The Final Battle (Once Upon a Time)

"The Final Battle" is a two-part episode, comprising the twenty-first and twenty-second episodes of the sixth season of ABC's Once Upon a Time and the one hundred and thirty-second and thirty-third episodes of the series overall. It premiered on May 14, 2017. It was written by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, while Part 1 was directed by Steve Pearlman, and Part 2 by Ralph Hemecker. This episode serves as the season six finale, and well as the closing chapter of the first book.
==Synopsis==
Henry awakens to a cursed Storybrooke and discovers Emma has been in the mental hospital, and the Black Fairy is the new mayor. Henry attempts to help Emma regain her memory while Gold tries to find out what has really happened to Belle. Meanwhile, Snow, Charming, Regina, Zelena, and Hook are trapped in a crumbling Fairy Tale Land and desperately try to figure out a way to be reunited with Emma and Henry.
==Plot==
===Opening sequence===
The Seattle Monorail is seen going through the forest.
===Event Chronology===
The Storybrooke events take place after the current events of "The Song in Your Heart", while the current events in the Enchanted Forest occur after "Mother's Little Helper".
The future events depicted in both Part 1 and Part 2 occur after the current events taking place in Storybrooke and the Enchanted Forest, with the future events in the Enchanted Forest depicted in Part 1 occurring some time before the future events in Seattle depicted in Part 2.
===Part 1===
====In The Enchanted Forest (During the future)====
In the woods, a man is seen running away from a beast. He reaches a cabin and sends his daughter, Lucy, away with the "Once Upon A Time" storybook, telling her to keep it safe as he fights off the creature.
====In Storybrooke, the Enchanted Forest, and other realms during Fiona's Curse====
It has been hours after Fiona enacted her curse on the entire town that engulfed everyone after the wedding. However, Henry, who is spared somehow, wakes up with the storybook in his hands, and starts searching for his family. After running into Archie, he tells Henry that Emma's at the hospital, where she is now committed to a psychiatric ward for the past two years. While visiting Emma, he learns that with Fiona's curse, Regina's original curse was never broken, and Emma had stopped believing him. He asks her where Snow, Hook, and David are, but the new curse now has Emma believing that these events never existed, citing that she has made so much progress and can't go back, then tells Henry to stop telling her about these stories. Suddenly Fiona (who is now the Mayor and Henry's mother) arrived and takes the book from Henry, but before he left he whispered in Emma's ear to tell her to resist as the Final Battle in coming.
At the same time in the Enchanted Forest, Snow, David, Hook, and Regina wake up and discover they have returned to the place where the events that lead to the first curse began, as they discover it is a prison for them and its tied to the book. Fiona, who is using this to banish Emma's family forever, tells Emma that she must burn the storybook if she wants to be released from the hospital, but Emma refused. Back in the trapped realm, Everyone now realize that Fiona is using Emma's soul so she can stop believing, and when Zelena showed up with Jefferson's hat, they transported into a portal of doors, where Zelena's realm disappeared, By succeeding, Fiona can make Emma destroy all the realms, prompting them to come up with a plan to save Emma. At the same time in Storybrooke, Fiona brings lunch to Gold and ask that he fix her watch, as it appears that she now being the primary support in the wake of Belle's "disappearance."
It appears that Emma is starting to lose her faith, as the realms are starting to disappear, and its forcing everyone to take shelter in the castle, even bringing Aladdin and Jasmine after Agrabah disappeared. Outside, Hook and David climb a beanstalk in hopes of finding a magic bean that will get everyone back to Storybrooke. At the same time, Henry breaks Emma out of the hospital and takes his mother to the roof top in hopes that she will remember her wedding to Killian. Suddenly, her memories returned, but now Emma has doubts and tells Henry she wants to return to Boston for fear that Fiona will put her back in the psychiatric ward, so Henry decided to help her Meanwhile, Gideon is extremely upset of Belle deserting him and now sees Fiona as more of a mother than Belle, and even Gold's attempts to console his son doesn't help either.
Back in the trapped realm, Regina and Zelena try to work on a potion but most of her ingredients are gone, when the Evil Queen arrives and offered to help. In Storybrooke hours later, Henry attempts to steal the storybook back from Fiona but she catches him, and believes that she can use him to control Emma. But as Henry escapes, Fiona pushes him down the stairs before he takes off.
Moments later, Gold asks Fiona to reopen the investigation into Belle's disappearance. As Fiona tries to talk him out of it, she shows him pictures of Belle enjoying life in other countries, and wants Gold to move on from Belle, and he fell for her lies. Back in the trapped realm, Hook and David began their search for the magic beans, only to encounter a dragon and the creature chases them. At the hospital, Henry wakes up and discover that Fiona and Emma there, Fiona finally succeeded in convincing Emma to burn the storybook in the furnace, as Fiona tells Emma it's the only way to keep Henry safe and to end these stories. Thanks to Fiona's scheme, the entire realms depicted in the book are now going up in flames.
===Part 2===
====In The Enchanted Forest (During the future)====
At the beginning of the episode, the young girl returns to her home and discovers everything destroyed. Tiger Lily shows up, and tells her to take the book to her mother.
====In Storybrooke, the Enchanted Forest, and other realms during Fiona's Curse====
Back in Storybrooke, Fiona, convinced that she has succeeded, brings what was left of the book to Henry and gloats to Henry that Emma has lost her faith. Unfortunately, just after Emma leaves Storybrooke to return to Boston, she discovers that Henry has left a illustrated manuscript in order to make her remember their past. Meanwhile as the realms begin starting to collapse, David and Hook continue to escape the dragon, but while climbing down the beanstalk they loose balance and fall, while Regina and the Evil Queen discover that they don't have enough magic left in them to connect with Emma to help her remember. When Snow finds a unconscious David, she kisses him and it awakes him, and tells her that darkness never wins.
In Storybrooke, Henry goes to the Pawn Shop where he hopes to remind Gold that he is his grandson (as he caught on to Gold not being under the curse) but when Gold becomes only concerned with finding Belle, Henry decided that he should take on Fiona himself, and he takes the sword from the shop. Back in the trapped realm, the Evil Queen tries to fight to protect the castle while the everyone else join together and wait. They soon discover that Henry is their only hope and when arrived to the Mayor's office, Emma arrives out of nowhere, as her destiny as the Savior has finally emerged, which causes the destroyed realms to reappear again. At the same time, Gold uses a spell tracker on "Her Handsome Hero" to find Belle, who was hiding from Fiona and she told him about Fiona's deception. Fiona stops by the shop to see Gideon, where it turn out she reclaimed Gideon's heart and is using him to find a wand that she'll use to decipher the mysterious writings that Henry created in the book now that Emma has regained her memory. When Gold confronted Fiona about her plans, she tells her son that once the Final Battle is over the curse will be lifted and that they can be a family again. She also tells Gold she can bring back the dead, so her plan is to bring back his first born son, Baelfire. Gold is not happy about what Fiona is doing, and he ends up killing his mother. Fiona, however, tells Gold before she dies evil can never kill good, but good can kill good. She also had Gideon's heart and instructed Gideon to kill Emma, and as expected Gideon confronts Emma and is ready to face off against her.
The Black Curse spell is finally lifted as Belle returns to Gold, and as Gold searches for Gideon's heart, Henry helps Emma escape from Gideon (knocking him out with a fire extinguisher) with Emma placing a protection spell to contain him. The broken curse also brings Snow, David, Regina, Hook, and Zelena back to Storybrooke to help Emma and Henry. Emma attempted to hold off Gideon as Gold searched for his heart (even as he is tempted a doppelgänger of Rumplestiltskin). Emma and Gideon fought until Emma throws down her sword and Gideon kills her. However, Henry, realizing his love for his birth mother, used his true love kiss and she is bought back to life. Gold then finds Gideon's heart (after resisting his doppelgänger) and return it to Gideon, only to discover that to Gold and Belle's shock that Gideon is once again a baby. Realizing that this is a new start as a family and possibly a happy ending, Belle tells Gold that this their happy beginning. Snow then sees the "Once Upon a Time" storybook reappeared. Henry then looks at the final page of the storybook and suddenly writes itself with the words "Both good and evil did the right thing, faith was restored and the final battle was won". As Snow points out, she reminds everyone that the story isn't over, thus ending a important chapter in their lives. With the stories and realms restored, the Enchanted Forest, Neverland, Wonderland, Agrabah, Arendelle, the Land of Oz, and all the other realms resume their happy beginnings, as does everyone in Storybrooke with the residents choosing to stay in the present day.
====In Seattle (During the future)====
"Years Later" in Seattle, Lucy arrives at the man's apartment by train, who is revealed to be an adult Henry, and tells him that she is his daughter and that his family needs him.
==Cast==
===Starring===
*Ginnifer Goodwin as Snow White/Mary Margaret Blanchard
*Jennifer Morrison as Emma Swan
*Lana Parrilla as Evil Queen/Regina Mills/Evil Regina
*Josh Dallas as Prince Charming/David Nolan
*Emilie de Ravin as Belle French
*Colin O'Donoghue as Hook
*Jared S. Gilmore as Henry Mills
*Rebecca Mader as Zelena
*Robert Carlyle as Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold
===Guest Starring===
*Giles Matthey as Gideon
*Andrew J. West as Henry Mills
*Alison Fernandez as Lucy
*Deniz Akdeniz as Aladdin
*Jaime Murray as Black Fairy
*Karen David as Jasmine
====Part 1====
*Raphael Sbarge as Archie Hooper
*Peter Marcin as Chief
*Ingrid Torrance as Nurse Ratched
====Part 2====
*Lee Arenberg as Leroy
*Beverley Elliott as Granny
*Gabe Khouth as Mr. Clark
*Faustino Di Bauda as Walter
*Sara Tomko as Tiger Lily
*Olivia Steele Falconer as Violet Morgan
*Sean Maguire as Robin of Locksley 
==Gallery==
==Trivia==
*This is the last to episode to feature most of the main cast. Robert Carlyle and Lana Parrilla continue into the final season as their respective characters, while this marks the last time Ginnifer Goodwin, Jennifer Morrison, Josh Dallas, Emilie de Ravin, Jared S. Gilmore, and Rebecca Mader are featured as part of the main cast. Colin O'Donoghue's portrayal of Hook is changed to the Wish Realm's version of the character, in the following season.
*This episode marks the Black Fairy's final appearance, a character who was first mentioned within the second episode.
*It's revealed that the Laws of Magic only exist so long as both light and dark magic exist. If one were to be destroyed, the other would have limitless abilities.
*It is also revealed in this episode that the first six seasons took place over the course of four years, lacing the present day in 2015 (Fiona called Henry a fourteen year old boy, and he was ten when he met Emma. Simple math).
*This is the second time Arendelle is mentioned since season 4, the first time was in "A Wondrous Place".
*Killian mentions his adventure with Emma, where they had to climb the same beanstalk that he and David climb.
*This is the second time Emma lost her memory, the first was back in season 3 until Hook restored her memory. Emma gets her memories back after the defeat of the black fairy in this episode.
*Hook can be seen wearing a special boot in some shots. This is due to his actor Colin O' Donoghue breaking his ankle during the filming of the previous episode.
*Gold ends up fulfilling his destiny as Savior; the cowardly man he used to be is "dead" symbolically fulfilling the prophecy and he saved everyone by killing the Black Fairy.
==External links==
*
*
Category:Once Upon a Time episodes
Category:Multi-part episodes