Rereading what I wrote 1 1/2 seasons ago reminds me even more how dissatisfying the journey, the quest since has become. They are still doing a lot right with the character IMO, but they have been doing a lot wrong with the journey for Emma.
For starters will think out loud a bit about Emma as daughter.
Many have been expecting Emma’s walls to be crumbled in rather a short time, walls she build up all of her childhood and most of her adult life. I say it again, something like that is not gone over night, not even in a few weeks, a year, it might even be never fully gone. It is a very deep going deep rooted feeling of being alone in the world and that distrusting people is the only possible survival strategy. People with such strong abandonment feelings have a tendency to push people away to avoid being disappointed and let down, strange, because it means one fairly often forces them even to let one down again, thus one is reinforcing feelings one would like to overcome.
One of the very first feelings Emma had was that of being alone, confused, uncomfortable, and no one there to make her feel better, safe, accepted, fed, happy and warm. Her parents are not really to blame for that, they had not much of a choice and Pinocchio was totally overwhelmed with the task given, first responders and some group home can’t ondoe these first hours either nor create much of a better feeling. Emma doesn’t remember it, but the feelings stayed with her. The way we feel comforted or not as toddler has influence on our relationships of any kind for all of our life. We can learn to handle it, deal with it, but it never goes away, it’s creating a kind of basic matrix or emotional vocabulary for our connections to the world around us and other people.
While there were interesting mother-daughter moments with Snow in 2A, after they returned it was like nothing had happened, they seemed to have less connection than ever before. In season 1 Mary Margaret had become a friend (more or less, people like Emma keep even to good friends some distance, if they even have any), they had made a connection in the Enchanted Forest, and then? Nada. In 3A it goes even so far, that she not just regrets to have missed out on seeing Emma growing up, raising her, and wished for a new child to experience that part of motherhood, Snow lacks IMO any understanding of Emma. Okay, one tiny exception, in Lost Girl there was a rare moment of understanding but it was gone like in a second. Snow and Emma could in theory connect even via that share experience of missing out on seeing their child’s first years, though Emma is so lucky to at least now experience Henry turning into a teenager and a set of false memory of raising him, but again, it is like there is nothing. Then there is Bandit Snow, who could share some experience of having to survive while on the run with Emma…
What I’ve seen this season 3 is a Snow, a mother who is so scared of having an adult daughter (right, dearie, it means you’re getting old in a way), that she constantly ignores her or even pushes her away with though a friendly face on the outside, pretending it’s even for her best. In superficial naive manner of true-love-will-always-find-a-way belief Snow doesn’t care much about the complex set of feelings her daughter had for Neal and instead assumed, he was her son’s father, so there had to be something and probably should be something. Right, blood is always thicker than water, what a limiting, exclusive and conservative view on family. This Snow didn’t give Emma any good feelings or reason to feel like having family with her, a home with her. No, in 3B she even snubs Emma for considering that she might be better of just with Henry and far, far away from all the fairy tale nonsense. Snow, who had no choice when Emma was born, failed her now as a mother and friend.
I am okay with Emma being at the end of season 3 at a point in her journey to take more risk in letting people close and closer, but I am not okay, how they brought her to this point. It would have made no difference to me if it hadn’t that much Hook but Neal. I would have loved to see as a counterpoint to the dysfunctional mother-daughter relations of the Mills family (Cora, Regina, Zelena) a somewhat bumpy but nevertheless beginning to work mother and daughter relation between Emma and Snow.
The main character to blame for it not working is IMO Snow, who at least had the experience of having for some of her childhood years a caring mother. Yes, I would expect Snow, who they made a token Gaia, Mother Earth in the pilot, do translate some of her own good family experience to Emma. Well, she did, in season 1 – but somehow that got lost while Snow was cuddling with her Prince Charming wishing and trying for a new baby.
Emma didn’t fail as a daughter, she was there for her family when they needed her regardless her doubts about staying afterwards. Although she decided to give up her powers to safe Hook’s life, but guess she would have done that even for Regina or Archie, that is just how Emma ticks. That Emma can’t be the cuddly toddler anymore for Snow is not Emma’s fault.
Besides that a huge part of it is more of a rant about what they did with the character of Snow, what me irks about how they took Emma a step or more along her journey to a better self, is that the key character now became a man, the possible true love or love interest. It’s such a worn out path. Female heroes often have no mothers at all, they learn fighting and embrace being a hero through mentorship, guidance, teaching or friendship with a man, and often enough even when it’s a fatherly figure there are romantic feelings involved. No, not even Xena is an exception, but at least a man (Ares) had to share the honor with a woman (Gabriele). Wonder Woman learns her skills by her mother and sisters, but still it takes a guy to get her off the island to become a hero in our world. Merida and Frozen with Elsa are more progressive in that, even Maleficent does a somewhat better job. But OUaT has nothing better to do than to turn Emma into just another princess, who is not the classical damsel-in-distress anymore but still can’t find herself and find confidence in herself without some guy holding her hand. What a shame.
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