This article is about the Once Upon a Time episode. For the creature from Fantasia, with the same name, see The Firebird.
"Firebird" is the twentieth episode of the fifth season of ABC's Once Upon a Time, and the one hundred and eighth episode of the series overall. It premiered on May 1, 2016.
Hades offers Emma a chance to return to Storybrooke, but time is running out for Emma to save Hook, and for Gold to help Pan find a heart, while the others try to stop Cruella and the Blind Witch, who are preventing them from leaving. In Emma's past, she befriends a bounty hunter in her quest to find her parents.
Plot[]
Opening Sequence[]
Emma's yellow bug drives through the red-tinted forest.
In The Characters' Past[]
In 2009 Maine, at Chantley's Lobster House, an adult Emma has begun a quest to find her birth family, and joined by a bounty hunter named Cleo Fox, who has been tracking her down since Emma robbed a few convenience stores. Over time, both Cleo and Emma bond, and helps Emma gain access to records that may help her, but come up empty handed. When they arrived in Phoenix, Emma attempts to escape as she is wanted for robberies there only to have Cleo talk out of it. When they stop at a government record office, Emma breaks in to get information, but Cleo helps her escape by breaking a window and she cuts herself. As Emma helps a injured Cleo, she tells Emma the only family member she has left is her daughter that she gave up a long time ago.
A year later (2010 Boston) and after Cleo has passed, Emma finds Cleo's daughter Tasha Morris (Max Chadburn); who now works at a department store. Emma collected information about Cleo so that she could know more about Tasha's birth mother, and is sad, but appreciative. Before she leaves, Emma purchases the red leather jacket that would become part of her trademark wardrobe.
In the Underworld[]
In the moments, after Regina encouraged Zelena to pursue a relationship with Hades, the move has the outsiders, and especially Hook, not happy with this new development. But before tensions start to reach a boiling point, Hades appears and informs them that Zelena had been kidnapped by Gold and Peter Pan. A note Hades produces makes clear Gold and Pan are using Zelena as leverage in a trade deal for the contract on Gold's unborn child. Hades asks Emma for help by arranging a deal in which she will help him get Zelena back in exchange for Hades erasing the outsiders' names from their gravestones so they can leave the Underworld. At the diner, Hades closes up the place so he can meet with Gold and Pan. Zelena, who has been cuffed and prevented from using magic, is with them. Hades agrees to Gold's demands and rips up the contract, only to have Pan demand that he take Zelena's heart as part of his plan to return to the living. Emma breaks in through the back door, stopping Pan. Gold and Pan leave separately during the confrontation and without complete satisfaction. As Hades and Zelena are reunited, Hades frees Zelena by removing the cuff, and the two share a kiss. Suddenly, Hades' heart begins to beat once again, resulting in a new level of fulfilment in Hades' vision for a 'normal' life and leaving the Underworld with Zelena. As part of the arranged deal with Emma along with Hades' new freedom, a portal to Storybrooke can open which will close at sunset. As promised, Hades wipes the outsiders' names off the gravestones. Before the Portal opens, Emma attempts to give half her heart to Hook so he can live again and travel through the portal safely, but the process doesn't work. Hades explains that Hook's soul might not be able to return to a decaying body because he has been in the Underworld too long. Emma's insistence on a way to bring Hook back leads to Hades telling of a rumour of the only time when someone was able to bring the dead back to life from the Underworld: the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. According to what worked in that tale, Hook must acquire ambrosia, the food of the Gods, to restore his body and be reunited safely with his body, but in order to get to the ambrosia, Emma has to go deep into the Underworld and face a test to determine True Love based on her heart. Before Emma and Hook go on their quest, Hades removes Emma's heart so that she can bring it with her for the test she and Hook will face. The others promise her that they will remain waiting for their return, but must leave by sunset in case Emma and Hook do not succeed.
Around the same time, Pan demands that Gold help him get a heart before he leaves, and Pan offers his son Pandora's Box, which will keep Belle safe. And as the others wait for Emma and Hook, Henry and Regina decide that they should help continue the unfinished business of the trapped residents. Regina even convinces Robin to give his baby over to Zelena so she and Hades can take care of her, but after he steps aside for a breath of fresh air, Gold shows up and takes his heart. Meanwhile, Henry, in his role as the Author, successfully help the resident complete their "unfinished business" by allowing them to leave, only to have Cruella and the Blind Witch lock the outsiders in the jail in their plot to takeover the Underworld in Hades' absence and keep them away from the portal. Regina suspects the Blind Witch had help from Hades since she's not capable of having magic. As Emma and Hook continue the search for ambrosia, Emma physically weighs her heart to see if she is worthy as she places it on a scale, but the weight is increasing her pain, and even Hook tries to grab it, but the heart starts to catch fire. This has left Emma with two choices, saving her heart or Hook, and when she chooses the latter, a door opens as she is deemed worthy, only to discover the plants are dead, and the two suspect Hades is preventing them from return to Storybrooke.
As the portal starts to close, Hades convinces a reluctant Zelena to go through it as the rumbling starts to make the ceiling fall above them. Knowing that there is no other way to bring him back to the living, Hook wants Emma to go on without her and decides that it's time to say goodbye and vows not to let her be his unfinished business, and she agrees not put her emotional armor back up once they are separated. When Emma returns, she's on to Hades' and the Blind Witch's scheme to leave the outsider in the Underworld, as she and Regina use their magic to free everyone while Henry leaves behind the "Once Upon a Time" storybook with the details on the "unfinished business" of all the remaining Underworld residents. Finally, Gold places Robin's heart into Pan's chest, only for Pan to discover that Gold had tricked him: Gold had returned Robin's heart to him while Pan was distracted and replaced it with a wineskin filled with water from the River of Lost Souls, and used Pandora's Box to contain Belle safely. Pan is suddenly destroyed as everyone, including Hades and a heartbroken Emma, finally make it to the portal for their return to Storybrooke.
Cast[]
Starring[]
- Ginnifer Goodwin as Snow White/Mary Margaret Blanchard (absent)
- Jennifer Morrison as Emma Swan
- Lana Parrilla as Regina Mills
- Josh Dallas as David Nolan
- Emilie de Ravin as Belle French
- Colin O'Donoghue as Hook
- Jared S. Gilmore as Henry Mills
- Rebecca Mader as Zelena
- Sean Maguire as Robin Hood
- Robert Carlyle as Mr. Gold
Guest Starring[]
- Emma Caulfield as the Blind Witch
- Robbie Kay as Peter Pan
- Victoria Smurfit as Cruella De Vil
- Rya Kihlstedt as Cleo Fox
- Geoff Gustafson as Stealthy
- Bronwen Smith as Cashier
- Max Chadburn as Tasha Morris
- Anthony F. Ingram as Clerk
- Greg Germann as Hades
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Colin O'Donoghue revealed that he and Jenifer Morrison found Emma and Hook's goodbye scene very hard to film and that Hook kissing Emma's hand wasn't scripted, but improvised.[1]
- Emma and Killian are revealed to be each other's true love.
- This is the second episode this season not to feature Ginnifer Goodwin as Snow White, following the previous episode.
- The episode shares its title with the creature with the same name, from Fantasia.
- Killian is brought back to life and reunited with Emma in the next episode.
- Stealthy is seen after his death in the season 1 episode "7:15 A.M.".
- Zelena learns of Pan and Rumple's plan after they kidnapped her in "Sisters".
- Hook asks Emma why she can only tell him she loves him when one of them is facing death, referencing the episodes "Operation Mongoose" and "Swan Song".
- When Peter Pan is drinking the water from the river of souls, Mr. Gold tells him that villains don't get happy endings, which is the same dialogue he told his father as he killed him in "Going Home".
References[]
- ↑ C-odonoghue. com (June 21, 2016). "Q&A at Fairytales IV - Were the hand kiss and cheek kiss improvised?". YouTube. Retrieved on September 27, 2020.
External links[]
