In this week’s “Once Upon A Time,” the theme is all about the parents – Rumplestiltskin, Cora and a new character we meet through flashbacks.

The episode “The Queen is Dead” quite literally lives up to the title and introduces another character through flashbacks – Snow White’s deceased mother Queen Eva. She is a kind-hearted, sympathetic queen who suddenly becomes gravely ill and on the verge of death during a young Snow White’s birthday celebration.

Back in New York, Neal tries to reconnect with Emma and Henry and Hook comes to town to get more revenge on Rumplestiltskin. He eventually catches up to him and stabs Rumple in the chest.

Snow tries to find a way to cure her mother and searches for the Blue Fairy to see if she can offer a way to help her mother. Once she finds her, the Blue Fairy offers Snow a candle, which will cure her mother, but also take the life of someone else.

Snow, an innocent girl who does not want to use dark magic, decides to not to take the Blue Fairy up on her offer because her mother wants her to be good so she returns home to spend time with her mother before she passes away.

In Storybrooke, Snow White and Prince James come face to face with Cora and Regina once they locate Rumplestiltskin’s dagger and are forced to choose between surrendering the dagger to Cora or letting Cora and Regina kill Snow White’s longtime servant, Johanna.

While this episode doesn’t live up to last week’s great episode of the revelation of Niel being the son of Rumplestiltskin, this episode answers more interesting questions brought up throughout the series. It revealed Cora was indeed behind the death of Eva – in a scene from the flashbacks of her funeral, we find out Cora killed Eva and impersonated the Blue Fairy, all in order to continue with her master plan to make Regina the queen.

Cora’s response “See what being good gets you,” makes you wonder how this revelation will affect Snow White and if she will have a darker side in future episodes. Snow’s choices seem always to be right ones but end up costing her important things or people in her life.

With even more surprises and twists to come this season, we have only yet to see the upcoming epic showdown between good and evil.