ABC
Recently on Once Upon A Time, a huge plot twist was revealed: Peter Pan is Rumplestiltskin’s father. Now, if you’re like us, that old children’s song “I Am My Own Grandpa” might be playing in your head while you try and figure out how a teenager is Rumple’s father, Neal’s grandfather, and Henry’s great-grandfather. However, it has more to do with magic than some kind of Oedipus storyline: Rumple’s father wanted to live in Neverland, but he had to turn himself into a boy first, so he used magic to do so.
Although we’re all fans of big plot twists — they’re exciting if they’re done well — this is a twist that Once Upon A Time has already done before when Neal revealed he was Baelfire, Rumple’s son, as well as Henry’s father. It seems surprise father figures aren’t hard to come by in the world of Once Upon A Time. We didn’t respond to Peter Pan’s big reveal with shock or surprise so much as a tired “C’mon, really?”
Now, after this revelation, all of the people in Neverland — except Hook and the Lost Boys — are all related in some way. Wait, maybe one of the Lost Boys is Hook’s son through Rumple’s wife, making him Neal’s half-brother!
We would have enjoyed the rest of this season a lot more if Peter Pan had just turned out to be a simple bad guy — or at least a bad guy with a back story that doesn’t make him related to the big unhappy family at the center of Once Upon A Time.
