Recap / Once Upon a Time S5 E18 "Ruby Slippers"

Season 5, Episode 18:

Ruby Slippers

In flashbacks, Ruby and Mulan find themselves in Oz, where they meet Dorothy. After the three witness Zelena's return to Oz, they look for a way to defeat her once and for all. However, Dorothy mysteriously disappears, and Ruby's search for her new friend lands her in the Underworld, where she must find in her heart the means to save Dorothy from the Wicked Witch's curse.

Tropes

• Arc Words: The Charming family's "I will always find you" gets turned around by Dorothy and Ruby, but remains just as heartwarming: "You came back for me." "I'll always come back for you."
• Bait-and-Switch: After Zelena gives her the sleeping spell, it seems as if Belle intends Gold to use True Love's Kiss to waken her, once the contract is destroyed. But when he tells her he can't be the man she needs him to be, the one who will give up power for her love, she says she knows that: she wants him to bring her back to Maurice in the mortal world, so he can kiss her awake.
• Balancing Death's Books: Once again, the idea of "a life for a life" comes up, as Hook and David scratch his name over Snow's, to allow her to escape the Underworld.
• The Bus Came Back: After last being seen in DunBroch heading out on a search for other werewolves, Ruby and Mulan return, this time in Oz.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Once Dorothy and Ruby realize their feelings for each other, both of them are unable to articulate it—Ruby because she thinks Dorothy is disgusted by or afraid of her wolf form, Dorothy because she is afraid to lose Ruby to Zelena.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Belle is shown looking over the Her Handsome Hero book while feeling guilty over Gaston.
  • Zelena is shown landing right back in Oz after Regina banished her.
  • Zelena's flying monkeys seem to have been waiting in Oz to work for her again.
  • Mulan uses her own experience with Aurora to encourage Ruby not to wait to tell Dorothy how she feels.
  • Mulan says she was okay keeping an eye on Dorothy under a sleeping curse as "I have experience with this sort of thing."
  • The Blind Witch extracting payment in a previous episode of a mortal's breath gives Snow the idea of similarly bottling Auntie Em's kiss to be taken to waken Dorothy.
  • What Cruella told Regina about the meaning of the different types of gravestones comes true when, after Auntie Em is...poured into the River of Lost Souls, her stone is cracked.
  • Dorothy not having Toto when she was in Oz the last time is explained by him having been a gift her Aunt Em gave her after her return, when no one would believe her story.
• Cool Old Lady: Aunt Em protected Dorothy from being sent to an asylum by her family and gifted her with Toto shortly before dying.
• Couch Gag: The title card features Red Riding Hood.
• Deader than Dead: Hades turns Dorothy's aunt into a mindless, drifting soul by water from the Acheron, though "Last Rites" suggests that this is reversible. Which means there is hope for Milah too (but also that some villains could return as well...).
• Deal with the Devil: Pun surely intended, but Cruella tries to get Charming to make one with her—that she would allow the phone to stay, at least long enough for one last call to baby Neal, if he would let her have time alone with Henry and the quill. Refused, of course.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Ruby. She had thought what she needed was to find her pack, leading her from Storybrooke to DunBroch to Oz...but it turns out it's love she was looking for.
• Double-Meaning Title: The title seems to be a reference to the magic slippers from the MGM movie...but as has been shown before and remains true in this episode, in Once Upon a Time they are silver like in the books. Instead "Ruby Slippers" refers to Ruby (since the episode revolves around her), who is the one to use them in the end, and serves as a rare official, non-fanon example of Idiosyncratic Ship Naming for the Ruby/Dorothy ship.invoked
• Fate Worse than Death: Belle cites the trope verbatim describing what happened to Gaston.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • When Regina and later Belle visit Zelena to talk, she's drinking whiskey. The brand on the bottle says "Moloch"—Moloch is the biblical name of a god associated with child sacrifice.
  • The shot of Henry writing Ruby and Dorothy's story is close enough to read when paused.
• Hide Your Pregnancy: A double one as Snow leaving for Storybrooke and Belle putting herself under a sleeping curse gives excuses for the absences of Ginnifer Goodwin and Emilie de Ravin's pregnancies.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The enchantment Hades put on Killian's hook so he could carve names on the gravestones for him remains—allowing him to do what Emma couldn't, scratching out and replacing a name rather than erasing it entirely. This lets Snow escape the Underworld. However, the fact this leaves David there, easily a target of James (right down to a malicious Twin Switch) may also have played into Hades's hands...
• Hope Crusher:
  • Hades has Cruella rip out the phone that connects to the living world as he feels it offers too much hope.
  • Hades turns Aunt Em into a pile of water to prevent her from helping save Dorothy.
• Irony: Two episodes ago Belle refused to trust Zelena...but she trusts Gold even less, and so in this one she goes to Zelena for help. The fact she is appealing as one mother to another (and that Zelena has plenty of reason to want to spoke Gold's wheel) puts it in a bit more perspective.
• Misery Poker: Played for Drama, but otherwise the case for Dorothy telling Ruby that her family mistreated her and tried to commit her for her stories of Oz, only Aunt Em believed in her, and she died not long after—only for Ruby to turn around and explain about being run out of her village via Torches and Pitchforks after killing her boyfriend.
• Must Make Amends:
  • After the events of the previous episode, Belle is determined to do this—by finding her own way to save their baby rather than depending on Gold and his dark methods.
  • Zelena seems to be at least attempting this as her only means of getting her baby back from Regina and Robin—by proving herself worthy rather than going through Hades to do it. After she attempts to flee in order to keep from facing Ruby (because she's convinced knowledge of what she did will keep Regina from ever believing she could perform a Heel–Face Turn), Regina instead convinces her that it is both possible and something she believes can happen—if Zelena stays to face the music and does what she can to help.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Ruby wonders if Oz has a lot of singing "like the movie."
  • Zelena threatens Toto to force Dorothy to give up the slippers. And initially has him inside a wicker basket.
  • Dorothy says that when she told her family about Oz, they tried to have her committed. This also happened to her in Return to Oz, as well as to Alice in Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.
  • Dorothy and Ruby run through a field of poppies that can make you sleepy, similarly to the movie.
  • When Zelena reveals what she did to Dorothy, it at first appears that rather than just showing them her image, she has actually trapped Dorothy in a mirror...which is what happened to Ozma in Return to Oz.
  • The episode title, although see the subversion under Double-Meaning Title above.
  • The gathering of Munchkins around a sleep-spelled Dorothy's bier is very reminiscent of the Seven Dwarves doing the same for Snow White.
• No Bisexuals: Averted—Ruby, who had a boyfriend Peter, has now discovered her true love in Dorothy.
• Parental Substitute: Aunt Em took Dorothy in after the rest of her family tried to have her committed for talking about Oz.
• Plot Hole: Minor one, but while obviously Zelena took the slippers from Dorothy after cursing her and used them to get back to Storybrooke, it is not revealed how exactly after this Ruby was able to follow her by cyclone the way she said; the only possible explanation seems to be that Ruby was able to recreate the cyclone spell using ingredients/books/etc. in Zelena's now-empty chambers in the Emerald City. Although the scrap of Dorothy's gingham dress she was clutching probably had something to do with it too.
• Power Trio: Ruby, Mulan and Dorothy.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • Because Gold and Belle are doing their own thing, they aren't aware that Ruby has the magic slippers, which could've been used to bring Belle back to Storybrooke and keep their baby safe from Hades.
  • If Ruby had simply admitted her feelings for Dorothy earlier and volunteered to give her True Love's Kiss in the first place, instead of waffling and trying to get Auntie Em to do it first, Auntie wouldn't have been gotten by Hades.
• Put on a Bus: Snow uses the magic slippers to take Ruby to Oz, then go back to Storybrooke.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Zelena tries to pull this to escape the consequences of what she did to Dorothy, only to be stopped from using the slippers by Regina. Oddly, she gives Zelena the same advice that Hades did, that she needs to face what she did rather than run away. Despite her envy of Regina, her experience with earning redemption (and Hades's untrustworthiness) seems to convince Zelena to stay to try and make amends. Although the end of the episode leaves this somewhat ambiguous.
• This Is Reality: Mulan notes that Oz isn't "a book or a movie."
• True Love's Kiss: After trying to use a familial version (again) in the form of Auntie Em, the kiss to free Dorothy from the sleeping curse turns out to come from Ruby.
• Villainous Demotivator: After turning Aunt Em to water, Hades warns the inhabitants of the Underworld to spread the word that this is what will happen to anyone who tries to deal with the outsiders.
  Hades: It's hard to be a Savior when no one wants you to save them.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Aunt Em is turned into water by Hades barely a minute after she appears onscreen.
• We Need a Distraction: While her full motivations are not yet clear, it seems at least one reason Zelena went to Hades and told him she was reconsidering his offer was to keep him from noticing and doing anything to stop either Hook changing the name on the gravestone or Ruby using the slippers to escape.