Season 4, Episode 4:
The Apprentice
After Emma asks Hook out on a real first date, Hook visits Mr. Gold and asks for his hand to be reattached so that he can embrace her with both hands. But magic always comes with a price. Henry and Mary Margaret try to offer hope to Regina when she becomes frustrated over not being able to find a cure to save a frozen Marian, and Will Scarlet attempts to break into the Storybrooke library to find a special book. Meanwhile, back in the Fairy Tale Land that was, Rumplestiltskin is after a magical box that the Sorcerer’s apprentice is guarding, and he may use Elsa’s sister Anna to help him get it.
Tropes
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Lampshaded twice by Rumple/Gold when he is told by someone that they'd "do anything" to get his help. "I love when people say that."
- Book Ends: The episode starts with the old man wiping the floor with a broom and ends with Henry doing the same in Rumple's shop.
- Continuity Nod: The book Will Scarlet stole from the library was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and the page he had torn out showed the Red Queen, all referencing his status as the Knave of Hearts and his former Love Interest in the spinoff show.
- Couch Gag: The title card features the Apprentice's walking broom.
- Double-Meaning Title: Refers to either the old man or Henry.
- Genre Savvy: Rumplestiltskin sends Anna to put something in the Apprentice's tea, implying without actually saying it that it will kill him—knowing that someone good like her would not be able to do this, so that when she withholds what she thought was poison but was actually an antidote, he would be turned into a mouse. This same act, a good person overcoming temptation, would give him the ingredient he needed to get past the barrier to the box. When Anna turns out to be Genre Savvy enough to outsmart him by not having been tempted, he instead provokes her into trying to kill him to get out of their deal...and it's this temptation which gives him his ingredient when she overcomes it, because she cannot kill when it's something someone she loves, Elsa, would never want.Anna: You take the most precious thing in this world, love...and turn it into a weapon.Rumplestiltskin: Love is a weapon, dearie. Always has been. It's just so few people know how to wield it.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: Thanks to the temptation of the Hat, Gold is heading once more back into villainy.
- Hypocrite: Gold suggests Hook is and always will be a villain, and when he blackmails him one too many times ends up forcing him to be his lifelong servant...when the first thing he asks Hook to do is to help him capture the Apprentice and absorb his powers with the Hat. Granted, Hook brought this on himself with his blackmails, but quite clearly the pirate isn't the one who hasn't actually stopped sliding back into villainy.
- Idiot Ball: Hook thinks it's a good idea to continue to blackmail Rumpelstiltskin, the Dark One. He pays for that arrogance.
- Magic Feather: Hook's hand is a dark inversion of the Magic Feather: believing Gold's implications that the hand carries his former villainy within it, Hook suffers a nocebo effect.
- Meaningful Echo: When Anna and Hook beg Rumpelstilskin that they will do whatever it takes to resolve their problems, he replies "Oh, I love it when they say that.".
- More than Mind Control/Your Mind Makes It Real: After Gold warns Hook of what reattaching his hand would do to him, and he starts exhibiting violent and murderous tendencies, he returns to demand the hand and its influence be removed—only for Gold to tell him it wasn't the hand, he did it all himself (though the power of suggestion certainly helped).
- Mythology Gag: The Apprentice was turned into a mouse. Can't be a coincidence. Also the broom, which first appears normally for the Apprentice to sweep with, then is enchanted by Gold (to track him down) just as it was in Fantasia, and then is finally shown being used by Henry at the pawn shop while a familiar Leitmotif plays.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: While it was obviously necessary to keep Rumple from gaining unlimited power, Anna taking the Sorcerer's Hat with her back to Arendelle not only ensures Rumple will see her and her sister as enemies to be eliminated at the first opportunity, it means she's taken the one object known to be able to remove people's magical powers back where Elsa is...with an aunt who is prone to see all non-magical people as enemies.* And of course, because she inadvertently helped Rumple get what he needed to break the enchantment blocking him from the hat, this also means if he ever manages to get hold of it again (as he has in the present), he's already primed to make his next diabolical move.
- Out-Gambitted:
- Not only does Anna manage to outsmart Rumple's first plan when she reveals she wasn't tempted to poison the Apprentice, but after she is tricked into giving him what he wants, she takes advantage of the mouse's attack and manages to get hold of the Dark One's dagger, order him to give her the box, change the mouse back, send her back to Arendelle, and promise never to come after her and harm her. After she vanishes, Rumple actually loses composure in a furious scream.
- On the other hand, in the present Gold: uses the power of suggestion to make Hook think his reattached hand is turning him evil again; proves he has no leverage over him by revealing Belle has the real dagger now; forces Hook into an open-ended deal to remove the hand; reveals there was never anything to make Hook act that way except himself; makes Hook help him capture the Apprentice; removes himself from the security footage of said capture so only Hook is shown; and blackmails Hook with revealing this to Emma, thus making Hook his lifelong servant.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Henry decides to go undercover in Gold's shop, thinking that the fact he now has his happy ending with Belle despite being a villain means he has learned how to change his story, and thus must know who the author of the storybook is. As the rest of the season shows, Gold most certainly has not changed his story or stopped being a villain, however happy he is with Belle—but he does know about the author, even if not knowing precisely who or where he is, and he certainly knows both how to find him and how to get him to change someone's story.
- Secret Test of Character: Oddly subverted in that Anna failing to give the poison (actually an antidote) to the old man was part of Rumple's plan to take the hat.
- Shout-Out: The Apprentice's house number in Storybrooke is 1940, the same as the year Fantasia came out.
