How The ‘Once Upon A Time’ Season Finale Was A Game-Changer

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the season finale of Once Upon a Time.

This year’s Once Upon a Time season finale may have been the worst yet, as far as keeping both characters and fans tense and on edge throughout the entire two-hour event. To begin with, most of those two hours were spent in Once Upon a Time’s present day with only flashbacks used in the beginning of the first part of Once Upon a Time’s season finale to tell the past of The Author (Patrick Fischler).

It is this flashback that tells how The Author came upon that magical quill that ends up wreaking so much havoc on the characters of Once Upon a Time and also becomes an important plot point for later in the Once Upon a Time finale. While the heroes of the Heroes and Villains story scourge Storybrooke in search of a way to stop The Author, Regina (Lana Parrilla) teamed with Hook (Colin O’Donoghue) and Emma (Jennifer Morrison) paired with August (Eion Bailey), the book is completed and the final words “The End” cast the curse much in the same way that the original curse was cast in Once Upon a Time’s first season.

This time, as had been revealed in last week’s Once Upon a Time spoilers, Henry (Jared S. Gilmore), being the only soul unaffected by the curse, is cast as the unlikely hero. Realizing that everything depends on him, he begins his quest to try to save Storybrooke’s people. Henry sets a string of events in motion when he convinces Regina to give Robin Hood (Sean Maguire) true love’s kiss, and ends up facing the pointy end of Rumplestilskin’s sword.

Proving that any soul can become the hero in Once Upon a Time, Regina leaps to the rescue, sparing Henry from that fatal blow. As Regina falls dying, making Once Upon a Time fans fear that Storybrooke has lost one of its greatest characters, Henry hears the calling of that magical quill. It seems the cursed quill has found its new Author.

Becoming as much a hero as his mother(s), Henry rewrites Heroes and Villains, returning the Once Upon a Time characters to their true destinies. Those that were killed in that Once Upon a Time alternate storyline were returned and the good were once again good. All seemed right within the Once Upon a Time universe, until it was revealed that Mr. Gold/Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle) still suffered from the Dark One’s infestation. The Apprentice (Timothy Webber) stepped up to draw the darkness from Rumplestiltskin’s heart using the sorcerer’s hat. The darkness being withdrawn held so much power, however, that it overwhelmed The Apprentice and escaped out into Storybrooke.

This is where that big spoiler comes in and, in true Once Upon a Time fashion, it’s a doozy!

The darkness, searching for another soul to corrupt, seeks out Regina. Just when it seems Regina will be returned to darkness, The Savior runs to her aid and saves the day. Emma grabs the Dark One’s dagger, determined to spare Regina, but Emma suffers the blade herself.

As the season finale of Once Upon a Time concludes and Emma is carried away into the darkness, a new name is etched on the Dark One’s blade: Emma Swan.

Once Upon a Time will return with Season 5 in September.

[Featured image: Jennifer Morrison/Once Upon A Time courtesy of ABC]