Bullet point style 1) Never said they wouldn’t slide back. But there’s sliding back, and then there’s throwing the baby out with the bath water. Rumple committing murder knowing full well it’s the last thing Neal would ever want? Baby. Bathwater. Bye bye.
We’ll have to agree to disagree with that one…
2) Never said Regina hasn’t changed. Like I said: hero last season. Back tracking this one. But I disagree with your assessment re: Marian. Regina is trying to get HER happy ending, but that ruins Marian’s (this is also why I have a huge problem with Emma’s promise to Regina through the door–realistically, Emma should have said, “I’ll make sure you’ll get a happy ending because you’re a core character and a regular star. The heck with this innocent guest star chick). @PriceofMagic brought this up in another thread: Emma’s promise was really unrealistic. It’s impossible to give Regina a happy ending and not ruin someone else at the same time. And that morality of that is…problematic, though I grant it’s because “main character”
Okay, I hadn’t thought of it like that, and yeah, of course it’s because Regina is a main character, but Emma never said her plan to help Regina find her happy ending was to make sure she ended up with Robin- that was Regina’s idea, and one I imagine will affect the journey we are about to see her go on. At least she backed out of outright killing Marian so I still say it’s a step in the right direction, if a small one. She may surprise us yet. We’ve only seen one episode so far. Emma feels really bad for what happened., but I think she would like to see things work out for everyone, even if it’s an unrealistic goal.