Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: A- | 4 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Let My Wrath Be Unleashed
By Cindy McLennan | Season 1 | Episode 2 | Aired on 10.30.2011
Queenie stands around a fire, with her father and other fairy tale villains. They're in a creepy, dead corner of the Enchanted Forest. She blahs about putting an end to "our" misery. "Today we claim victory, and move to a new, better realm -- a place where we can finally win." A blind crone who must be the villain from Hansel and Gretel ask if they'll be happy. Queenie guarantees it, of course we've already seen her word is far from her bond. She needs a lock of hair from all the horribles. To motivate the villains to cooperate, she magics up some twisty branches on the dead trees surrounding them. Snakelike, the trees surround the horribles. The crone, a dwarf or gnome (I like thinking of him as a dwarf in this scene, because of the Narnia connection, and a gnome in the next, because... you'll see why), and a giant (from Jack and the Beanstalk) all cut off locks of their hair and hand them to Queenie. The trees resume their normal shape. Father hands Queenie a jeweled box. In it is the final ingredient -- the heart of her prized steed. She tosses it in the fire and charges: "Let my wrath be unleashed." The winds whip up. The fire turns a blackish green. The wind ceases. The fire dies. The dwarf-gnome laughs like hell and taunts Queenie for her failure. Queenie immediately turns him to stone. See? Narnia.
Our World, Mayoral Manse, Exterior, Garden: There's the same little stone dwarf-gnome. Ahahaha. Well played, Show. Well played. Just then Sidney (also played by Giancarlo Esposito, i.e. the Magic Mirror) finds Regina picking apples from her prized tree. He holds up the local paper, Storybrooke Daily Mirror (ha), and says, "The Mirror strikes again." He's done a hatchet job on Emma Swan, but what Regina really wants in intel. There's not much intel to tell. Emma was a foster kid. She got in trouble as a kid, but since then she's been clean. She doesn't like to stay in one place. Oh and she had Henry while she was in Phoenix. Pay attention to that, because we're going to need it later. Think about the Phoenix of mythology, not just the city that would be America's oven, if only ovens were that hot. What does a phoenix do? It's a firebird that burns to death and is reborn from the ashes of its former self. Regina is dissatisfied. She tells Sydney that he's found her nothing of value, therefore he has no value to her, and she warns that when something is of no value to her, she throws it away. Sydney promises to do better.