Last night’s episode of Once Upon a Time continued the epic Frozen saga as it was a Belle-centric episode that featured Belle’s adventures with Anna in Arendelle and as always: beware of spoilers.
I feel that it has been a very long time since Belle had a big episode, and as I was watching this episode, I couldn’t even remember the last time she even had an episode that focused heavily on her. I think the show has always struggled with finding out what they can do with her aside from being with Rumple all the time so most of the episodes she is in, she is mostly a background character.
But this week, they succeeded in giving her a separate story that focused more on her background as we get to see her mom for a few seconds in the flashbacks. I know it was supposed to be symbolic, but I couldn’t help roll my eyes when we saw that Belle’s mom was also someone who loved books. It was just too on the nose, if you get what I mean. We learn that Belle’s mom died during the attack of that gigantic ogre. For some reason, Belle couldn’t remember the incident, so she travels to Arendelle to meet Grand Pabbie so that he could restore her memories and there she meets the lovely Anna who helps her to find him.
I really loved their interaction together, but the pacing was just a little bit off as it went really quickly from them meeting Grand Pabbie to the Snow Queen attacking them. Speaking of the Snow Queen, who also goes by Ingrid, I like that Anna realized right away that something was really off with this woman. Unfortunately, nothing gets past Ingrid, so she kidnaps Anna and takes the box from her that contains the sorcerer’s hat. It’s been good to see over the past few episodes what it is that Ingrid wants so much, which turns out to be family. Elizabeth Mitchell’s performances keep pulling me in and as time has progressed, Ingrid is starting to come off as really psychotic, but in a fun way.
Let’s cut to the present: as Elsa is struggling to find her sister, Belle tires to take on the Snow Queen herself, which also impressed me. Finally, we get to see so many things from her. She uses the “dagger” on Rumple to make him take her to the Snow Queen’s place, and while she is there, Ingrid’s mirror starts to talk to her and just like Ingrid itself: that is one messed up mirror. I wasn’t sure how to look at this until the very end of the episode when Belle reveals to the gang that Ingrid is planning to use the mirror to turn everyone against each other in the town.
Now let’s talk about Emma’s supposed ties to Ingrid in the past. We learn that Ingrid (also known as Sarah, which was her name while she was Emma’s foster parent) is under the belief of this prophecy that says that a savior named Emma will become her sister. This got to a point where even I had to scratch my head for a while as I need to see more episodes in order to see if I like this plot or not. Overall, “Family Business” was another solid episode and so far, season 4 of Once Upon a Time has been the show’s best season.
Once Upon a Time airs on Sunday nights, 8/7c on ABC.
Photo via ABC
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