Jefferson knows about the curse. Emma’s wall of disbelief starts to crack. Mr. Gold plays both sides of the fence. The Evil Queen again demonstrates her evilness. Wonderland looks wonderful.
Recap
Fairy Tale Land and Wonderland
Jefferson loves his daughter Grace. Just like Rumpelstiltskin, he’s a single father who cannot provide for his child the way he wishes he could. Like Rumpel, he treasures his child above all else. Both men make a tragic mistake while acting with the best intentions — each takes an action, meant to protect his child, that backfires and separates him from his child instead.
The name Jefferson is almost certainly a homage to the Jefferson Airplane, who famously performed the song White Rabbit. And Grace, the name of Jefferson’s daughter, must be a homage to Grace Slick, the Jefferson Airplane’s lead singer (hat tip [ahem] to a TWoP poster for catching all that).
I think it’s significant that Jefferson had the same name in FTL and Storybrooke. Maybe that had something to do with his knowing about the curse. As far as I can remember, Regina is the only other person who has the same name in both worlds.
Speaking of Regina, she shows up at Jefferson’s cottage one day out of the blue, wanting Jefferson to use his magical hat to get her into Wonderland. We aren’t told exactly what their relationship was in the past — other than that Jefferson worked for Regina before, that he lost his wife, in some unspecified way, because of that work, and that he never wanted to work for Regina again. But she plays on his guilt at not being able to buy his daughter a stuffed white rabbit, and he consents to take Regina to Wonderland one last time.
The hat creates a CGI vortex that looks like … well, like a CGI vortex. After that, though, the special effects are wonderful (pun intended). When they land in a huge round room, the walls covered with red drapes, with brightly colored doors all around, it looks both surreal and oddly familiar, as if it were something seen before in a dream.
At Jefferson’s touch, the looking glass liquifies and ripples, and they go through, and the landscape looks just right. Even the yellow brick-ish road that seems borrowed from Oz looks right.
There’s a funny moment when the caterpillar blows smoke rings in their faces, and Jefferson says, “I hate Wonderland.”
They make it through a carnivorous-shrubbery maze and enter a room that looks very much like the Evil Queen’s vault of hearts that we’ve seen before. Filing people, or pieces of people, in walls made of wooden (metal?) boxes must have been the fashion of the day.
Her father’s in the box. (Remember the father-in-the box in the LOST episode The Man From Tallahassee?) He springs up to full size with a bite of a magic mushroom, and now we see that Regina has double-crossed Jefferson. Only two people can get back — and one of them isn’t going to be him. She blames Jefferson, tells him if he were a better father, he wouldn’t have come, when, of course, he came because he was a good father. Blaming the victim — that’s just how evil Regina is.
Jefferson gets captured and dragged off to see the Queen of Hearts, across a narrow bridge over a dry moat in a fantastical castle — another dreamscape that is surreal, yet also oddly familiar. The Queen’s face is covered, as are the faces of many of the members of her court. Would we recognize them if we saw their faces?
Poor Jefferson gets the “off with his head” treatment, but in this version of Wonderland, it’s not fatal. I’m glad this is a family show so we don’t have to see blood and other bits dripping out of his neck.
He ends up trying, in vain, to make a hat that has the magic that will let him go home. (Is his quest to go home another nod to The Wizard of Oz?) Was he still in that room in Wonderland, still trying to get home, at the time of the curse? If so, is that why he can remember his past in Storybrooke when the other characters can’t?
Storybrooke
Jefferson pops up in the middle of the road, a ruse to get Emma inside his mansion, drugged, and tied up. He’s already got Mary Margaret bound and gagged in another room, and when he sharpens a pair of scissors, over and over, he sure looks like a psychokiller. But he really just wants Emma to make him a magic hat.
The most amazing thing about Jefferson (besides the chemistry he has with both Emma in Storybrooke and the Evil Queen in FTL) is that he knows about the curse. In order to escape, Emma humors him by pretending she believes in the curse too. He tries to choke her — he really is crazy, after all — but Emma and Mary Margaret (channeling her inner badass Snow) chuck him out the window — where he disappears, leaving only his hat.
Emma gives Mary Margaret the option of escaping, but Mary M decides not to run. Regina shows up at the jail and is shocked to see that Mary M is in the cell. Turns out she and Mr. Gold had made a deal, had planned for Mary M to escape.
Emma, sitting with Henry in front of the school, sees Paige/Grace go by, and something clicks in Emma’s mind. She asks Henry if she can look at his book. For the first time, she is looking at it as if its stories could be real. She leafs through the pages and sees Jefferson and Grace.
Emma knows the truth. There is no turning back for her now.
What we didn’t see
We didn’t see Snow, though we saw a lot of Mary Margaret. We didn’t see Rumpelstiltskin, though we had a brief, but significant, scene with Mr. Gold. No Red, no Granny, no cafe, no Belle, no August W. Booth (but did you notice that Eion Bailey was listed with the main cast in the credits?). And neither David nor Prince Charming showed up.
Best lines
Jefferson, in response to Emma saying that stories, unlike history books, are not real: “Story books are based on what? Imagination? Where does that come from? It has to come from somewhere.”
Jefferson, summing up the problems of the world: “Everyone wants a magical solution to their problems, and everyone refuses to believe in magic.”
Emma, to Mary Margaret: “Nobody’s ever been there for me except for you. And I can’t lose that. I cannot lose my family.” Mary Margaret: “Family?” Emma: “Friends. Whatever. You know what I mean. Wouldn’t you rather face this together than alone?”
Best answer by the writers directly addressing viewers’ previously expressed questions about the show
Emma asks Jefferson why he says he is living under a curse, when he is living in such a beautiful place. He says that like everyone else there, he has had everything he loved ripped away from him.
Best use, by another character, of one of Rumpelstiltskin’s favorite words
Jefferson, to Emma: “I know what you refuse to acknowledge, Emma. You’re special. You brought something PRECIOUS to Storybrooke. Magic.”
Theme
Family sticks together, or at least yearns to: Jefferson and Grace, Regina and her father, Emma and Mary Margaret/Snow.
Wonderland
I was a bit apprehensive about this episode, before I saw it, because Alice in Wonderland is not a fairy tale, and I thought the Wonderland sets and characters might either clash with the rest of the story, be a watered-down version of the inimitable John Tenniel illustrations, or be too treacly and Disney-fied. But I needn’t have worried. It worked beautifully. Wonderland and Fairy Tale Land were seamlessly integrated, and the design of Wonderland was imaginative and fresh.
Why mad hatters are mad
Lewis Carrol, author of the Alice books, didn’t invent the expression “mad as a hatter,” according to The Straight Dope site. Hat makers used mercury to cure felt, and prolonged exposure to the toxic mercury vapors made their limbs twist and their speech become confused. In severe cases, the hatters hallucinated and had other symptoms of psychosis.
Credits
Sebastian Stan played Jefferson. Ali Skovbye played Grace/Paige. Roger Daltry of The Who was the voice of the caterpillar, a performance that was ridiculously over-hyped considering he only said about five words. But maybe he’ll be back.
The writers are Vladimir Cvetko, in his OUAT debut, and David H. Goodman, who previously wrote The Price of Gold, True North, and What Happened to Frederick. The director was Ralph Hemecker, who previously directed 7:15 A.M.
A special (ahem) hat tip to all the people working on this episode’s amazing set design and the costumes for the Evil Queen, Jefferson, Grace, and the Wonderland inhabitants.
Questions
Is Jefferson hot, or what? (That’s a rhetorical question.)
Is it significant that Jefferson has the same name in both worlds?
How relieved are you that Emma finally seems to be open to the idea that Henry’s book could be true?
Whose side do you think Mr. Gold is on? Emma’s? Regina’s? Neither? Both?
I feel like Gold is on Emma’s side, and solely Emma’s. Not Mary M’s or David’s or Ruby’s or any else’s. Just Emma’s. He wants Emma to win, and Regina to not win (but not exactly lose…) and he genuinely doesn’t give a crap about anyone else.
The writers said there would be no “aha” moment for Emma about Henry’s book this season, but that she would begin to realize how whacked Storybrooke is.
And even though you said it was a rhetorical question…YES Jerfferson is so so so hot!
LOL about Jefferson. I’m leaning towards thinking that Mr. Gold is on Emma’s side — but he’s always on his own side. And he still has his unfinished deal with Emma — she promised to give him something — and some day, he’s going to claim it — and it might not be a good thing for her. I thought Emma did have an aha moment at the end of this episode — no matter what the writers said (what do they know, ha?) How can she not believe, after seeing Jefferson in the book?
Jefferson…or what. He’s not really hot to me. (James/David and the Huntsman is HOTTTT!!!) I’m so glad that Emma is catching on to SOMETHING. I think Gold is on his own side. I think he also has something to gain from Emma breaking the curse. I noticed Jefferson’s name was the same. Like he said, his curse was knowing about his previous life. He’s not under the same curse as people from FTL because he was in Wonderland. I loved his quote about people wanting magical solutions without believing in magic.
No one really said that this show was based off fairy tales. I think its just based off stories, like Jefferson said.
“You know what I mean. Wouldn’t you rather face this together than alone?”
Hmmmmm…gosh, doesn’t that sound like something from Lost? “If we can’t live together, we’re going to die alone.”
I have always said that Rumplestilskin/Mr. Gold is a true Chaotic Neutral. He is on the side of neither Good nor Evil. He is on the side of Chaos. Whatever messes things up the most for the greatest number of people involved is what he’s in favour of. However, he also has one advantage that Regina doesn’t have: He knows who – and what – Emma is. And you know he’s going to wield that information like a weapon.
I think like most others that mr gold is on his own side. Yes he gives people what they want. But like he once said ” all magic comes with a price”. Also in the last episode he kept on saying to Snow and Charming that he had invested in their future. i totally think that HE gave Emma the magic on cuz he knew that she was going to be the only one to help them out of storybrook. also i think that the love potion that he made has something to do with it. either he made Emma or he gave her the magic. at the end do you think that the mad hatter fell into his hat or ran away. i first got the impression that after he fell out of the window he did survive. In FTL the queen of hearts told him that he could go home only if he could figure it out how to bring the magic into his had. And he didnt die when they chopped his head off. so i think he lived and ran away because he cant die. What do you think?
Oh yeah, the love potion! That’s got to be significant. As for the Mad Hatter, I think he’s alive, but I don’t think he could have run away. I don’t think there was enough time. Emma and Mary Margaret went over to the window pretty quickly, and I think they would have seen him if he were running. Maybe he fell through the hat back to Wonderland?
Hi Ms Terri. This is Kristen. I think you’re right about Jefferson not running away after falling out the window. It is true that there was not enough time. It is possible that he could’ve fallen into his hat that he supposedly couldn’t “get it to work.” But there’s another angle to that also. The actor who plays Jefferson (Sebastian Stan) was only in 6 episodes of OUAT. There is one episode where there was a great storm or something and Jefferson was trapped inside a car IN STORYBROOKE! Now how could he have fell out of the window into his hat, and be in another realm but still come back to Storybrooke? And besides we didn’t see the hat spinning or any purple smoke and plus Emma said that she couldn’t get it to work even though Jefferson thought she could. It turns out that at one point Jefferson’s hat got destroyed. We know this because David found him and used a locater spell on the hat to find Jefferson. He found him and asked him how to use the hat and Jefferson explained that it was unusable now that it was destroyed and ran away.
I do think that the whole thing with the mad hatter opened Emma’s eyes to the town. I dont think she believes that the stories are real but I think she will start to notice that something is up. For instance has anyone notice there is no music or television. I have never once seen a person listen to music or talk about movies or tv so I find that really weird. Also I don’t get why Emma coming from an outsider to the town does not realize that a mayor should not have that much power over a town. Hopefully Emma will start to realize these things.
I really liked this episode. Wonderland was great. I loved the back story of the Mad Hatter. I have a few questions that I hope people take a stab at, I am reall curious. Who is the Queen of Hearts? How did the EQ dad get in wonderland?
It seemed that the Mad Hatter said he was “stuck in this house”. Can he leave the house?
What magic did Emma have?
I’ll take a stab at one of them. We know that the Mad Hatter was able to leave the house during the last episode because we saw him run out into the road. So either he was lying about not being able to leave the house, or he was only imagining he couldn’t leave because he was insane — or he was, in fact, stuck in the house until Emma came to town and the curse started to lift a bit. I think it’s probably the latter — that he couldn’t leave the house at all until Emma first came to town. He may have still been trapped in that room in Wonderland (the one with all the hats) at the time of the curse — and somehow being unable to leave the room in Wonderland got turned into his being unable to leave his house in Storybrooke. I hope someone was bringing him some food!
OMG, I just remembered something!!
When Jefferson, in Wonderland, is accosted by the Queen of Hearts’ men, he says something about “the Queen,” meaning the Evil Queen. The Queen of Hearts’ soldier then abruptly corrects Jefferson, saying, “That woman’s name is Regina. There is only one Queen here.”
Ok, no big deal…EXCEPT, did we know that Regina’s name in FTL was ALSO Regina? She has the same name in both worlds! So: Jefferson, Emma and Regina (and perhaps Mr. Gold, since he doesn’t seem to have mentioned a first name), so far, are the only people who have the same name in both worlds. That has got to mean something!
It may turn out to be related to the “names have power” concept. These people have power because they know their true names.
I believe that the people who have the same name never had a happy ending. Only the people who were ripped of their “happy ending” had a name change. Jefferson didnt have a happy ending(lost daughter and could go home), Regina didnt have a happy ending(killed dad), Rumple didnt have a happy ending(lost son and himself). The spell was cast so that all the happy ending be wiped away.
Talonvoki I think you are on to something with this name thing. I would even stretch it to MM since she has the same pseudonym in FTL when she was staying with Red.
on another fan discussion site, many are convinced that the queen of hearts
in wonderland is regina’s mother………..what are your thoughts on that
idea?
luckily, i’ve read the mad hatter’s returning, so maybe that hot chemistry
between he and emma will be evident again.
inJoy