What A Time

I've been watching Once Upon A Time out of the corner of my eye lately, and it's gotten so weird, and so labyrinthine, I'm not sure what real fans are making of it.  I may have gotten a lot of this wrong, but the first half of the third season has mostly been an excursion to Neverland where Peter Pan, the most evil force in the universe, runs things with his thugs the Lost Boys.  The whole gang comes to save Henry--Emma, Regina, Snow White, Prince Charming, Rumpelstiltskin, Captain Hook--and others join in, such as Tinkerbell (who's lost her magic) and Baelfire.

We keep investigating the backstory and it ties itself in knots.  Rumpelstiltskin's son is Baelfire, who slept with Emma who had Henry who started this whole mess.  Snow White and Charming had Emma and saved her from the curse so she could be the savior of the whole town.  Regina, who killed her father and later her mother and whose main enemy is Snow White (or something like that--she's good now, though) raised Henry because she needed someone to love while running a boring town where nothing changed (all part of a plan which Gold knew would happen, leading to Emma returning to town and setting everyone fried).  Oh yeah, Regina also locked up Belle, Rumpel's true love.  Hook, who of course has a troubled past with Pan, is now in love with Emma.  Peter Pan needed Henry because he's a true believer and could save him.  On top of everything else, turns out Pan is Rumpelstiltskin's father.  And this is just the basics.  The background stories get much more complicated. 

My guess is the trip to Neverland is playing like the first part of season three in Lost, where a handful of Lostaways were stuck on the Other's separate island.  Most fans thought it took the action to the wrong place (though I liked it).

Anyway, the good guys get back Henry and sail away on Hook's ship through the sky.  Except that powerful, nasty Pan pulls a switcheroo and changes bodies with Henry, so they bring him back to Storybrooke, where his plan is to unleash Regina's curse once again.  Regina can reverse it, but the price is Storybrooke will disappear and it will be as if nothing ever happened.  So Emma and Henry can go back to the real world--with false memories that they've always been together--while the rest of the gang goes back to the Enchanted Forest but have no way back.

The scene of Emma and Henry living a normal life at the end was interesting, but of course they couldn't let it be, so at the last moment Hook knocks on the door and says he needs Emma's help.  She doesn't remember him, but that's clearly where the show is going when we return.

Will I return? I doubt it. I only catch a few minutes of it now and then, and it's too silly to get invested in characters who turn on a dime and plots that pile one coincidence on top of another.