Once Upon a Time Season 4 Recap: Storybrooke has FROZEN over

by Lavon Samuel Davis

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In case you’ve been living under a rock, this season of Once Upon a Time did a Frozen crossover. It makes sense when you’re aware Disney owns ABC but…yeah. The season finale is this coming Sunday and like the last episode of Season 3, the main heroes and villains of the next season are revealed to get the fans excited. According to the trailer for the season finale Cruella DeVille (101 Dalmatians), Ursula (Disney’s The Little Mermaid) and Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent) are the main villains (and possibly one heroine if they base Maleficent on the one from the movie of the same name).

Should be interesting.

I started watching at Season 3 (Wizard of Oz Theme) and I got hooked. Once Upon a Time (henceforth OUAT for short) does an amazing job taking classic heroes and villains–and new favorites, too–and doing something fun with them. Frozen is no exception =O

 

The actors they tapped to play Elsa, Anna, Kristoff and Hans were spot-on. They became the characters they were cast to play. I like the approach the producers took when they accepted the difficult challenge–and immediately, too–a season based on Frozen. Boy, did they knock this out the park by even throwing in the classic Snow Queen to boot.

Here’a a full recap but be warned, there are major spoilers for Season 4 and Frozen:

• The Season opens with the ship Elsa’s parents are on caught in the storm and fast sinking. The Queen–her name revealed to be Helen in a later episode–hastily writes a letter to her daughters, stuffs it into a bottle and throws it overboard. The king asks her what she’s doing and she replies “They must know the truth!” This starts making sense when Elsa’s predecessor is introduced a little later. What’s funny: The bottle itself isn’t mentioned again until Anna accidently breaks it trying to knock out Kristoff (more on why later).
• Also in the season opener, Elsa (played by Georgina Haig) arrives in Storybrooke in search of her sister. A misunderstanding puts her at odds with Emma and the rest of the denizens of Storybrooke but when Emma realizes she’s not a threat the two come to a mutual underatanding of each other.
• Almost all of the rest of the season splits between Elsa, Anna, Emma and Ingrid’s (played by Elizabeth Mitchell. You may remember her from LOST) respective pasts and the present. I’ll explain Ingrid briefly. Those who’ve read the novel The Snow Queen knows in the end, the Snow Queen decided to use her powers for evil. We know from production interviews they had two plans for Elsa: The one we know and one where she follows the steps of her counterpart from the novel she’s based on. Ingrid took the other path.
• Ingrid is actually Elsa and Anna’s aunt and sister of their late mother Helen. There was also a third sister, Ulga but of them only Ingrid had ice powers. The sisters were well loved by the people of Arendelle though Ingrid was rarely seen in public because of her powers (Sound familiar?). Fast forward to when they became adults. Ingrid has an altercation with the then much younger Duke of Weselton and his learns about her ice powers. Ulga is accidently struck by Ingrid’s powers and turns into an ice statue, which crumbles to pieces.
• Horrified and grief-stricken, Helen seals Ingrid inside a magical urn (which Rumplestiltskin came across along with the legendary Sorcerer’s Hat at the end of the previous season) designed for this purpose. She then asks Grandpabbie (yes, the Trolls make appearances!) to cast a powerful spell to make everyone in Arendelle forget her sisters ever existed. Grandpabbie reluctantly agrees to her request, warning “there is always a price for magic this strong”. The irony: her firstborn daughter would have the same powers as her aunt.
• Fast forward to after the events of Frozen. Anna and Elsa are preparing for Anna’s wedding to Kristoff. The sisters find a page in their mother’s diary describing the journey their parents never returned from and a powerful wizard who may hold the key to taking Elsa’s powers away. Anna decides to travel to Misthaven (Storybrooke) to find out what the wizard may have known about what their parents were doing before they died at sea. Elsa refuses to let her go but with help from Kristoff, Anna sets off despite her sister’s protests.
• While on her journey Elsa meets Prince Charming, The Apparentice and ultimately Rumplestiltskin. On top of that, she also runs into Hans, who is out for revenge and this time he has some of his brothers in tow. When Anna returns to Arendelle she meets Ingrid, her long lost aunt who is now free of the urn she was sealed inside of. Anna is suspicious of her but Ingrid is aware and tries to pit the sisters against each other. When this plan fails, she seals Anna inside the Urn apparently intended for Elsa but her sister later frees her.
• Time stops for Arendelle for 30 years. When the powerful spell that literally froze Arendelle for 30 years thaws, it’s 30 years later (the present) and Elsa is nowhere to be found. On top of that, Hans usurps power in Arendelle (how he’s allowed to bypass the line of succession despite Anna clearly being alive) is never explained and chases Anna and Kristoff all the way to Blackbeard’s ship. They couple was hoping to strike a deal with Blackbeard but Hans got to him first. The two end up in a chest at the bottom of the sea and to add insult to injury, the same spot the previous king and queen’s ship went down in.

We’ll get to what happens next in a bit but now let’s talk about how Emma’s past fits in:

• It’s revealed Ingrid was Emma’s foster mother when she was a teenager. When Emma first ran into Ingrid in Storybrooke, Ingrid wiped Emma’s previous memories of her. Of course, Emma also lost her memories in Season 2 so…yeah.Not hard to believe she didn’t know who Ingrid was in Season 4.
• Ingrid manipulates Emma in an attempt to pit her against her friends and family. She has magical powers and her loved ones (not including Regina) don’t. When she briefly loses control of her powers, her family is frightened. With help from Elsa, Emma avoids making the same mistakes Elsa and Ingrid did in the past.
• It’s also revealed Ingrid and Rumplestiltskin are using each other for their own gain and they let the other know they mean business. Ingrid ulimtately outmaneuvers The Dark One when she discovers she doesn’t need his help to get what she wants. Forced into a corner, Rumplestiltskin manipulates Hook to do his bidding.
• Elsa came to Storybrooke in search of her sister Anna. She knows based on her mother’s diary Anna traveled to Misthaven (The Enchanted Forest) like their parents did. It’s while looking in some old books Emma first learns Ingrid was one of three sisters in Arendelle. In happier times, the sisters had a bond so close, nothing could break them. This is why ultimately brought Ingrid to Arendelle: She wanted to find two replacement sisters who had powers like she did. She found them in Emma and Elsa.
• With the town suddenly in danger, Emma and Elsa find they can’t use their powers on Ingrid because of the bracelets she placed on the three magic users (herself included). The bracelets represents the love of three sisters who would never even think of hurting each other. In the episode that just aired, Emma figures out the only way to break the bracelets’ power is to use love’s opposite: hate.

Now we’re going to get back to Anna and Kristoff:

• While looking for her sister, Elsa comes to a quiet beach on the eve of a powerful spell that will turn the people of Storybrooke on each other. At her wits end, she wishes Anna was right there with her. Meanwhile, the chest Anna and Kristoff were thrown into the sea inside has almost completely filled with water. Before they are overtaken, Elsa’s wish brings the two to the beach much to Emma’s astonishment.
• Because of how the spell was designed, Emma and Elsa are immune. Anna is also immune since she had already had the spell used on her before. The spell is so powerful, it makes Regina the Wicked Queen again and even turns Snow White and Prince Charming against each other.
• Regina and Snow White cross swords while under the spell’s effects. Anna tries to intervene but Regina teleports her and Kristoff back to the beach where Elsa and Emma found them. Anna randomly finds the bottle containing the letter her mother wrote to them after breaking it on Kristoff’s head to subdue him.
• Meanwhile, Emma and Elsa confront Ingrid now free to use their magic on her. Ingrid notes their hesitation while she, on the other hand has no such reservations. Just as she is about to finish off Emma, Anna arrives with the letter and reads it aloud. Helen reveals the identity of their aunt Ingrid and her other sister Ulga as well as making everyone in Arendelle forget they existed. She regretted what she did to Ingrid and will always cherish the good memories the three of them had as children.
• Refusing to believe it, Ingrid reads the letter herself. Believing the words, Ingrid sacrifices herself to stop the spell enveloping Storybrooke, telling Elsa and Elsa to live the lives in happiness and with the people who accepted them for who they are.

…Whew!

 

I know, MASSIVE wall of text XD

 

The season finale is this Sunday where Anna, Elsa and Kristoff say goodbye to the friends they made in Storybrooke and return to Arendelle where the two have Hans and Blackbeard to deal with. I don’t know if their role in this season will be considered canon but I feel it would be a waste not to use the new lore introduced. The sisters fighting the Southern Isles to get their kingdom back would make for a nice story too, I think. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll get surprised with teaser of for Frozen 2 during or after the season finale of Once Upon a Time.