'Once Upon a Time' Season 2, Episode 17: 'Welcome to Storybrooke' Recap

A man and his son are camping. The father gives his son a key chain he made as a kid.

As he stands to make dinner, the wind suddenly picks up. A storm breaks in suddenly. They hide in the tent, and peek outside. Green and purple fog rolls in on them.

The storm passes, and the man and his son come out, trying to figure out how to get back. The son, Owen, looks over a ridge and sees Storybrooke.

As they walk through, the man can’t believe it. He swears the town wasn’t here when they drove through last time. The sheriff’s car pulls up, and the man steps out—Graham, the old sheriff. He welcomes the two to Storybrooke.

Regina wakes. She looks out the window in shock.

“I did it. I won!”

She goes through her closet, admiring the clothes, and pulling out a black dress. She walks through the town in wonderment. People greet her as the mayor, going easily about their business without any sense of confusion.

Mary Margaret is building a bird house with her students; the scene from the pilot. Regina comes to speak with her. She asks how long she has been a teacher, and Mary Margaret says as long as she can remember.

Regina brings her to the hospital and asks her if she can identify David Nolan, asleep in a coma. Mary Margaret seems upset, but does not recognize him.

At Granny’s, Sheriff Graham greets Regina. He asks if should come over later. She is interrupted by the boy, Owen, who asks her about her pancakes. His father comes and introduces himself, Kurt Flynn. He asks about a hotel room. Regina excuses herself as Granny offers him a room.

Regina asks Graham who they are. She warns him she is threatened by things she doesn’t understand, and bad things happen when she is threatened.

Present day:

Regina lays a rose on her mother’s coffin when Gold comes. He leaves a rose as well, paying his respects to Cora. He tells Regina desperate times call for desperate measures. Regina vows revenge on Snow, but Gold reminds her it will cost her Henry. He tells her has hasn’t learned her lesson, just like Cora—you can’t have everything. He tells her to cut her losses.

“Never.”

She tells him she will find a way to have everything.

Snow White won’t eat. Henry asks what is wrong with her and Emma says she is just sick. He realizes she is lying. Reluctantly, Emma explains that Snow is partially responsible for Cora’s death. Henry insists she is Snow White—she can’t hurt anyone.

Gold comes to a cold reception to tell them that Regina is planning to seek vengeance.

The man and his son are still in Storybrooke, in the diner. Regina is annoyed because Owen is in her seat. She tells them she is having their car fixed sooner than expected. They go to leave, but the boy brings her the keyring as a gift for letting him sit in her seat.

Regina wakes up beside the Sheriff. She goes down the road, and everything is exactly as it was before—only Snow White is out of order, bumping into her.

The next day things are all the same once again. She yells at Mary Margaret for almost bumping into her again—but Mary Margaret won’t fight back, frustrating her.

Regina goes to talk to Gold. She tells him this town isn’t the deal they made—but he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. He asks what she’s unhappy about, and she says it’s that everyone in the town does what she wants—because they want to, not have to.

Regina calls Kurt and invites him and Owen for dinner.

Back to Regina in the vaults. She searches until she finds a brooch of her mother’s, and then tears apart her trunks. In one of her dresses, she finds a scroll.

“Thank you Mommy!” she whispers tearily.

Gold and Charming go down to the vault, finding that things are missing. Two ingredients for a spell—Gold says it will force someone to love her.

He tells Emma what they found.

“She’s gonna use it on me, isn’t she?” Henry asks, overhearing. Gold explains that she wants to kill Snow White—part of the spell requires the heart of the person she hates the most. They yell at Gold to help them, but he refuses. He tells them it’s a blood feud, and the only way to end one is with more blood.

Henry stops them and yells at them. They used to be heroes, and now they’re discussing killing his mom?

At Regina’s house, Kurt and Owen pretend to enjoy their lasagna. Kurt explains that his wife passed away recently and things aren’t going well. Regina understands—what’s the point of a fresh start with no one to start over with?

 Regina and Owen make apple turnovers—the only thing she can actually cook. He asks her why she’s not a mom. He tells her she would be really good at it. He tells her he hates his old home since his mom died.

Kurt comes in, and Regina asks Kurt to move there. Kurt gently turns her down.

Henry and Neal go to Granny’s. Neal tells Henry that Storybrooke may not be the safest place for him. He wants to bring Henry to New York for a while, where there is no magic. Henry says the solution is to get rid of the magic in Storybrooke.

At the diner, the man from the car accident has lingered. He’s planning to take a hike. Emma is suspicious of him for staying so long. Emma goes to the table and asks Neal how it went. Neal says it went well—Henry agreed to go, and is in the bathroom. Emma noticed his backpack is gone—Henry is running.

Regina breaks into Snow’s apartment, and finds her unresponsive on the bed. She moves forward, but is stopped by Gold.

Regina speaks to the mechanic, asking him to take longer on Kurt’s car. She finds he has already left.

Regina pulls the Sheriff’s heart from a box. She whispers to it to find them and pull them over, and arrest Kurt for drunk driving. She turns, and Kurt is standing in the doorway. She tells him it’s not what it sounded like, but he goes to leave. He is stopped by the Sheriff, who arrests him for drunk driving as ordered. Kurt tells him he’s being controlled. He knocks the box with the heart of the table, incapacitating Graham. He runs, and veers off in his truck.

In the woods, Henry unexpectedly runs into Greg.

In the mines, a group searches for Henry. Charming thinks he is looking for dynamite—Neal tells them Henry wants to get rid of magic. He’s going to blow it up?

“Where would he even do that?” Emma asks, as in the woods, Henry puts a bundle of dynamite on the wishing well.

Regina gets a call from Greg. He tells Regina that he saw Henry alone in the woods, seeming upset. Regina heads off to the woods.

Back in time, the Sheriff and Regina chase down Kurt’s truck. The Sheriff tries to run them off the road in a high speed chase. Kurt and Owen think they lose them—but they reappear at the border of Storybrooke and cut them off. Kurt tells Owen to run into the woods. He clutches his THING. Kurt tells him he gave it to him so he will always be with him, and Owen runs off as Sheriff and Kurt wrestle. He screams to Regina that he can’t force Owen to stay.

Owen hesitates. Regina goes up to him and tells him she just wants him to stay with her.

“Not like this,” he tells her. She apologizes and lets him go, and he races off down the road.

Henry goes to light the dynamite, but Regina stops him. She tells him he’s not going to get rid of magic, he’s going to get himself killed. She makes the dynamite vanish. He tells her he knows about the curse she’s planning. He tells her it will be fake if she kills Mary Margaret.

“Not like this,” he tells her.

Emma, Neal, and Charming show up, and they move to attack one another. Henry jumps in the middle and tells them magic is the problem. He appeals to Regina to help him. She says she can’t get rid of magic—but there is something she can do. She burns the scroll up. He thanks her, and hugs Emma, and they go off together (again, Regina gets screwed here. Can’t she just get weekends with the kid? I feel like a lot of resentment would be alleviated).

Owen brings the police to the edge of Storybrooke, but they don’t believe him. There is no town called Storybrooke. Crying, Owen yells that he will find his father and never stop looking. On the other side, Regina, invisible to Owen, cries at the scene.

Gold tells Snow what happened. She asks him how he does it—lives with himself knowing the bad things he’s done.

“You tell yourself you did the right thing. And if you say it often enough, one day you might actually believe it,” he answers.

Regina has a knock on her door. She goes and answers—it is Snow.

“Kill me,” Snow tells her. She says it has to end before anyone else dies.

Regina tells her Henry would never forgive her. But she has a problem—she never learns from her mistakes. She reaches in and grabs Snow’s heart.

“Huh.”

She points out a black spot on Snow’s heart.

“Once you’ve blackened your heart, it only grows darker and darker,” she tells her. Snow pleads to crush the heart, but Regina says she won’t need to destroy Snow; she’s doing it to herself. Soon she will bring herself down, and her family, and Regina will get Henry. She will have everything.

She jams Snow’s heart back in and tells her to leave. Greg, meanwhile, has been filming the whole thing on his cell phone. He runs back to his car and puts the key in—it is Owen’s key ring.

“I’ll find you, Dad,” he says. “I promise.”