I wanted to respond to this with something i posted in another thread.
<strong style=”box-sizing: border-box; color: #000000; font-family: proxima-nova, sans-serif; line-height: 25.6000003814697px;”>Will Killian (Colin O’Donoghue) play a role in bringing Emma back from the darkness?<br style=”box-sizing: border-box;” />HOROWITZ: Who says she’s being brought back from the darkness?
<p style=”box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, serif; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.74902);”>I just want to say that I don’t think Emma is turning dark.</p>
<p style=”box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, serif; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.74902);”>– Killing Cruella gets a pass. You hold a gun to a kid’s head, somebody’s going to get hurt. Heroes do kill, and sometimes that’s why their heroes.</p>
<p style=”box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, serif; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.74902);”>– Emma pushed and threatened to hit Lily’s old landlord when he insulted Lilly. Ok, fine… doesn’t mean Emma is going Dark. In the pilot, we saw Emma bang a guy’s head against his steering wheel after he provoked her. If anything, Emma is just a different person outside of Storybrooke. She was raised in the real world and knows who she has to be to survive it.</p>
<p style=”box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, serif; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.74902);”>I don’t think the writers are showing us Emma heading down a dark past. They’re showing us an extreme version of Emma that has always existed. Coming to storybrooke changed her life, and she was resistant to that change for a long time. Venturing back into the real world brings out a side to Emma that we aren’t used to seeing.</p>
<p style=”box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, serif; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.74902);”>After what the Apprentice did to baby Lily/Egg, we are left we two possible outcomes:</p>
<p style=”box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, serif; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.74902);”>1. All of Emma’s potential for darkness went into Lily, protecting Emma’s heart from darkness ever touching it. In season 2, Cora tried to take Emma’s heart and couldn’t. Could it be because of what the Apprentice did?</p>
<p style=”box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, serif; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.74902);”>Another example, Emma killed Cruella with LIGHT MAGIC. Seems like if the savior were going dark, her magic would’ve taken on a darker color. Regina couldn’t tap in to her Light Magic until she found herself in a good, healthy place emotionally.</p>
<p style=”box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, serif; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.74902);”>2. All the Apprentice did was send the egg, Cruella, and Ursula to a Land Without Magic, having been manipulated by the Author. Maybe the Apprentice’s spell was never about transfering Emma’s darkness. Maybe it was only to get various pieces on the chess board into certain positions for the “final battle” to play out.</p>
<p style=”box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, serif; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.74902);”>We know the Author was manipulating the stories, so maybe he only made the characters think they had transfered darkness into the egg, but all that really happened is that they sent the egg to another land. However, after the most recent episode, we know that the Apprentice blames himself for what happened to Lily so much that he intervened and explained things to her, which makes me think his spell definitely worked.</p>
<p style=”box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, serif; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.74902);”>If it did work, Emma can’t go dark. The only way I could see it happening is if she became the next Dark One.</p>