I agree in the show there was no sign of huntsman/red, but it is apparently built up in the graphic novel. He likes wolves, she turns into one, they both have been outsiders, both have a connection with Snow. It is a story so almost anything can be developed.
I agree about missing friendships. I didn’t like Ruby, but when they showed Red I understood the character and completely changed my mind that she was just a trashy tart for eye-candy purposes with no plot reason. Hey! That’s the connection between Graham and Ruby…they were both a little skin-showing seemingly just eye-candy, but had deeper plot based internal conflict masking a good and caring personality ….but I digress.
I miss Emma/Snow as friends without the tension of the parental angst. I wonder if Emma and Snow feel that too, perhaps conflicted because Emma did want a mother and Snow did want to be a mother? I am conflicted too because I liked the S2 dynamic. It was only in S3 that the mother/daughter thing between them (like everything else in NL) became darker and depressing.
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass