Recap / Once Upon a Time S6 E4 "Strange Case"

Season 6, Episode 4:

Strange Case

The Evil Queen seeks to get her hands on Dr. Jekyll's serum, while Snow White has her first day back as a school teacher. Meanwhile, Hook tries to save Belle from Mr. Gold while in the Victorian London of years past, the origins of the conflict between Jekyll and Hyde are revealed.

Tropes

• Aborted Arc: Jekyll is killed off right after being hired by Mary Margaret alongside Frankenstein to flesh out the high school's science faculty in the previous episode.
• Adaptational Heroism: Relatively, at least. Hyde turns out to be a Tragic Villain motivated by a genuine love for Mary.
• Adaptational Villainy: By contrast, Jekyll is driven to rage when he learns Mary loves Hyde but not him, which leads to him accidentally killing her. He also tried to murder Belle as revenge on Rumple.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Jekyll's love, Mary, confesses to Hyde that she could never feel for Henry because of his work. She does, however, feel far more for the passionate and darker Hyde. When she finds out Hyde and Jekyll are the same person, she screams she would never love someone as "weak" as Henry, which leads to her fatal fall.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Poor Jekyll never had a chance with Mary because his attitude and outlook on the human condition disgusts her. Hyde also has no chance because possessive Jekyll, once he learns of this, won't let him have her.
• Bedmate Reveal: How Jekyll discovers what Hyde was up to with Mary the night before, and how she discovers they are the same man. The consequences are tragically dire.
• Beware the Nice Ones: It turns out Jekyll has been the true darker side of the two all along, who killed his beloved Mary by accident and is out to kill Belle for what he feels is revenge on Rumple for "causing" all this.
• Berserk Button: When Hyde cries over the loss of Mary (whom he truly loved), an outraged Rumple tries to strangle him for being so weak.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: Inverted version; Shirin speaks to Snow White of the princess of her kingdom who was weak, didn't fully embrace who she was, and thus brought the kingdom to ruin, as an example to get her to change her teaching methods. Turns out, of course, that Shirin is the princess in question (Jasmine) and insulting herself thanks to her failure (whether real or perceived).
• Can't Live Without You: Thanks to them being the same person, when Jekyll ends up fatally stabbed and leaks Blood from the Mouth, the same happens to Hyde before he collapses.
• Continuity Cameo: Mary's father is Dr. Lydgate, the head of the asylum Alice was locked up at.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Gold explains he sought out Jekyll in the first place in hopes the serum would destroy what he saw as the "weak" part of himself falling in love with Belle.
  • When Jekyll asks Rumple why he has come to him and is giving him aid, he responds in a very similar manner to how he explained himself to Dr. Frankenstein, that he had "a vested interest in your work." It's also a Call-Back to Season One, when Gold told Mary Margaret (after she hired him as her attorney to defend her from the charge for Kathryn's murder) that he was "invested in your future."
  • Regina asks Emma to kill her if it proves too difficult to stop The Evil Queen and notes how it's the same request that Emma made to her after becoming The Dark One.
  • Hook calls back to both Ariel and Ursula when he leaves a seashell with Belle and says she can blow it to summon him for help (it's connected with Ursula's shell necklace he's wearing).
• Cool Teacher: Mary Margaret is thrown when her students react badly to her usual teaching method. She's told that she's going by the old methods from when she was cursed, and has to be more herself. She does so by showing Newton's third law via an archery lesson.
• Couch Gag: The title card features the clock tower of Westminster Palace.
• Cry for the Devil: This episode is all about the tragedy of Hyde and how he became a monster because of Jekyll's monstrous actions. Had it not been for his other half killing Mary, Hyde might have even been a good man.
• Destination Defenestration: Jekyll's rage results in Mary smashing through the window and falling to her demise.
• Deus ex Machina: It's not explained how Hook got there Just in Time to save Belle and (unintentionally) kill Jekyll, though it's entirely possible he either didn't fully leave the waterfront area (due to not buying Jekyll's story or some other reason) or ran into Emma, David, and Regina. It's also possible that even as the seashell broke, it still carried Belle's cry for help to him.
• Disc-One Final Boss: It turns out Hyde isn't the overarching villain for the season, as he doesn't survive the episode.
• Enemy Mine: Emma suggests one of these to Regina, claiming they could get Gold to help Jekyll complete his serum because it seems to be the only way to kill Hyde, something Gold wants as much as they do. But it turns out that despite this, Gold is actually working with the Evil Queen because of his previous deal with her—she had sworn not to harm Belle, but that would go out the window if he didn't help her and Hyde.
• Entitled to Have You: Jekyll towards Mary, because he had feelings for her and thinks she was "supposed to love" him and not Hyde; and Rumplestiltskin towards Belle because he thinks she will inevitably love him and come back to him out of necessity even if she wants nothing to do with him.
• Everyone Has Standards: Lydgate, a man who practices the most barbaric forms of surgery and is committing adultery with his assistant, considers Jekyll's experiments dangerous.
• Forced to Watch: Hyde uses the dagger to force Gold to take them to the Jolly Roger. There, he knows Jekyll will kill Belle to get back at Gold, and thanks to the dagger, Gold can neither stop Jekyll nor bring down the protection spell to let Belle escape, so can only watch it happen.
• For Your Own Good: Gold casts a spell to lock Belle onto the Jolly Roger for her protection. When Belle protests, Gold says "you'll thank me one day."
• Genre Savvy:
  • When Gold warns Belle that Hyde is after her, Belle immediately asks what he did to Hyde in the past to anger him.
  • Regina refuses to hand the remainder of the serum to Gold.
  • Due to her experiences with Rumplestiltskin, Belle immediately recognises Jekyll saying Mary would have been his as a clear sign that he's a man who sees the woman he supposedly cares about as an object, and that he's making himself look better than he is with lies.
• Gone Horribly Right: Gold puts a protective spell over the Jolly Roger to keep out Hyde...only for Jekyll to be the one to attack Belle, and the spell also stops Belle from leaving.
• If I Can't Have You…: Jekyll, once he learns Mary not only loves Hyde but will never love him, ends up carrying out this trope by accident by knocking her out the window—although the way he was struggling with her and his ranting about her being "supposed to love me, not him" suggests he might have ended up doing it willfully anyway.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Happens to Jekyll in the end (and by extension Hyde, just without the actual impalement).
• Important Haircut: Gold does this early in the episode after looking in the mirror. Everyone comments on it, especially both Reginas who say it brings out his eyes. Subverted later when Belle tells Gold he cut his hair short because he hates the sight of himself following her rejection of him. The real life reason for the change is that Robert Carlyle was filming the sequel to Trainspotting and cut his hair to reprise his role as Francis Begbie.
• Inadvertent Entrance Cue: Grumpy snaps at Jekyll how dwarves are defenders of the kingdom.
  Grumpy: We are the wall between chaos and calm!
  Evil Queen: How nice. Because chaos is here.
• Irony: Gold, unable to do anything thanks to Hyde and the dagger, gets to watch Belle be stalked by a vengeful Jekyll...only to have her be saved by his own long-time rival and enemy, Hook, who had once been the one to take Belle away from him in the first place.
• It Only Works Once: Hyde easily avoids the same baton Emma had used on him. He openly says "you didn't expect me to fall for that again, did you?"
• Jekyll & Hyde: This is the episode.
  • Turns out that Hyde and Jekyll are more than just evil and good. Jekyll in Hyde's words is "all mind, but no heart".
  • Gold tries to kill Hyde but it doesn't work as he's still linked to Jekyll. Likewise, the Evil Queen survives because Regina is still alive.
  • Ends up being a twist as Jekyll turns out to be the true monster.
  • When Jekyll finally dies, Hyde also dies.
• Loophole Abuse: The Evil Queen agrees to not hurt Belle for Gold...only for Hyde to rumble he's not held by any such deal. Also, Hyde uses his previous deal with Gold (info on how to wake Belle in exchange for power to do whatever he wanted in Storybrooke) to claim the locket without anything in return.
• Loves My Alter Ego: Jekyll discovers this when he wakes up next to Mary. It doesn't end well.
• Motive Misidentification: Since in most adaptations of the story Jekyll intended to destroy the darker impulses in himself (and in this version he wanted to control them, only to later want to destroy Hyde in the Land of Untold Stories), it seems likely Rumple wanted the serum for the same reason—that because he couldn't receive Belle's Kiss of True Love without losing his Dark One powers, he thought he could use the serum to keep his darker impulses buried and under control, thus letting him be with her. But instead, it's the same as Jekyll only in reverse—rather than wanting to destroy passion and desire as beastly and evil, he wants to destroy his feelings for Belle because Love Is a Weakness.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Rumple came up with the name of Jekyll's alter ego as a play on him "hiding" in plain sight.
  • One of the children in Mary Margaret's class has a straw hat and is credited as Tom Sawyer.
• One Drink Will Kill the Baby: When Hook suggests to Belle they break open a bottle of rum, she snaps, "I'm pregnant."
• Out-Gambitted:
  • For the umpteenth time, Gold manages to get one over on Regina, this time by forcing her to pour the serum on the Dagger or he'll crush Jekyll's heart.
  • Only then, Gold is outwitted when he tries to stab Hyde with the dagger. Hyde just brushes it off, revealing he had switched the serum for a fake to render the "poison" useless.
• The Reveal:
  • Jekyll is from Alice's London and was sent to the Land of Untold Stories by Rumplestiltskin in retaliation for what Rumple viewed as his "failure" and wasting his time (since the serum didn't work as he hoped it would).
  • It was Jekyll who killed his love Mary (albeit by accident). He then used the potion to turn into Hyde just as Mary's father burst in so Hyde would be blamed for it. Meaning Jekyll has been the darker side of the persona all along.
  • Shirin, the new teacher's aide who gives Mary Margaret advice, is actually Jasmine...and is working with the Oracle to find Aladdin.
  • The only way to kill one's dark half, even once it is separate from you, is to die yourself. This understandably upsets Regina.
  • Also, we find out just why Hyde, quite understandably, hates Gold's guts.
• Stolen MacGuffin Reveal: Jekyll thought he was clever, concealing a vial of the serum from Hyde in his jacket. Turns out Hyde was one step ahead of him, as usual, and switched it while he was knocked out.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Presumably, after being framed by Jekyll, Hyde decided that if he was seen by others as a monster, he might as well become one.
• Tragic Keepsake: Mary's cameo locket, which both Jekyll and Hyde have a strong emotional attachment to. Ironically, it turns out that Hyde actually loved her and Jekyll, in possessive stalker fashion, ended up killing her (accidentally) when he learned of her love for Hyde; the locket got torn off in the struggle and left in his hands as evidence of his sin.
• Two-Person Love Triangle: Jekyll ended up in one of these with Hyde and Mary thanks to Loves My Alter Ego. It doesn't end well.
• Yandere: Jekyll ended up being one of these toward Mary.