, Gretel, Blind Witch

Next week: The mysterious stranger gets the Storybrooke welcome, and Mary Margaret & David and Snow & the Prince deal with their feelings for each other in alternate universes.

Once Upon a Time airs Sundays at 8/7c on ABC.