"Once Upon a Time" in Season 5

OH BOY.

My favorite show is back and it is just as awesome as ever!!!

Let's get that SPOILER WARNING up fast!

First of all, I'd like to point out that the very first shot, Minneapolis 1989, freaked me out because that's when and where I was born. In fact, since I was born at 9:00 at night, I’m just gonna pretend it was the night I was born. Ignore me... 

*cough* Anyhow. Young Emma looks so much like old Emma, it's great. And sudden Merlin appearance! Sudden prophecy!

Then Arthur pulls up Excalibur, which has a really familiar design on the broken off end... the Dark One's dagger was formed from Excalibur? (Let's not quibble over the fact that Excalibur came from the Lady in the Lake, NOT the stone. It's still working out cool.)

Getting down to business, Emma's been carried off to the Enchanted Forest where Rumple prances around as a bit of her imagination, as sort of an evil Obi Wan "mentoring" her into following the dark side. She runs into Merida, who is exactly like Merida from the film, only older. While cool to see Merida in the flesh, OUAT is disappointing us by continuing to translate modern princesses word-for-word instead of reinterpreting them as they did all the old ones. (Yeah, it's to keep the little girls interested and selling merchandise, right?) Cue struggle - to kill Merida and steal the wisp or not?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Hook is running around following his heart, while Regina follows her head. Shennigans ensue, Zelena escapes, Regina saves the day, and then in a super epic scene everyone crams into Granny's and in whipped off in an actual Tornado to Oz the Enchanted Forest (although it really was almost Oz). And by "everyone" it really is everyone, down to baby Neal, Roland, three dwarves, and Granny. They even took Zelena, with Robin now refusing to budge from her side in case Hook manages to let her escape again.

I was a little thrown that they took the kids, but I guess if I were jumping between realms, I wouldn't want to risk another 28-year-separation from my newborn.

The gang arrives just in time to convince Emma not to squash Merida's heart, Emma trusts Regina with her failsafe dagger,  and then Arthur conveniently shows up (yay for prophecies, who needs cellphones?) and leads them off to Camelot.

Then quicker than you can say "We lost our memories AGAIN?" (and Snow does) everyone finds themselves waking up back in Storybrooke 6 weeks later, wearing awesome clothes (that I will review on the sewing blog next week) and no idea of what's happened.

Cue Darth Vader's Emma's entrance with an ominous "You failed" and a stone dwarf to punctuate the horror on everyone's face.

Like I said. OH BOY. This season is gonna be good.