Season 4 Episode 12:
Darkness on the Edge of Town
With Gold banished from town, the residents of Storybrooke attempt to resume their normal lives. Hook and Belle search for a way to release the fairies from the Sorcerer’s hat, while Emma, Henry and Regina continue to look for clues that could lead them to the Author. But when a terrifying darkness descends on the town, Emma and Regina are forced to confront the true nature of evil. Meanwhile, in New York, Gold and Ursula enlist Cruella De Vil to join their cause.
Tropes
- Batman Gambit: How Rumplestiltskin and the Queens of Darkness get into Storybrooke. Rumplestiltskin poses as a professor trading emails with Belle who translates the spell to let the fairies out of the hat, but the spell releases the Chernabog as well. And only Cruella and Ursula know how to defeat it, so the others have to let them into Storybrooke out of good faith. This allows them to let Rumplestiltskin come back into Storybrooke after dark.
- The Chessmaster: Rumplestiltskin, per usual. He screwed over the Queens of Darkness in the past, and he's still able to convince them to work with him again.
- Couch Gag: The title card features Cruella's car.
- Dark Secret: Snow White and Prince Charming have one involving a previous encounter with the Queens of Darkness, or at lest with Ursula and Cruella. Whatever it is, Snow is willing to threaten Ursula and Cruella with death to keep them quiet about it.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The landlord for the Author's house is listed as "Yen Sid." (Spell it backwards.)
- Funny Background Event: Ursula and Cruella impatiently waiting to be let into town as the heroes defeat the Chernabog, and then debate whether they should do it.
- He's Back!: The moment Rumplestiltskin crosses the town line he ditches the cane and regains his strut, showing that the Dark One is back.
- It Only Works Once: Trapping a magical being inside the Sorcerer's Hat—once you've been released, you can never be trapped again. Good news for Blue and the other fairies, and the Apprentice once they can get him out. Bad news when it turns out the Chernabog got released too.
- Logical Weakness: For anyone outside Storybrooke who usually has magic, they're now vulnerable...which means Cruella and Ursula can threaten Gold with death and he can't stop them. At the same time it means the heroes can be persuaded to trust Cruella and Ursula in turn—they can use their information about the Chernabog but never have to let the women in (with only Emma's belief in honesty and integrity, and Regina's self-awareness of how hypocritical it would be to deny other villains a chance at redemption, to make them do so), because without magic Cruella and Ursula are harmless—and can't even see the town or get inside where the magic is. And of course since the Chernabog can't exist without magic, luring him across the town line will eliminate him as a threat.
- Lured into a Trap: Cruella and Ursula each think one of the others has done this to her when they arrive at Maleficent's castle at what seemed to be her invitation, only to find out she knows nothing of it and is ready to kill them for trespassing. Turns out Rumplestiltskin was the one who got them all together...and considering his ultimate actions in the cave of the Chernabog, the trope is quite correct—just a little more time-delayed than most examples.
- Mythology Gag: The vault of evil the Chernabog is guarding is on Bald Mountain, and when he reveals himself it's by unfolding from within his wings when he appeared to be a peak of rock, just like in Fantasia.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Belle finds what seems to be the spell to release the fairies from the Hat and, with the help of an Oxford professor, translates it so that Regina can set them free. Unfortunately, this also releases the Chernabog. The trope is enforced, however, since Gold was posing as the professor and thus made Belle "break it."
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The Chernabog was inside the Sorcerer's Hat. Implying the Sorcerer must have fought him so as to imprison him...
- We later learn the Sorcerer was trapped inside a tree in Camelot for five hundred years, so it would have been his Apprentice who imprisoned Chernabog in the Hat—which is actually even more awesome.
- Ontological Mystery: At least as far as Regina and Emma are concerned, the explanations for who the Author is, how and why he wrote the storybook, and how they could find him and persuade him to change it, are this—since even though they know how and why they ended up in Storybrooke, they don't know or understand the larger cosmic narrative they seem to be part of. It's also somewhat this to the Blue Fairy/Mother Superior, since while she knows of the Author, she doesn't know exactly how or why he wrote the book either—and thanks to his disappearance, she doesn't even know where he is.
- Plot Tailored to the Party: It most likely wasn't designed specifically for them, but the barriers surrounding the Dark Curse are such that Rumplestiltskin needs the Queens of Darkness to get it—a swarm of lethal beetles that Cruella's animal-control ability can disperse, dragon fire that Maleficent can absorb, and a crevasse that Ursula's tentacles can reach across.
- Reset Button: For a reason never revealed, and despite the fact Storybrooke's existence is still tied to the second casting of the Dark Curse by Snow White, Mary Margaret has gone back to teaching in this episode and Regina has resumed her position as mayor.
- The Reveal: Unlike what was implied early in season 1, the Dark Curse was neither written nor created by Rumplestiltskin, but was taken from a hidden vault of evil. Who actually created it or how is yet to be revealed...
- Shout-Out: The fried chicken restaurant from Lost makes an appearance, complete with its "Have a cluckity-cluck-cluck day" slogan.
- String Theory: Hook and Belle have one in the library, trying to put together information about the Author so they can find him (and figure out how to free the fairies and Apprentice from the hat).
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Ursula and Mr. Gold don't really get along. Nearly every single one of their scenes in the present day are them sniping at each other.
- Villain Decay: Chernabog, to some degree. While frightening in appearance and otherwise well-designed, and strong enough that Emma and Regina together cannot defeat him, he is depicted here merely as a creature that "devours the heart of whoever is most susceptible to evil" rather than an all-powerful demon/Satan figure. He's also rather easily defeated by being tricked into flying across the town line, although whether this destroyed him or merely left him unable to cohere isn't clear. (And in the Enchanted Forest, while the Queens of Darkness aren't strong enough to destroy him either, they're still fairly easily able to outwit him, distracting him with Maleficent's heart while the others escape out a crack in the rock, then having Ursula pull her out with a tentacle to where he apparently can't follow.)
- Villains Out Shopping: Cruella and Ursula hilariously stop to order Double Cluck Combos at a drivethrough on their way to Storybrooke (with Gold also in the car, unamused).
- Wham Line:
- Mother Superior says the Sorcerer and the Author are two different people.
- Rumplestiltskin says they have to revive Maleficent.
- He also says that the Chernabog was after Emma and not Regina.
- Wham Shot: Chernabog perched atop the clock tower.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Played with. Rumplestiltskin used a variant of this trope. He left the Queens of Darkness behind because he still needed them for one last thing: satisfying the Chernabog with another form of evil so that it did not go after him.
