CS would be the easy path for Emma. It would be running from all her feelings about Neal and her history with him and running to something that just feels good. That’s not emotional character development. It is actually rather backtrack-y for Emma.
Indeed! Now that they’ve actually shown Emma stating how hard it would be for her to face the emotions of their relationship again, they surely must be planning on having her explore those emotions and come to terms with them. They’ve blatantly set it up to be a thing she’s gonna deal with in the future at some point, even she does end up taking an easy path detour with Hook for a bit first.