That is what was so great about Emma and Neal’s dynamic. She didn’t have to be “The Savior” or “Princess Emma.” No, she was simply Emma, a lost girl, who grew up alone in the real world but who found a home in the back seat of a stolen car with a lost boy who also grew up alone in the real world.
And he didn’t have to be Baelfire–the lost boy who’s own father chose dark magic over him. He could be Neal.
“He was always Neal to me” coupled with Neal telling Rumple “It’s Neal!” always stood out as a way to telegraph to the audience that these two got each other, when no one else did.
I think Emma’s story was about, first of all, healing the rifts of the big kinship tree at the center of OUAT. She was the girl that her parents were forced to abandon, and who herself was forced to abandon her child. Neal was the kid whom his father did not choose, and who was himself unable to choose his son (for different reasons). By healing these generational rifts, this central pivot of the 3 generation structure (Neal/Emma) also would have healed the other generational abandonment traumas — mainly, Regina’s and Rumple’s, the causes behind the Dark Curse that effected the separation in the first place. That was the structure of this story, I think.
That’s exactly the structure of the story. Emma heals the rift between Snow/Regina while healing her abandonment issues with Snowing. Neal heals the rift between Rumple/Hook/the world while healing his abandonment issues with Rumple. And Henry serves to help rebond Emma and Neal after what happened between the two of them. Together, SwanFire family breaks the cycle.