Great episode — and wow! What a twist! I did not see that coming!

A vicious wolf terrorizes Fairy Tale Land. Red and Snow discover it’s a werewolf — and (Shocker #1) its human footsteps in the snow lead up to Red’s window, where Peter, the man she loves, had walked the night before.

Red offers to tie Peter up and loyally stay with him through the night. But (much bigger Shocker #2) it’s really Red who is the wolf, as was her mother before her — and as was sweet old Granny. Red kills the man she loves, who is helpless, unable to flee the wolf who is Red because he is tied up in his chains. Tragic.

In Storybrooke, Mary Margaret finds David wandering through the woods, in a kind of a trance. She says he looked right through her, as if “he were a different person.” For a moment, I was worried that he might be a werewolf too.

Ruby, yearning for adventure, gets more than she bargained for when she becomes Emma’s assistant and finds a human heart in a buried box.

The fingerprints in the box are Mary Margaret’s.

Funniest lines

Granny, to Ruby: You dress like a drag queen during Fleet Week.

Ruby, to Granny: And you dress like Norman Bates when he dresses like Norman Bates’ mother.

What we didn’t see this time

No Mr. Gold and no Rumpelstiltskin. I hope he’s just resting up for a powerhouse performance that will come soon.

Credits

Red Handed was written by Jane Espenson, who has written several of the best episodes of the show. The director is Ron Underwood, in his OUAT debut. Jesse Hutch played Peter. Hutch is in three episodes of True Justice, a 13-episode TV show about undercover cops, created by and starring action hero Steven Seagal — and also starring Meghan Ory, who plays Ruby/Red! True Justice first aired in Spain last year, and will be in the U.S. on the Reelz channel starting March 30, 2012.

Editing

I liked the jump from SB to FTL where people were knocking (Granny on the table, Peter on the window) on both sides of the cut.

Leakage between the worlds?

When Red tells Snow to give her a name she can use, Snow says “Margaret” and then “Mary.” Is it possible that Snow has some subconscious knowledge of her future Storybrooke self? In a similar vein, last week Dreamy dreamt about meeting Astrid, in a scene from his future.

We know, of course, that the SB characters sometimes have memories of parts of their FTL lives. Is it at all possible that it is also working the other way?

The curse and memory

In Ruby’s case, it seems like the Storybrooke curse is not a curse at all, but a blessing if it keeps her from remembering who she used to be and stops her from having to return to the tragic life she lived in FTL.

Overall

I got goosebumps at the moment I realized Red was the wolf — when Snow told Granny the wolf was also human, but not to worry because Red had him tied up, and Granny said to Snow, “Oh, that poor boy.” Excellent episode, much better than last week’s. Outstanding performances by Meghan Ory (Ruby/ Red), Ginnifer Goodwin (Snow / Margaret) and Beverley Elliott (Granny).

Questions

Whose heart was in the box? We are meant to think it is Katherine’s, but I think it could be someone else’s heart from Regina’s huge heart collection

Have you changed your mind, after this episode, about what happened to Katherine?

Why were Mary Margaret’s fingerprints on the box?

What happened to David? Why was he wandering around the woods like he was somebody else?

How did Red get out of the cottage on the nights she was going on killing sprees as the wolf?

Do you agree with me that Ruby is better off “cursed” in Storybrooke than she had been living in Fairy Tale Land? If so, what does that say about the curse?