The Apprentice (character)

"I am his apprentice. And you are not the first Dark One I have faced."

- The Apprentice to Zoso

The Apprentice is a character of the show Once Upon a Time, based on the role of Sorcerer Mickey and Dave Stutler. Unlike Mickey and Dave, this Sorcerer's Apprentice is an old man who is based on the original apprentice from the Goethe poem. He appears in the fourth episode of the fourth season, portrayed by Timothy Webber.

In the Enchanted Forest
Since becoming an apprentice to a skilled sorcerer, this unnamed man protects his teacher's creation, a box capable of transforming into a hat for absorbing and accumulating magic, from each person that takes on the Dark One's powers. As an added measure of security, the sorcerer curses the box so those who have succumbed to darkness may never open it, and only someone who has been tempted into darkness but has not given into it can do the opposite. While sweeping the grounds of the box's location, the latest Dark One, Zoso, arrives in an attempt to open the guarded relic. The apprentice, after being magically thrown aside by Zoso, watches the Dark One's futile endeavor to access the box's contents only to be blasted away by the artifact's magic. Once he informs the Dark One of why his mission will never succeed, a beaten Zoso teleports away.

Years later, Zoso is succeeded by the next Dark One, Rumplestiltskin, who also conspires to possess the sorcerer's box and utilize the hat within it. The apprentice, now living in a small cottage, stores the box in his basement for safekeeping. In a deal with Anna, Rumplestiltskin sends her to put a bottled substance, which she presumes to be poison, into the apprentice's tea. In actuality, it is an antidote to cure him from a poison he had ingested from Rumplestiltskin. During one day, the apprentice opens his door to Anna and invites her in for tea and biscuits. He even allows her to stay at his home as long as she desires. As he sweeps the floor, Anna checks on the boiling kettle. Despite Rumplestiltskin's instructions, she dumps the bottled substance into a fire. After Anna's departure from the cottage, the poison causes him to turn into a mouse. Since discovering the truth, Anna rushes to the apprentice's house and begs Rumplestiltskin to undo the poison's effects, but the Dark One tricks the girl into nearly succumbing to darkness but ultimately turning away from it. After Rumplestiltskin gains the box, the apprentice, in mouse form, jumps onto and bites the Dark One's hand. Startled, Rumplestiltskin drops the dagger, to which Anna seizes it and commands him to give the box to her. She forces him into sending her and the box to Arendelle as well as reverting the apprentice into a human. Since then, The Apprentice later meets the Princess of Arendelle's aunt, Ingrid the Snow Queen. She wants him to ask the Sorcerer what she needs to complete her family. After Ingrid had frozen Anna and Kristoff following her tricking Anna into imprisoning Elsa in a magical urn, she is approached in a cave by the Apprentice. In exchange that Ingrid hands him the box instead of giving it to Rumplestiltskin, he will tell her what the Sorcerer told him about Ingrid's question. Ingrid does so and the Apprentice tells her that she will need a true sister. As the sister in question is not born yet, the Apprentice tells Ingrid that the sister she requires will grow up on Earth as he manifests a portal door to take Ingrid to Earth in the 1980s.

Snow White and Prince Charming are directed by a peddler to the Apprentice's house where they talk to him about the vision of Emma being corrupted. The Apprentice tells them that a blank slate would purge the darkness from their child. He warns them that once the spell is enacted, it can't be reversed. When Maleficent's egg is obtained, Snow White and Charming ended up transferring their unborn child's potential for darkness into Maleficent's egg, and the Apprentice had no choice but to banish the unborn child into a Land Without Magic, as its presence in the Enchanted Forest would have been too dangerous to handle. The Apprentice furious at the event Gorin had manipulated, demanded for the quill back telling him he had abused all the rules, having lied and deceived himself and the Sorcerer and forsaken his holy duty. The Apprentice then traps him within a illustrated of a door in a page of the book as punishment for his crime.

In Storybrooke
Receiving a knock at his door, the apprentice is shocked to see the Dark One, Mr. Gold (Rumplestiltskin's couterpart). Forced into a seat by Mr. Gold's accomplice, Hook, he watches the Dark One set down the sorcerer's box, opening it with the cursed dagger, which transforms into a hat. Despite being surprised Mr. Gold has the box, the apprentice warns that every Dark One has tried to possess it, but all eventually fail. With cautious assertion, he declares the unlikelihood of Mr. Gold's plan to amass enough magic in the hat to free himself from the dagger's will and still keep his Dark One powers. Mr. Gold assures him otherwise, and then turns the hat's underside to face the apprentice, who is sucked into it.

Trivia

 * He is described as "an elderly, grizzled and unflappable knight who for many, many years has dedicated himself to serving a righteous cause."
 * His transformation into a mouse is a reference to Mickey Mouse, the Sorcerer's Apprentice in Fantasia.