The fifth episode of “Once Upon a Time” Season 6 aired on ABC on October 23 and it featured Aladdin and Princess Jasmine somehow crossing over to Storybrooke.
Just like it has consistently done over the course of six seasons, the TV series managed to interconnect the story of Aladdin from Agrabah to Emma’s dilemma in the present as the street rat turned out to be the Savior both in the past and in the present and he might just be the key to saving Emma from her doomsday vision foretelling her own death.
The Entertainment Weekly believes that the episode is one where the ladies jump to the front and center of the show.
First in the past, Jasmine was tasked with bringing in Aladdin to save her land from Jafar. In the present Storybrooke, the Evil Queen is tasked with being a devious inspiration to her sister Zelena to make her dark side come out. And there is also Emma, who, for the past five seasons of “Once Upon a Time,” has been tasked with saving everything good in the world.
In Agrabah many years ago, Jasmine enlisted Aladdin to steal the “Diamond in the Rough,” a powerful weapon which can prevent the evil vizier Jafar from lording over the capitol.
The real ‘diamond in the rough’
When they were already in the Cave of Wonders, Jasmine and Aladdin were almost crushed by a cave-in, until Aladdin uses a blast of magic to save them. As Jasmine suspected, Aladdin is a Savior, the real “diamond in the rough” to ward off Jafar.
But after Jasmine leaves, Aladdin gets a visit from Jafar, who uses a red bird named Iago to reveal the thief’s dire fate. Aladdin can avoid it, though, by using magical shears to cut away his Savior status, details TV Line.
Over in Storybrooke, Emma led shrink Archie into the woods on a search for the seer, only to find the young woman dead and teacher’s aide Shirin fleeing the scene. Back at the cop shop, Shirin eventually reveals that she is, in fact, Princess Jasmine, and she has been looking for Aladdin, the Savior.
The Evil Queen Regina tries to find out from Archie what Emma has been sharing in their sessions. When he dutifully keeps mum, she weaves her magic on him to the farmhouse to be watched by Zelena, while she masquerades as the shrink.
As Archie, the Evil Queen goads Emma into spilling her secret to the Charmings, Henry and Hook, and she found out that Emma has foreseen her death, at the hands of someone hidden under a hood.
Fearing she is the one to one day wear the hood, Regina dashes off to whip up a locator spell for Aladdin, because if he is alive, he must also die to make the prophecy come true, just like the other Savior in Emma.
Saviors must die
Emma leads them all to a crypt in the woods, where Jasmine finds the scarab she gave Aladdin next to a skeleton and assumes that the street rat is dead.
Emma asks everyone to get out so that she can be alone with the reinforced reality that Saviors must die. Henry though interrupts, to try to lay claim to his role but Emma says she would not have changed a thing, that she found real magic in her life, in him.
Aladdin then emerges from the crypt’s shadows, explaining that he, in fact, used the magical shears, and once Agrabah fell, he fled to the Enchanted Forest and has been living among them in Storybrooke all this time.
With the help of Emma, Aladdin finds Jasmine and reveals himself to her. Later at the Charmings, Emma says she will use the shears only as a last resort if they can’t find another way out of her situation. She thus tasks Hook to hide the shears, leagues away in the ocean.
But Hook decided instead to keep the shears in his possession, which was sort of a cliffhanger to fans of “Once Upon a Time.”
Incidentally, Season 6 of “Once Upon a Time” picked up from the plotline of the past season and the premiere episode that aired on September 25 saw Regina struggling to deal with the loss of Robin Hood, her perceived one true love.