Last week ‘Once Upon a Time’ gave us a glimpse of Emma’s past and revealed who Henry’s father was. This week, we get to know Ruby/Red Riding Hood a little better. I must warn you, though, if you just started watching the series this season and have not watched any of Season 1, there is a MAJOR spoiler about the character that plays heavily in this episode. If that wasn’t bad enough, for those who have been following the series, last night was the first night since the curse has been lifted that Ruby has had to deal with a full moon.

“What big eyes you have…” The better to read the recap, my dear!

Once Upon a Time:

Red Riding Hood

Snow and Red are running through the woods as they try to escape the Queen’s knights. Red is concerned as her hood is ripped and she doesn’t know if it will still keep her from transforming. She tells Snow they need to split up as she doesn’t want any harm to come to her. Snow agrees but tells Red that they should meet up by the stream the next morning to continue their escape. Red asks Snow why she is being so nice. Snow tells her it’s because she knows who Red really is. As Red runs off, we see that Quinn has been watching the two ladies in the shadows.

Red wakes up and heads to the stream where she is to meet Snow. She removes the robe to get a drink and Quinn grabs it when she’s not looking and runs off. Red chases after him and in a clearing, he is seen holding the robe threatening to burn it to get her attention. He then tells her that he knows she is a wolf because he is one too and wonders why she insists on wearing the robe. She confides in him that her parents died when she was young and her grandmother, who never told her what she really was, gave her the robe. Quinn seems to know a lot of what she goes through (hurting people and the black outs) and tells her there is a way to control her wolf side so that she won’t be afraid of what she might do again.

He leads her to an underground sanctuary which was formally the Grand Hall of a castle. Red sees other people how are the same as her. Quinn introduces her to Anita who tells Red that she is her mother.  She goes on to tell Red that if she wants to control her wolf side, she needs to embrace that part of her. Once she accepts she’s a wolf, she will no longer be afraid.

Quinn is not happy to be found

Following wolf tracks, Snow inadvertently arrives in the wolves’ den and Red is able to save her before Quinn breaks her neck. She explains to Snow that this is where she belongs and that these people are her people. Snow realizes this is where they must part ways and tells Red she understands her decision. As they hug, the Queen’s men barge in killing Quinn in the process.

Anita turns on Snow blaming her for leading the Queen’s men to their location. She orders her men to tie her up and orders Red to kill her frind but she refuses. Anita tells her she’ll kill her herself. Just as Anita in wolf form is about to pounce on Snow, Red transforms and stops her by pushing her back and causing her to land on a rod. Snow throws Red’s hood over her to change her back and she sees the rod has gone through Anita. Before she dies, Anita tells Red that she chose Snow over her people but Red tells her that she chose herself and she is not a killer.

Storybrooke:

The dwarves are hard at work trying to mine for fairy dust when Leroy breaks through a wall. He found a chamber that holds diamonds that can be ground into fairy dust. David, Henry and Mother Superior/Blue Fairy arrive and she tells David to keep the remains of Jefferson’s hat safe so that the magic dust can make it work again.

David talking to Henry about his nightmares

Everyone is celebrating at Granny’s and Henry is nervous about sleeping because of his nightmares. DA Spencer/King George comes in. Spencer still has a vendetta against David and warns the sheriff that he plans to take him down. David counters and tells him to go ahead as the townspeople have seen him beat him once before and will see him do it again.

David heads to the back of the diner where Granny is making a makeshift cage out of the freezer. Ruby tells him that the cage is for her as she doesn’t know if she can control her transformation now that the curse has been lifted. If she had her red cloak, it wouldn’t be a problem, but her cloak is nowhere to be found. David is certain that Ruby will not change but she doesn’t want to take any chances that someone will get hurt and heads into cage.

The next morning, Granny arrives at the diner to let Ruby out but finds that the freezer door has been knocked down and there are claw marks on the wall.

Meanwhile, Granny and David head to the woods where they find Ruby sleeping. She doesn’t know what happened nor remembers anything from the night before. Granny tells her that thefreezer was torn to shreds and Ruby begins to panic. Just then, David gets a call that someone double parked their car at the cannery and needs to go there to check it out.

The three of them arrive at the cannery where Ruby smells blood. Granny finds the top half of Billy by his truck when all of the sudden they hear Ruby scream. She’s next to the bottom half screaming that the wolf killed him – she killed him!

Gold helping Henry.

Henry had that nightmare again of him being trapped in a room filled with flames. This time we get to be inside his dream and sees the mysterious woman across the floor (which we happen to know from the last episode is Belle). Regina wakes him up and she notices that his hand is burned. She brings him to Gold to see what he can do. Gold tells them that when someone is under a sleeping curse (like Henry was), their soul travels to another world where it stays until the person is woken up. This world is between life and death and is very real. Even after the curse is broken the soul will return to that world. While Gold can’t keep Henry going back to that world, he can give him an amulet so that he can control his actions in his “nightmares.”

Ruby is convinced she is guilty of killing Billy but David refuses to believe that. She begs David to lock her up before she turns again that night. David does as she asks just to placate her. Spencer comes in and tells David to hand Ruby over to him and let the town decide her fate, but David refuses. He then winds up the townspeople by telling them that David refuses to protect them and turns them into an angry mob.

Meanwhile, David has snuck Ruby out of prison and taken her to Belle’s library where they can chain her up. David goes to find out who the real killer is. Ruby tells Belle to leave before she changes but Belle tells her since David sees the good in her then there must be good and doesn’t understand why Ruby can’t see that. Ruby instead handcuffs Belle to the chains and tells her that she is going to confront the crowd. She deserves whatever consequence comes to her as she is a killer.

Granny’s own wolf sense follows Billy’s blood odor that leads them to a car trunk where they find Ruby’s hood and a hatchet proving that Ruby did not kill him. They break into the car and find out that it belongs to DA Spencer. David surmises that Spencer planed the whole thing so that the townspeople will lose confidence in him and thus take away his power. In the distance they hear a wolf howl.

David helping Ruby.

Spencer leads the mob where Ruby has already transformed into a wolf. Just as he is about to shoot her, Granny is able to use a crossbow to knock the gun out of his hand. David addresses the crowd and tells them that Ruby was set up by Spencer. He convinces the crowd that Ruby not dangerous and approaches the wolf talking to her and calming her down. With the hood in his hands, he throws it over Ruby and she transforms back into a human. She thanks him for saving him but he tells her all he did was remind her of what she already knew.

Spencer takes advantage of this tender moment and when no one is looking, escapes. Ruby is able to track him down where they see him by a bonfire. He tells David that he will never see his wife and daughter again as he takes Jefferson’s hat from under his jacket and throws it in the fire. David is frantic as he is unable to save the hat. He knocks him and is about to shoot him but can’t. Spencer taunts him and says he should have killed him when he had the chance. David turns away and looks into the fire as his only hope to get Emma and Mary Margaret back is now gone.

David looks over Henry and is in despair but Red tells him not to lose hope because she knows he’ll find another way. She asks him to call Granny to let Belle out of her chains as she wants to go do something she hasn’t done in a long long time – run. As she leaves, David hears the howling of a wolf in the distance.

The Enchanted Forest:

Mary Margaret and Emma head back to their camp where Aurora is once again having her nightmare. This time she sees Henry with an amulet who tells her not to be scared as he brings the flames down. She wakes up and tells Mary Margaret that his time her dream was different. Not only did he put out the fires, he talked to her and told her his name was Henry.

So far I’ve enjoyed the last two episodes that have been focusing on the backstories of the inhabitants of Storybrooke. While they haven’t done much in terms of advancing the grand story arc, they were entertaining none the less. More importantly, with such a large cast, the more insight you can give on certain characters, the more invested the viewer will be and you get more of a sense of the whole town and its people.

As speaking of its people, did you notice that Mr. Gold seems to have a soft spot for Henry? When does he ever give a service out for free? If Pinocchio was able to get out of the real world like we saw last week, is there a possibility that Neal may actually be Gold’s son Baelfire? Or maybe it’s just me looking for a happy ending.

Anyway, ‘Once Upon a Time’ will take a week off next week and will return on November 25th. So what did you think of this episode?