Smash the Mirror

"Smash the Mirror"
Season Four
Season 04, Episode 08
Episode Information
Character backstory	Anna Elsa Ingrid
Premiere date	November 16, 2014
Viewers	6.80 million
Written by	David H. Goodman and Jerome Schwartz
Directed by	Eagle Egilsson (Part 1) Ralph Hemecker (Part 2)
Episode Chronology
Previous Episode	"The Snow Queen"
Next Episode	"Fall"
Related Pages

“

Now my mirror is complete.

”

—Ingrid

"Smash the Mirror" is the eighth episode of Season Four of ABC's Once Upon a Time. It was written by David H. Goodman and Jerome Schwartz, and directed by Eagle Egilsson and Ralph Hemecker. It is the seventy-fourth episode of the series overall, and premiered on November 16, 2014.

This episode is a two-hour episode, and has subsequently been split into "Smash the Mirror, Part 1" and "Smash the Mirror, Part 2".

Synopsis

In Arendelle when the Snow Queen tries to pit Elsa and Anna against each other and it proves more difficult than she anticipates, she takes drastic measures. Meanwhile, in Storybrooke Emma’s powers are out of control and her fear of hurting loved ones pushes her away from everyone she cares about. In her confusion Emma turns to Gold for help getting her powers under control. Gold tells her about a way to get rid of her powers altogether and Hook tries to put a stop to it. Meanwhile, Regina struggles with her plan to find the author of the storybook until her quest takes an unexpected turn. Robin Hood recruits Will Scarlet to assist him on a mission and Mary Margaret and David search for Emma.

Deleted Scenes

"Just Like Everyone Else"

This scene is included on Once Upon a Time: The Complete Fourth Season.

At the Blanchard loft, Mary Margaret notices Elsa with snow floating around her. She asks if that means she's upset and if she's worried about Emma. Elsa makes the snow disappear, apologizing that the floor is wet. Mary Margaret says that she seems very focused on her gloves. Elsa says that her parents gave them to her so they would conceal her magic, but Snow says that she thinks they didn't work. Elsa agrees and says that her sister's love helped. Mary Margaret asks if she has ever tried taking it all way, like Emma did, but Elsa says that she wanted, but she couldn't. She adds that Emma is lucky to have parents like them. Mary Margaret says that she doesn't know what Elsa's parents did or didn't do but all parents make mistakes. She then asks what Elsa would tell Emma, since she understands her more than anyone at the moment. Elsa says that she doesn't know if she would stop her or join her.

Cast

Starring Ginnifer Goodwin as Mary Margaret Blanchard Jennifer Morrison as Emma Swan Lana Parrilla as Regina Mills Josh Dallas as David Nolan Emilie de Ravin (Credit only) Colin O'Donoghue as Hook Jared S. Gilmore as Henry Mills Michael Socha as Will Scarlet Robert Carlyle as Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold

Guest Starring Scott Michael Foster as Kristoff Georgina Haig as Elsa Elizabeth Lail as Anna Sean Maguire as Robin Hood Elizabeth Mitchell as Ingrid/Snow Queen Timothy Webber as the Apprentice Co-Starring Lee Page as Arendelle Guard #1 Patrick Roccas as Arendelle Guard #2 Raf Rogers as Arendelle Servant

Trivia

• Production Notes
• Episode Connections
• Cultural References
• Set Notes
• Other Notes

Title

• The title card features Emma's yellow car.
• The title of this episode was announced by Adam Horowitz via his Twitter account on September 25, 2014.
• The episode is named after The Who song of the same name.

Production Notes

• For the scene where the Snow Queen arrives in Boston, a segment was filmed where Ingrid is seen exiting the magic door in the middle of the city. This ended up being cut from the final episode.

Event Chronology

• The Arendelle flashbacks occur after "Family Business", and more than 30 years before "Fall". (For more details, see the Arendelle timeline)
• The first Enchanted Forest flashback occurs after "Family Business". The second flashback occurs 2–3 years after those events. (For more details, see the Enchanted Forest timeline)
• The Land Without Magic flashback takes place in 1982, 16 years after "Operation Mongoose Part 1" and immediately before the flashback with the Snow Queen and Madame Faustina in "Shattered Sight". (For more details, see the Land Without Magic timeline)
• The Storybrooke events take place after "The Snow Queen" and before "Fall".

Episode Connections

• The Apprentice says to Ingrid that the Sorcerer only speaks through him. The reason for this is explained in "The Price".
• Emma lost control over her powers in "The Snow Queen".
• Anna was imprisoned by Ingrid in "Family Business".
• The photograph of Emma with Mary Margaret and Happy is from the welcome home party at Granny's Diner in "The Cricket Game".
• Regina mentions finding Robin Hood with Tinker Bell's help; an event that occurred in "Quite a Common Fairy".
• Hans was frozen by Ingrid in "Rocky Road".
• Hook leaves a voice mail message for Emma to reveal a secret he kept from her. This refers to events in "The Apprentice".
• Anna imprisons Elsa in the urn, which was mentioned by Ingrid in "Rocky Road" and "The Snow Queen".
• Regina talks about Henry's therapy sessions from Season One, and she explains the real motif for her actions.
• Regina points out that Henry has the heart of the truest believer, which was first revealed in the episode with the same name.
• Mary Margaret talks about how she had an affair with a married man; a story line which began in "7:15 A.M." and concluded in "What Happened to Frederick".
• Mary Margaret says that Regina has literally seen her heart, as shown in "Welcome to Storybrooke".
• Emma's scarf, which is used as a locator spell, is the one she wears in "Tiny", "Manhattan", "The Queen Is Dead" and "The Miller's Daughter".
• In "Rocky Road", Elsa and Emma ask Mr. Gold how Elsa ended up inside his vault, which is revealed in this episode.
• Elsa is freed from the urn in "There's No Place Like Home".
• Arendelle is unfrozen in "Fall".
• Mr. Gold taunts Hook about his loss of Milah, which occurred in "The Crocodile".
• How Hook knows Rumplestiltskin from before he became the Dark One is shown in "The Crocodile".
• Mr. Gold's plan to free himself from the dagger is thwarted in "Heroes and Villains".
• Hook gets his heart back in "Heroes and Villains".
• The story behind the mysterious page 23 is explained in "Mother".
• In "Family Business", Emma and Mr. Gold wonder how Ingrid escaped into our world. In this episode, the Apprentice gives Ingrid a way to the Land Without Magic.
• The Apprentice says Ingrid will be reunited with her niece, which occurs in "Rocky Road". He also states she will find her third "sister". This occurrence is alluded to in "Breaking Glass" and "Family Business", and explored in "Shattered Sight".
• The Spell of Shattered Sight strikes in "Fall", and is broken in "Shattered Sight".
• Will claims to understand Robin Hood's love for an evil queen. The reason he understands this so well is shown in the Once Upon a Time in Wonderland episode "Heart of Stone".

Biblical

• The Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament by Joseph Tayer and Vocabulary of the Greek Testament by James Hope Moulton and George Milligan are sitting on a shelf in the library.

Disney

• This episode features Elsa, Anna, Kristoff and Hans from Frozen, as well as their homeland Arendelle.
• When Anna says, "Go away Anna, go away Anna", she recites dialogue from the "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" sequence in Frozen.
  • This episode contains a number of other references to Disney works. See the list of Disney references for more.

Lost

• The storybook page where young Regina is running away, and the page Robin Hood finds, are number XXIII (as Regina points out), a reference to the fifth Lost number, 23.
  • This episode contains a number of other references to ABC's Lost. See the list of Lost references for more.

Fairytales and Folklore

• This episode features the Snow Queen from "The Snow Queen" fairytale, the ugly duckling from the titular fairytale, Captain Hook from the Peter Pan story, Robin Hood and Will Scarlet from the Robin Hood ballad, Rumplestiltskin from the "Rumplestiltskin" fairytale, and the apprentice from "The Sorcerer's Apprentice".
  • Will Scarlet is also the Knave of Hearts from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
• While planning to break into the library, Robin says that he needs Will to be "sober as Friar Tuck on a Sunday", but Will replies that he is "not sure Sunday's ever made any difference for that man". In the Robin Hood ballad, Friar Tuck is fond of drinking.
• At the end of the episode, the trolden glass shatters, just like in "The Snow Queen" fairytale.

Popular Culture

• Among the food that Elsa prepares as a welcome home meal for her sister Anna is "chocolate julekake". Julekake, meaning "yule cake", is a traditional cardamom-flavored Norwegian yeasted bread which has a cake-like texture and is normally served during Christmas.
• Regina pretends to read the trade paperback comic book Ultimate Comics: Wolverine: Legacies, which was released in July 2013, the year before the episode premiered. She also makes a reference to the main character's trademark adamantium claws. She also mentions "purple shorts", a reference to the Hulk, who always wears large purple shorts in the comics.
• In the library, Robin Hood picks up the children's book The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss.
• Other books in the library are:
  • Thriving On Chaos by Tom Peters (on the far right when Will asks Robin Hood if he and Regina are still together)
  • Vocabulary of the Greek Testament by James Hope Moulton and George Milligan
  • Cashelmara by Susan Howatch (on the bottom right corner when Robin Hood takes out The Cat in the Hat)
• Regina makes a reference to Jimmy Choo shoes.
• Regina says that her happy ending "is not a Stephen King book-on-tape", a reference to the famous author.

Props Notes

• The Storybrooke map that Mr. Gold shows Emma, mentions a location called Brock Lake. The map that Hook finds in the pawnshop mentions a location called Villar's Point.
• Among the library shelves are books for dreams & mysteries, rosicrucianism, neoplatonism & gnosticism, hermeticism and divinatory graphology.
  • Rosicrucianism is a worldwide brotherhood claiming to possess esoteric wisdom handed down from ancient times. Their teachings are a combination of occultism and other religious beliefs and practices, including hermeticism, Jewish mysticism, and Christian Gnosticism.
  • Neoplatonism is a philosophical and religious system that arose in the third century in Alexandria. It mixes Platonic ideas and oriental mysticism.
  • Gnosticism is a collection of philosophical and religious movements whose adherents shunned the material world and embraced the spiritual world.
  • Hermeticism is a religious and philosophical tradition based primarily upon writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Its philosophy is comprised of astrology, alchemy and theurgy.
  • Graphology refers to the inference of character from a person's handwriting. The theory underlying graphology is that the way words and letters are formed can reveal traits of personality.
• The lantern Elsa is using to search through the Arendelle castle is the same prop Snow White is using in "The Queen Is Dead". It is also the same prop Mary Margaret and Emma are using in the Season Two episode "Queen of Hearts".
• One of the library books that Robin takes from the shelf is called 1988 Mercedes-Benz 560SL Repair Manual. This is a repair manual for Regina's car, which is a 1988 Mercedes-Benz 560 SL [R107].
  • The children's pop-up book that Will opens contains a text page about the history of the British Royal Navy. It reads:

Sicily and
Sardinia from
Austria and
Savoy, defeating a
Spanish fleet at Cape
Passaro, and an undeclared [war](illegible)
in the 1720s, in which Spain tried
to retake Gibraltar and Minorca.
After a period of relative peace, the
Navy became engaged in the War of
Jenkins' Ear (1739–1748) against Spain,
which was dominated by a series of costly
and mostly unsuccessful attacks on Spanish
ports in the Caribbean. During the Battle of
Cartagena de Indias, the Navy deployed a huge force

The page is a word for word rendition of an October 2014 version of a Wikipedia article about the Royal Navy (the episode was filmed in October 2014).

• The fact that Will and Robin check out these two books is understandable, since the books' bindings and spines are almost identical to Henry's storybook.

• An excerpt from the fairytale of "The Golden Bird" can be seen on the back of the mysterious storybook page that Robin finds.

Set Dressing

• As Elsa and Anna are skulking around the castle, Charles IV of Spain and His Family, a painting by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya from 1801, can be seen in one of the rooms.
• The picture left of Elsa's and Anna's parents in the castle hall is a portrait of British king Edward VII, from 1902.
• As Elsa follows Emma's scarf, she walks past a sign which says "Storybrooke Heritage Park".
• There is a framed illustration of a ship in the library. The same prop appears in Henry's apartment in the Season Seven episodes "Hyperion Heights" and "A Pirate's Life".
• Among the books sitting on the library shelves (in addition to the ones mentioned under "Popular Culture") are:
  • Fine Art Reproductions by New York Graphic Society
  • Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament by Joseph Tayer
  • Kunstgewerbeblatt
  • The Complete Printmaker
  • The Encyclopedia of Creative Cooking
  • Audubon Perspectives: Fight for Survival
  • Eyewitness to Disaster by Dan Perkes
  • Great Marques: Mercedes Benz
  • The Great Events by Famous Historians volume VI, XII and XVII

Costume Notes

• Mary Margaret is wearing a Thakoon Striped Shirt (no longer available).
• Regina is wearing a London Leather-Trimmed Pencil Skirt from Burberry (no longer available).
  • Regina wore the same skirt when she was dining with Kurt and Owen in the Season Two episode "Welcome to Storybrooke".
  • The skirt was also worn by the character Quinn Perkins on the Scandal episode "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner". It was also worn in public by Brazilian actress Danielle Winits in September 2013.

Filming Locations

• The scenes at the Apprentice's cottage and the Storybrooke Heritage Park were filmed in Burnaby's Central Park.
• The Boston flashback was filmed on Granville Street in Vancouver.

International Titles

International Titles
Language	Title	Translation
Finnish	"Särje peili"	"Smash the Mirror"
French	"La Sœur Parfaite"	"The Perfect Sister"
German	"Magie ist Sehnsucht, doch schnell wird sie zum Fluch"	"Magic is longing, but soon it becomes a curse"
Italian	"Frammenti di specchio"	"Fragments of Mirror"
Polish	"Roztrzaskane lustro"	"Shattered Mirror"
Portuguese	"Quebrar o espelho"	"To break the mirror"
Spanish	"Romper el Espejo"	"Smash the Mirror"

Videos

4x08 - Smash the Mirror - Promo

4x08 - Smash the Mirror - Canadian Promo

4x08 - Smash the Mirror - Sneak Peek 1

4x08 - Smash the Mirror - Sneak Peek 2

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