Not everyone is heading above ground in Once Upon a Time season 5, episode 20. Who decided to stay and who had no choice in the matter?

Perhaps it was all his years navigating the dangers of the open sea, or maybe his past experiences with Pan, but Hook is the only person making any sense in the Underworld. Once Upon a Time season 5, episode 20 begs us to believe that evil is the new nice, only I’m having trouble seeing through the smoke and mirror act. Trusting a pirate is still new to the hero gang, but at this point in the series, choosing to believe Hades over the former captain seems a bit ridiculous.

In an attempt to move the plot of the Underworld back above ground, Once Upon a Time gave us two paths to follow — a new backstory for Emma and quite a few stakes for the heroes to work against. Or should I say all the stakes that Once Upon a Time forgot about until the eleventh hour? That’s right! We have a sunset deadline, a portal waiting to take them home, Zelena and Hades holding onto Baby Hood, Emma and Hook in the deepest circle of hell, and Regina, David and Henry locked up by Cruella and the Blind Witch! Like I said, ALL THE STAKES!

For the first 15 or so minutes of “Firebird” I wondered if maybe I missed an episode in the past week. The sudden turn of Hades into all-around good guy did not seem to surprise anyone in the hero group save one skeptical pirate. When did the God of the Underworld suddenly go from eternal damnation for all to a portal wielding, gravestone clearing, “let’s grab a beer in Storybrooke” kind of guy? Smitten by Zelena and tortured by her kidnapping, Hades decides to cash in his bargaining chips and navigate his escape from the Underworld with Zelena at his side.

Turns out all Hades needed from the heroes side was a blast of light magic and his own free will to rip up the contract with Rumpel. Pan and Rumpel poof away to Belle’s side where a new negotiation between devils takes place. A heart for Papa Pan is all it will take to carry the Stiltskins into Storybrooke. Rumpel pays the least likely to be missed sidekick of the group, Robin, a visit and rips his heart out of his chest. Luckily, Hades’ suddenly pleasant charisma did not sour Rumpel’s resolve to seek revenge on his father. When out of the watchful eye of Pan and his shadow, Rumpel filled a fake heart with water from the River of Souls and impaled it in his chest. Oh Robbie Kay, you truly were underutilized. If this moment was meant to serve as the “act of redemption” that casts a positive light on Rumpel, the writers are going to have to work a bit harder to win me over.

With Rumpel off to Storybrooke, let’s focus on the grand plan Hades has in store for his future. After kissing Zelena (and harboring a crush for a decade or so), Hades managed to break his curse and restore a beat to his long-dead heart. Now he can live life above ground in Storybrooke with his new love. Wait? Did the odd greenish light cast from the broken spell suddenly awaken poor judgement in Regina? The Evil Queen cannot trust her friends, let alone her son sometimes, but so we believe that Regina is willing to give Zelena and Hades a free pass to literally walk off into the sunset? How does this lapse in judgement not have more severe consequences for her?

For all the execution problems Once Upon a Time faces, they still have not lost their ability to nail a goodbye scene between Emma and Hook. Buying into Hades’ scheme that ambrosia, ala Orpheus and Eurydice, will give the lovers a way around their heart-splitting hiccup, Emma and Hook descend into the deepest corner of the Underworld to test their love and restore Hook’s soul. (Apparently his corpse is rotting in some cooler in the coroner’s lab in Storybrooke. Or maybe the good citizens of Camelot roasted him on a spit in the town square. No one actually knows what is going on up there, so anything is possible!)

Finally, confirmation that Emma and Hook do share true love! And man can these two sell true love. Their moment of hesitation before submitting to the test to rationalize why they may not be meant for one another was a nice touch. What if this trip to the Underworld really was all for nothing? Sure they love each other, but would this sacrifice carry the same weight if their love turned out to be just a surface attraction?

Luckily, those are questions we do not have time to consider because the weights decide that Captain Swan passes the True Love test. But since nothing nice can last in season 5, Hook discovers that he was right all along. Instead of saying, “I told you so,” Hook kindly bites his tongue and decides that it is time to stop messing around with the lives of the living and sacrifice himself to a life of steam pipes and Cruella’s reign.

Emma may not be ready to say goodbye, but it’s time for her to stop looking for a future that does not exist and let fate do its thing. This is where the second path of the story meets her predicament. The reveal of Emma’s obsession with her leather jacket may have been the heart of the story the writers were going for here, but another buried meaning struck me. I couldn’t help but notice Emma’s obsession with twisting narratives to fit her ideal structure of what her story should look like.

A bail bonds woman took a chance on getting Emma the answers she longed for about her birth parents. When the facts presented did not match what she had in mind, she pushed and pushed until someone ended up impaled by a sharp object that left her to find a way to repay that woman’s sacrifice regardless of everyone else’s feelings. If it makes Emma feel good, then mission accomplished! When Emma heads off to find Tessa, the woman’s daughter, she crushes her spirit, revealing that Tessa’s birth mother was never truly looking for her, nor was she still alive. “Oh hey, your birth mom is dead and she used to wear leather jackets! Sorry for the news, but can you ring up this purchase?”

So goes the narrative of Once Upon a Time season 5. Emma tries to get what she wants by trying to defy fate and rewrite the narrative. Everything ends up exactly as she started only with a bit more fallout. Hook is still dead and now Hades is in Storybrooke. Tessa’s birth mother is still dead, but now her daughter knows that she was kind of stalking her at another time in her life. But hey, Henry got his quill back and that girl made a sale, right?

Watch Once Upon a Time season 5, episode 21, “Last Rites,” next Sunday, May 8 at 8:00 p.m. ET on ABC.