E!Online Spoiler Chat October 3: Belief and Peter Pan

Thomas: I have a OUAT question. Can you tell us why Peter Pan wants the heart of a true believer? What can belief do?
Five points to you, as executive producer Adam Horowitz is glad people are asking that very question. “What we didn’t want to do was do a villain who just wants world domination and wants to do something terrible,” he explains.

I understand Adam to be saying that Peter Pan does NOT simply want to do something evil for evil’s sake. If he means Henry harm, which I’m starting to doubt, then it could be for the “greater good” of Neverland.

“What we wanted was someone who had a really character-based motivation for why belief was important to him and why the truest believer was important to him. That’s the story we’re going to unfurl in these first 11 [episodes].”

I think the reason PP needs Henry’s belief is because his own level of belief has been depleted over the centuries. We have yet to see PP fly on his own without Henry. PP isn’t the one who came to Earth, as traditionally depicted; rather, it was his shadow. As to what character-based motivation means, I think PP wants a mother, which is why PP gives Emma a map to find Henry in 3×2.

So belief is just as important to PP as the actual heart. Is PP testing both Henry and Emma to see which one has stronger belief before he makes his final decision about who’s heart to take?

I no longer think that PP wants Henry’s actual heart. I think he needs Henry’s figurative heart, that is Henry’s core belief. I think he needs Henry’s level of belief to rub off on PP, so to speak, since PP’s skepticism has increasingly grown over the years of being trapped as a a boy. He may be unable to fly on his own anymore, and therefore able to leave NL.

I think the reason PP needs Henry’s belief is because his own level of belief has been depleted over the centuries. We have yet to see PP fly on his own without Henry. PP isn’t the one who came to Earth, as traditionally depicted; rather, it was his shadow. As to what character-based motivation means, I think PP wants a mother

I wonder if his line about it being easier to get someone to hate something, instead of believing in something, could be him speaking from personal experience? In Barrie’s story, PP sees his mother with another child, and that causes him to lose faith in her love for him, because she’s replaced him. Basically, he lost belief in his mother’s love, resented her, and then left her behind for forever and went to NL. If K&H give their PP a similar background and/or mentality, then he could have been sorely lacking in belief right from the getgo.

CRACK-THEORY TIME: Remember how Tinkerbell died in the Peter Pan (it happened in the 2003 verison, and I think in the Disney version too), She died because someone said they didn’t believe in fairies.. WHAT IF Pan wants Henry heart to use his belief to somehow raise the dead? Maybe Tink is dying… Maybe he is dying…

That might be part of it. We have yet to see Tinkerbell but we know we’re going to meet her in present-day Neverland by 3×3. So any true belief from Henry would have to save Tink by that episode for this theory to pan out. Get it, Pan out? hehe