Is This Henry Mills?

"Is this... Henry Mills?"

- Older Henry to Younger Henry

"Is This Henry Mills?" is the twentieth episode of Season Seven of ABC's Once Upon a Time. It was written by Dana Horgan & Leah Fong, and directed by Ron Underwood. It is the one hundred and fifty-third episode of the series overall, and premiered on May 4, 2018.

Synopsis
Roni enlists Lucy's help to wake Henry and stop Gothel, but things don't go as planned. Meanwhile, Rogers and Weaver go to Margot in hopes of freeing Tilly before her magic can be used to power the spell. In a flashback, Young Henry struggles to decide what path to follow until a mysterious phone call helps put him on track.

Starring

 * Lana Parrilla as Regina Mills/Roni
 * Colin O'Donoghue as Rogers
 * Andrew J. West as Henry Mills
 * Dania Ramirez as Cinderella*/Jacinda Vidrio
 * Alison Fernandez as Lucy
 * Mekia Cox as Sabine
 * Robert Carlyle as Weaver/Rumplestiltskin (Wish Realm)

Guest Starring

 * Emma Booth as Eloise Gardener
 * Beverley Elliott as Granny
 * Daniel Francis as Mr. Samdi
 * Jared S. Gilmore as Young Henry
 * Jeff Pierre as Drew
 * Rose Reynolds as Tilly
 * Tiera Skovbye as Margot
 * Naika Toussaint as Seraphina

Co-Starring

 * Bruce Blain as Desk Sergeant

Uncredited

 * Jennifer Morrison as Emma Swan*
 * Crystal Dalman as Coven Member

Trivia

 * -|Production Notes=

Title

 * The title card features Regina's car.
 * The title of this episode was revealed by Adam Horowitz via his Twitter account on February 22, 2018.

Production Notes

 * This episode has the lowest ratings of the entire series.
 * When writing this episode, Dana Horgan and Leah Fong listened to the Titanic soundtrack.
 * A scene where Henry and Regina tour the Ithaca University was deleted from the episode. There, Henry was supposed to meet another boy (played by Patrick Lubczyk).
 * However, this scene can still be seen in promotional pictures.
 * The establishing shot of Regina's house in the scene where Henry receives a phone call from his older self is stock footage from "Page 23". The shot itself is taken from footage from the filming of the opening shot of the scene where Emma brings Henry home at night in the Season One premiere: The identical position of the curtains in the windows and the lighting behind them, the shadows on the walls and the open window on the second floor, are a dead giveaway.
 * During the filming of the scene where Tilly and Margot reunite after the Dark Curse is broken, Rose Reynolds filmed two takes of their reunion; one where she refers to Margot as Robin and another where she calls her "Nobin". According to Rose Reynolds, she "wanted Nobin to make the cut".


 * -|Episode Connections=

Event Chronology

 * The Seattle events take place after "Flower Child".
 * The Storybrooke flashbacks take place after "Beauty" and before "Hyperion Heights" and "A Pirate's Life". The story begins on the first day of Henry's senior year in high school and ends on his graduation day.

Episode Connections

 * Lucy talks about how Mr. Samdi cured Henry, which took place in "Flower Child.
 * The citizens of Hyperion Heights are feeling the effects of Eloise's spell, which was cast in "Flower Child".
 * Eloise points out that Regina was once the eighth witch, which took place in "The Eighth Witch". She also says that Henry was unable to break her curse, which was shown in "Flower Child".
 * Regina says that Henry has the heart of the truest believer, something that was first established in "The Heart of the Truest Believer".
 * The lunchbox which Regina gives to young Henry, which he says he hasn't used since fifth grade, is the same lunchbox he was carrying at school in "The Stranger" and "Going Home". He was also using it as an adult in "Wake Up Call", where Regina says she bought it for him when he was ten.
 * Henry talks about how he kissed Jacinda, which happened in "Flower Child".
 * Lucy and Roni talk about how Emma touched Henry's storybook and believed, which took place in "A Land Without Magic".
 * Lucy mentions how Victoria showed her the second storybook, which happened in "One Little Tear".
 * The real reason that Lucy knows about Mr. Samdi's tarot cards is shown in "The Girl in the Tower".
 * Regina mentions the "snow monster incident", referring to the snowman Elsa created in "A Tale of Two Sisters".
 * Roni talks about how she adopted Henry, an event which took place in "Save Henry". She also shows him the adoption papers that she found in "Wake Up Call".
 * Young Henry talks about how he was kidnapped to Neverland, which took place in "And Straight On 'Til Morning", and met his first girlfriend in Camelot, which happened in "The Price".
 * Roni says that the day the curse was cast, Henry was kidnapped and was unable to save his family, referring to events in "The Final Battle Part 1" and "The Eighth Witch".
 * When Henry finally remembers, clips from "A Land Without Magic", "We Are Both", "The Final Battle Part 1", "Hyperion Heights", "Pretty in Blue" and "The Eighth Witch" are shown.
 * A voice over from "Pilot" can also be heard.
 * The Wish Realm version of Rumplestiltskin was released by Regina in "Wish You Were Here".


 * -|Cultural References=

Religious

 * Roni snidely says to Eloise, "So you're wiping out humanity with a rainstorm? How biblical." This is a reference to the Genesis flood narrative from the Bible.

Disney

 * Young Henry has a Tron: Legacy lunchbox. This movie was written by Once Upon a Time creators Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis.

Lost

 * An article on Henry's bulletin board says "Eight involved in Friday night brawl". Eight is the second Lost number.

Fairytales and Folklore

 * This episode features Rumplestiltskin from the Rumplestiltskin fairytale.
 * Henry says that he "went deep down into the rabbit hole", a reference to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
 * Tilly shrinks Rogers, Weaver and Margot the same way Alice herself was shrunken in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Popular Culture

 * Henry looks at catalogs from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Ithaca University and Boston College.
 * The colleges Henry applied to and got into are Madison, BU (short for Boston University), the USC (short for University of Southern California), the Wesleyan University and Bard College.
 * Margot says she once went to an ayahuasca ceremony in Iquitos. The ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic brew made from caapi vines, traditionally used as a spiritual medicine among the indigenous people of the Amazon basin. An ayahuasca ceremony involves drinking the brew under the guidance of a shaman, for a long night spent in deep connection to a higher intelligence and an understanding of one's true self.
 * Among the numerous fairy tale illustrations pinned to the wall in young Henry's room is the famous painting The Lady of Shalott (1888), by the English Pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse. It depicts Elaine of Astolat in a scene from Alfred Tennyson's poem "The Lady of Shallot" from 1832.
 * The Moai, the famous monolithic human statues on Easter Island, appear in a photograph in Belle and Mr. Gold's travel book.
 * A map of Paris, which shows the Gare Saint-Lazare train station and the Paris Opera, can also be seen.


 * -|Set Notes=

Props Notes

 * An excerpt from "The Darning Needle" by Hans Christian Andersen can be seen next to the illustration of Emma in Henry's novel.
 * A list of missing characters on Henry's bulletin board includes:
 * Oliver Z, a reference to production staff member Oliver Zentner.
 * G. Venturi, a reference to art director Greg Venturi.
 * Trev Purvis, a reference to set dresser Trevor Purvis.
 * C. Yusep, a reference to production staff member Yusep Chelsea.
 * Note that the list was first seen in "Flower Child", but only from far away and therefore the names were illegible.


 * -|Other Notes=

Filming Locations

 * The University of British Columbia doubles as the Ithaca University in a deleted scene.