Knightfall

**Knightfall** is the thirteenth episode of the seventh season and the 146th episode overall of the American fantasy-drama series Once Upon a Time. Written by Jerome Schwartz and Miguel Ian Raya and directed by Steve Miner, it premiered on ABC in the United States on March 16, 2018.

In the episode, Hook seeks out a device that will help free Alice from the Tower in the past, while in the present day Tilly becomes concerned about Rogers when Eloise agrees to be interrogated, Lucy turns to help so she can save Henry and Ivy decides to bury the hatchet with Jacinda as she looks to find Anastasia.

## Plot

### **Opening sequence**

The head belonging to Ivy's doll is featured inside the "O" mirrored fonts.

### **In the Characters' Past**

In the new realm, Alice is experiencing a nightmare that Gothel will come for her, but as she wakes up, Hook is there to comfort her, promising to end the nightmares once and for all. The two then take a pair of Chess pieces, a white knight for Alice and a black rook for Hook. Later on, he sought out the jailed Rumpelstiltskin for help and the two agreed to a deal. Rumple informs Hook of a device that will help save his daughter, but it's already in the possession of another seafarer.

Hook arrived to confront Ahab, the current possessor of the fish hook. However, Ahab is taunting Hook over having been washed up as a pirate (in this realm). Rather than fighting, Hook and Ahab decided on a dice game with the winner getting the Jolly Roger and keeping the fish hook. Surprisingly enough, Hook won. But Ahab isn't convinced that Hook has returned to his swashbuckling ways, and as he follows Hook back to Rumple's cell the tensions between the two reach the point of taunting Hook for abandoning Alice. This leads to a gun duel between Hook and Ahab, and Hook emerges as the winner.

Unfortunately, the nightmare of Alice being taken away by Gothel comes true, as Hook returns to use the fish hook to free Alice, only to have Gothel taunt Hook before banishing him from the Tower and acquiring the fish hook, leaving Alice screaming and crying out for her father, who is now left a weakened man.

### **In The Present Day**

Tilly is already starting to have strange reactions to Gothel's presence that has made her nervous, but Rogers is not having any of this as he and Weaver focus on Eloise, who suddenly shows up. She agreed to being interrogated, but only by Rogers, and Weaver allowed it. The interrogation between Rogers and Gothel is turned into a mind game as Eloise uses Rogers' psyche to gauge his past but to no avail. Outside the room, Tilly becomes concerned for Rogers as she watches, especially after he leaves the room for a second, when she flashes a sign at Tilly as if she knows who she is, but Weaver tells Tilly he'll let Rogers handle things.

Back in the room, Eloise tells Rogers that the killer is grappling with pain to fill a void, then offers a clue, in which the victims had a heart shaped box, and gives Rogers a cryptic message to follow his heart in order to capture the killer. When Rogers and Weaver arrive to the hospital upon learning of a delivery of heart-shaped boxes to the intended victims (including one that passed away years earlier), the two learn that the blind baker had died, but Tilly freaks out while holding a bloody scalpel trying to warn them before escaping out the window. As Rogers and Weaver come across a witches' symbol but with sectors crossed out to point to the deaths, Weaver tells Rogers the killer isn't Tilly, but Weaver isn't straightforward after they split up to search for her.

The reaction of what happened between Lucy and Jacinda after she stopped Henry from kissing Jacinda is already having Jacinda coming to the point that she is jealous of Henry and looking for more time with her mother, while at the same time has Henry explain to Regina about what happened. Later on, Ivy visits Henry at his apartment, but as expected, he isn't interested in Ivy but suggests that she should find comfort with her family. Ivy somehow takes that advice and pays a surprise visit to Jacinda's by returning everything Victoria took from her as a way to bury the hatchet. Jacinda and Ivy make up and Jacinda returns to Ivy her doll that she kept. This gives Ivy an idea, so when she returns to see Henry, she asks him to help find Anastasia as she believes that he can do this and he agrees.

Later that evening, Lucy sought out Regina at her bar and bought the passage about Henry dying. When she showed the page to Regina, Lucy figured out that she was no longer cursed and the two agreed to help find a way save Henry. The two come up a new code name for their mission, called "Operation Hyacinth."

## Casting notes

Mekia Cox is credited but doesn't appear in the episode.

## Reception

### **Reviews**

The episode received positive reviews from critics with most of the praise going towards O'Donoghue's performance.

*Buddy TV* noted that it was time to give Colin O'Donoghue time to shine in this episode: "It was a convoluted road bringing him into the fold, but since his introduction, Wish Hook has been one of the highlights of Once Upon a Time season 7. Yet as fun as the character has been, he hasn't had many episodes focused purely on him, although that could be because his cursed persona is duller than Prince Charming after an all-nighter of smoldering. In this episode, "Knightfall", *Once Upon a Time* tries to correct things by giving an episode focused completely on Hook in both realms. It's a bumpy road, certainly in the Rogers half, but because Colin O'Donoghue is leading it, there is the usual Hook charm at play that makes up a lot of slack."

*Entertainment Weekly*'s Justin Kirkland had no grade for this episode.

## Trivia

* First time Moana (or Maui's fish hook rather) has been brought into the show.
* Henry's apartment number is 815, the time that the clock in Storybooke was stopped at until Emma broke the curse.