Recap / Once Upon a Time S7 E17 Chosen

Season 7, Episode 17:

Chosen

Kelly comes face-to-face with The Candy Killer after someone she loves is taken hostage. Meanwhile, Samdi uses Drew to execute a deadly plan. In a flashback, Zelena learns a harsh lesson after an encounter with Hansel and Gretel goes awry.

Tropes

• Alone with the Psycho: Continuing from the previous episode, but with a twist — rather than simply killing Henry, Nick wants him to help find and get revenge on Zelena, and so their scenes as captor and prisoner instead play out as Nick insistently trying to get the information he seeks while Henry tries to play along until he can figure out a way to escape.
• Appeal to Worse Problems: Of all things, the Blind Witch uses this on Hansel and Gretel in the episode's opener, when they won't eat any more of her gingerbread cookies (because she's trying to fatten them up for eating): "Don't you know there are starving children in Arendelle?"
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • At the start of the episode, Zelena appears at the witch's cottage, and it seems she's there to rescue Hansel and Gretel. But it turns out this flashback is still back in the past, pre-Heel–Face Turn (rather than after Robin helped her get her magic back in the present), so since she's still wicked, she's just there to drive a rival witch out of Oz.
  • When Zelena returns to the cottage, Hansel and Gretel are nowhere to be found, only Hansel's hat, so she believes the witch killed and ate them. While the viewers know this isn't true, it isn't yet clear whether something else terrible happened to them instead... until she gets back to Ivo's place and finds out they escaped on their own and got back ahead of her...
  • Thanks to both the original Grimm fairy tale and what Gretel and Nick said in the previous episodes, the viewer is primed to think the Blind Witch is the one who burned Hansel via her oven. Instead it turned out to be Zelena, partly in self-defense, partly out of a rejected rage.
  • After Nick gets taken out, Kelly confesses (most of) the truth to Chad, and it appears he's going to take back the ring and leave, either out of disgust over who she used to be and what she did or because he simply can't handle all the revelations. Instead he stands by her and still wants to marry her.
  • Samdi shows up at the police station, and it appears he might be going to release Nick so he can continue killing witches for him. But Nick has become unreliable and therefore expendable.
• Be All My Sins Remembered: Zelena speaks of this, both in the past to Ivo and in the present to Weaver — how no matter how much she tries to change, do good, and be a better person, karma keeps catching up with her and ruining her happiness thanks to the evil she did before. She also comments to Weaver that there will always be a bit of darkness in her anyway that she can't get rid of — but he comments this is a good thing, as it both reminds them what they're fighting for and what they have to lose.
• Becoming the Mask: To some extent, this seemed to have happened to Hansel after he assumed a new identity as Jack — befriending Henry, slaying giants, and doing heroic things made him forget who he used to be, and believe he actually was a hero. But then Zelena came back into his life...
• The Big Bad Shuffle: This time it's Nick's turn to be gotten rid of by Samdi, since getting himself arrested after failing to kill Zelena makes him too incompetent to be useful.
• Blind and the Beast: After finding out the Gingerbread Witch is more than she bargained for, Zelena ends up recovering from injuries (and magical depletion) with a woodcutter... who turns out to be Hansel and Gretel's father, and blind. So naturally he doesn't know who she is, gets to know her without the Wicked Witch baggage, and they come to care for each other. As might be expected, when the truth comes out he doesn't accept her, but it isn't because of her past reputation or even him getting to see her after she restores his sight (since he doesn't even accept the gift) — it's because his children make it back and reveal how she initially left them to the witch.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Zelena is quite correct that with her injuries (both physical and magical) she needed to recover, and until she did she could do nothing for Hansel and Gretel, and that she did go back for them. But Ivo is also correct that she watched him searching night after night without telling him she knew where they were; even if she hadn't been well enough to go back yet, telling him the truth would have been the honorable thing to do and earned his trust. And of course, she did leave the children initially — not completely of her own volition thanks to the witch, but if she'd released them from their cages when they asked, this might have been avoided.
• Cassandra Truth: Nick shows Henry the blood test results from Doctor Sage's office proving that Henry is Lucy's biological father. Since Henry is being held captive by a Serial Killer who claims that magic is real, and as far as Henry's concerned he never met Jacinda before recently, he understandably doesn't buy it and says that the test must be a forgery. Likewise, Henry takes Nick's assertion that Roni and Kelly are Henry's mother and aunt and also witches to be mad ravings.
• Chekhov's Gun: Subverted. After being given back her emerald pendant by Weaver, it seems some magic might be unlocked from it which would help Zelena stop Nick. But instead it serves only as a reminder of her past self, galvanizing her to stay on the right path and win without falling back into evil again.
• Conscience Makes You Go Back: More delayed than usual (and that delay is costly, it turns out, though not for the reason you would think), but Zelena does eventually go back to try and rescue Hansel and Gretel from the witch.
• Continuity Nod:
  • When Zelena goes to Weaver for help, not only does he hold her in the proper malice and contempt he should for her past actions (namely, Baelfire's death and his own enslavement), but he comments on her "refusal to stay dead", referencing how she survived the Dark One's dagger and his Literally Shattered Lives trick back in Season Three.
  • As Regina and Zelena are discussing the curse and what it has done for the better in the latter's life, Regina not only makes the same sort of observation Ruby did in Season Two (that her cursed life, without memories of her past, was actually happier for her), she also makes reference to David/Charming's "We are both" speech in saying there's no reason she can't be both Zelena and Kelly.
  • The situation with Nick and Henry starts to resemble Jefferson and Emma's even more, with Nick just as desperate for Henry to believe as Jefferson was with Emma, and with Henry (like his mother) playing along with the psycho captor while not believing a word of it. The difference is that instead of wanting his captive to give him magic that will let him reunite with his family (because Gretel is dead), he wants them to help him get his revenge on the one he blames for his suffering.
  • Also, the first children we saw Henry befriend in Storybrooke back in the first season were Hansel and Gretel. Now we learn the first friend adult Henry made in the New Enchanted Forest was Hansel.
• Couch Gag: The title card features the Blind Witch's gingerbread house.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Kelly gives one to Nick. It... looks rather painful.
• Disposable Fiancé: Subverted. Not only does Chad finally show up, when he does so it's for a classic I Have Your Wife scenario, one that doesn't result in his death. And afterward, when the truth comes out that Kelly's original name was Zelena and she's done dark things in the past, he doesn't abandon her, so that by episode's end she actually gets to go off with him and resume her wedding plans.
• Double-Meaning Title: A more subtle example, but not only does Rumple suggest that Nick targeting Zelena is her "finally getting chosen before Regina", the episode revolves around Zelena choosing whether to be the Wicked Witch again (in any sense) or staying Kelly. It also ends with Chad choosing to stay with her and her choosing to go back to San Francisco with him when Roni gives her blessing. And it's implied by Facilier that he chose Nick to be his weapon against the witches in his way.
• "Eureka!" Moment: When Rogers sees the gingerbread house in Jacinda's car and is told that Nick got it for Lucy, it starts him suspecting that Nick is the Candy Killer. This is then confirmed for him when he's told that the text Jacinda got from "Henry" calls her "J", which Henry has never done but Nick has.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Played with (and here it would be Even Wicked Has Standards). When she appears at the gingerbread cottage, Zelena isn't there to rescue Hansel and Gretel (until later, after meeting and coming to care for their father makes her conscience send her back), she's there to get rid of a rival witch. But, she is genuinely appalled by the witch's cannibalistic intentions.
• Evil Versus Evil:
  • In the past, Zelena faces off with the Blind Witch because she cannot countenance other witches in Oz with power to match hers; she is in fact the one who makes her blind.
  • This episode makes it clear that Facilier is definitely working against Gothel, since they both want the Dark One's dagger and he has been using Nick to try and eliminate Gothel and her Coven.
  • To finish the triangle, Nick very much has been seeking to kill Gothel as well as her Coven, since he rightly blames her for Gretel's death... but his failure and arrest causes Facilier to oppose him as well, with deadly consequences.
• Guile Hero: Henry attempts once again to be this, not only by going along as best he can with Nick's "fantasy" but by drawing on his book to claim he'll use his Author powers to write Nick a better story with a happy ending. But unfortunately Nick knows Henry too well from their time together in the Enchanted Forest and doesn't buy the act.
• Happy Ending: Once again, the main episode arcs end like this — neither Zelena nor Chad dies, and in fact they get to resume their wedding plans with him standing by her despite what he has learned about her past; Regina also gives her blessing, saying she already provided all the help she needed and she can handle Henry's poisoned heart and the curse on her own, while Margot gets an amicable parting as well. And after being rescued by Rogers, Henry gets to reunite with Jacinda and Lucy, and tells them he's staying in Hyperion Heights rather than going for the job in New York.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Naturally, when Regina learns the Candy Killer has targeted Zelena, what's one of the first things she says? "Nobody kills my sister but me."
• I Have Your Wife: Nick kidnaps Zelena's fiancé Chad from the airport and holds him hostage until Zelena will meet him alone, so he can finally kill her in revenge.
• Internal Reveal: Aside from everyone finding out what happened to Henry due to Rogers' sleuthing, Henry himself gets to find out the circumstances behind Hansel becoming Jack, that the fairy tales are all true, and that he is Lucy's biological father. However, like Emma with Jefferson, because the guy telling him all this is a psycho and Serial Killer, Henry refuses to believe any of it — even the paternity test is suspect to him since it's coming from the guy who killed the doctor.
• Knight Templar: Nick/Hansel is utterly convinced that there's no such thing as a good witch, and that all he's doing is wiping out evil. He seems to think he can convince Henry of this despite Henry's own mother and aunt being witches (and, y'know, Cursed Henry not believing in magic).
• My Greatest Second Chance: Zelena views going back to save Hansel and Gretel (and perhaps developing feelings for their father) as this... but when she thinks she was too late and they already died, she views it as her own in-story Moral Event Horizon, and when they and their father reject her for lying/abandoning them, she goes right back into Then Let Me Be Evil again.
• Mythology Gag: Regina fondly calls Kelly a "monkey" and urges her to "fly off on her bicycle" to be with Chad.
• Pet the Dog: Despite holding him hostage, Nick decides to do something nice for Henry by showing him the paternity test that states Henry, not Nick, is Lucy's biological father.
• The Power of Trust:
  • In the past, Ivo explicitly trusts Zelena based on what he hears in her voice and senses from her heart; while it isn't clear how much he knows about the Wicked Witch (though Hansel and Gretel's knowledge of her suggests he knows enough to not hold her in high regard, to put it mildly), it's entirely possible that had she fully been honest with him he would have forgiven her — especially if admitting the truth sooner had enabled her to go back and rescue his children. But rather like Leopold and her mother Cora, her not doing so it until it was too late and others had already revealed her duplicity to him breaks his trust so that he turns on her forever.
  • In the present, Facilier makes direct mention of this power when it comes to magic, that "trust is a powerful thing... and even more powerful when betrayed." Because Drew/Naveen has earned Sabine's trust, learned her secret beignet recipe, and then shared it with Samdi, this enables him to regain enough power to enchant a voodoo doll to further his dark plans.
• Pull the Thread: Thanks to Nick texting Jacinda as Henry, no one suspects anything has happened to him... until Rogers, informed by one of the other cops of Henry's car being found abandoned with a flat tire, starts investigating — and not only does Jacinda realize Henry never calls her "J", only Sabine, but Rogers remembers Nick calling her that the night before at the arcade. Seeing the gingerbread house kit in Jacinda's car, which Nick gave to Lucy, clinches it.
• Put on a Bus: Zelena gets to go back to San Francisco to marry Chad and have her Happy Ending, now that the Candy Killer has been taken care of and the potion for Henry's heart is almost complete. Sensing a theme here, this late in the season...
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: Zelena again. While as Chad points out she doesn't kill Nick despite having many opportunities (and plenty of motive) to do so, and she doesn't regain her magic and use it for evil, she does give Nick a fairly good thrashing, ending with knocking him out quite forcefully.
  Zelena: I've changed... more or less.
• The Reveal: A lot.
  • Who burned Nick/Jack/Hansel? Not the Blind Witch, but Zelena.
  • Why is Nick killing witches? Aside from the obvious (his run-ins with Zelena and the Blind Witch), because he blames Gothel and her Coven of the Eight for Gretel's death. This was implied in the previous episode but fully spelled out here.
  • The Blind Witch wasn't always blind — that was Zelena's doing, too.
  • Not only do we find out for certain that Nick has all his memories, we learn who awakened him — Facilier, so as to eliminate Gothel for him so he could claim the Dark One's dagger. It's also confirmed he did awaken Drew/Naveen; what is still unknown is who awoke Samdi himself, or if he was ever even under the curse.
• Saying Too Much: After Nick's constant attempts to convince Henry of the truth of the book, and obtain his assistance in getting revenge on Zelena, Henry bursts out with a furious repudiation of Kelly being a witch. Unfortunately his tirade includes the detail that Kelly has a fiancé in San Francisco, which gives Nick the information he needs to kidnap him and force a showdown.
• The Scapegoat: While it is true that Zelena was the one who terribly burned him, and that seeing her family at Zelena's mercy is what drove Gretel to pursue the path of dark magic, Hansel is rather misblaming when it comes to his sister's death — since the one who actually killed her was Drizella, and this was at the instigation of Gothel. He does very much blame both of them (hence targeting Ivy two episodes ago), and also obviously blames the Blind Witch, but it seems the trauma of what happened to him has overridden anything else. As Zelena herself says, she didn't make Gretel choose to do what she did, nor did she kill her.
• Shout-Out: Nick's address on his apartment door is "1812", the same as the date the Grimm brothers released the first edition of Hansel and Gretel.
• Take Me Instead: Zelena offers this to Nick so that he will spare Chad. While you might expect he'd refuse, so as to twist the knife more in threatening her love, he's so unhinged and focused on revenge he actually takes her up on it — though by attacking her with a knife, not by freeing his prisoner.
• That Man Is Dead: Played with. Kelly insists that Zelena, the Wicked Witch, is gone and she is never going back to that sort of darkness... but she also laments how everything she did as the Wicked Witch still keeps coming back to haunt her, so that even if she is "dead", she still can't ever be free of her. Rumple also points out, when she admits a "nasty piece of darkness" is still inside her, that this is actually a good thing since it helps reminds them of what they used to be, and how much they have to lose, so that they won't backslide again.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: The two plots of Nick holding Henry prisoner and Zelena being targeted by the Candy Killer naturally intersect, but Rogers is also involved in tracking Henry down, and his reunion with Jacinda and Lucy helps resolve their relationship issues for the present. Even the seemingly unconnected bits with Drew and Samdi play a role, since it turns out that it was Samdi who awoke Nick for his own purposes, and his using Drew to betray Sabine provides him with the power for his voodoo doll.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Since Nick was the Candy Killer and not Gothel or another magic user who would logically have wanted them to use as ingredients or in Sympathetic Magic, it is never explained why he was taking locks of the witches' hair. While planting them on Tilly did make a nice Frameup, his motive (revenge for what the Coven did to Gretel, plus thinking all witches are evil) presumably means he took the locks as trophies of his kills.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: In the past, it appears Zelena can finally find friendship and understanding, perhaps even love, when a blind woodsman takes care of her after the Gingerbread Witch's attack. But then when she goes back to the candy house to save his children, she finds them already gone... and because they escaped and got back to him to reveal who she is and how she declined to free them the first time she was there, he turns on her, even spurning the gift of his sight being returned. In the present, this same past threatens to destroy her happiness since Hansel, out for revenge for what she did to him (and what he feels she did to his sister), kidnaps her fiancé and plans to kill one or both of them. Thankfully she manages to stop him without anyone dying, and she gets to have her Happy Ending when she goes off to resume her wedding plans.
• You Are Too Late: When Zelena returns to the gingerbread house, now intending to rescue Hansel and Gretel since she's become fond of their father Ivo, she is too late. Although it later turns out they escaped on their own rather than being eaten, hearing from the children about Zelena's original unwillingness to help them turns Ivo against her.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Samdi, who had awoken Nick so that his witch-killing vendetta could eliminate Gothel and her Coven of the Eight from the quest for the Dark One's dagger, decides that him failing to kill Zelena and getting himself caught and arrested has made him a liability... so, using the voodoo doll Drew was forced to empower for him, he stabs Nick through the heart.

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