Screwball did a really interesting essay on Emma’s plan to go to the underworld to get Hook. http://screwballninja.tumblr.com/post/135321215006/my-problem-with-emmas-underworld-vacation-the
It’s a nice essay. But I also think it points to the “elephant in the room:” why does Emma, arguably the central figure of the show, still have the emotional complexity of pasta salad 5 seasons later? Sure, time moves differently in the OUAT verse, but for the audience that’s 5 whole years. I mean, from the writers’ perspective, wouldn’t you think to yourself “Hmm, 5 years is a long time in my own life — hey, look at all this stuff that’s happened! I’m a different person now than when I started working on this show! *cue the Eureka moment* I know! Maybe I should incorporate this sense of progression into my characters’ fictional lives!”
Instead, most of OUAT’s characters are either static, or reset to 0 with enviable regularity. Even Regina, arguably the character who has had the most progress since S1, has largely ‘fossilized,’ beyond a mild back-and-forth around Zelena and the baby. She’s still fun and interesting to watch, but only because Lana Perilla kills it. But there’s hardly any progression at all for any of them, really. Actually, since S3, the only character that’s really “progressed” if you can call it that, is Hook. And that would be fine, except that it seems to have been happening at the expense of all the other characters, which at this point seem to be there only to accommodate his arc.