–This, however, is problematic if the Tiger Lily/Lucy scenes in S6 are flashbacks to the present day S7 HH stuff. Why? Because Lucy is 10 and Regina, Rogers, Tiana, Henry, Cinderella, et all have still not aged a single day from the time Henry and Cinderella met in the EF 2.0 even though at minimum 11 years should have passed (Lucy’s age + 1 year for courtship/conception). And if time is moving more quickly then everyone really should have aged.
Yes, close to eleven years have probably passed since Henry met Ella in EF 2.0, and we still don’t know why any of the residents of HH look so youthful. We’re supposed to buy that it’s been more than a decade despite the lack of signs of natural aging. You are probably overthinking this (the way a normal, inquisitive person would), but these writers don’t care about the age of actors. The writes just hope we will stop being critical and just suspend our disbelief. Recall how Neal and Emma were played by MRJ and Jennifer in the Tallahassee flashbacks even though both actors were firmly in their 30s at the time but were supposed to be playing teenagers. Lana has also played a much younger version of Regina in flashbacks. Kid Henry was supposed to be about 11 or 12 for several seasons even thought Jared was pushing 14 or 15. It was totally ridiculous because Jared Gilmore was going through a major growth spurt at the time and looked like a much older teenager. The audience is just supposed to believe that these characters are a certain age even if the passage of time doesn’t make sense in terms of natural aging.
We don’t really know how old Lucy was supposed to be in the EF 2.0 flashback with Tiger Lily and Henry. Even though Lucy is 10 in HH, she might have only been around 7, 8, or 9 in those scene. Yes, the actress appears older than 7, but the writers don’t care about details like that. While we’re not really sure how long the residents of HH have been cursed, it could be anywhere from mere weeks to years. One thing I’m pretty sure of though is that those were flashbacks and not flashforwards because of the narrative structure and sequence of events:
(A) Henry told Lucy to get the storybook to safety, which she clearly did because it appeared in published form in HH.
(B) Tiger Lily predicted Lucy would be reunited with her father, which came true because Lucy found Henry Mills living in Seattle when she knocked on his front door.
The fact that those events have already come to pass in the story lead me to conclude that the scenes of Lucy from the season six finale were flashbacks that happened before the present day.
–So either the writers have given up and it’ll never make sense, the Lucy/Tiger Lily scenes are flashfowards to the present day HH stuff (ie: after the breaking of the Curse and is the plot of 7B and a potential S8), or there is about to be some serious timey wimey hijinks involving time travel, lands with times that do not function normally, ect.
The writers gave up even pretending to care about the T word. That is why they always write “a long time ago” or instead of giving us specific amounts of time anymore. Also, these are the same writers who cannot do math because in the pilot kid Henry said he was 10 on Emma’s 28th birthday, yet Emma told Cinderella 1.0 that she was 18 when she had Henry. The only way that could be true is if she gave birth to Henry on her 18th birthday, which seems too significant to overlook if true. The writers probably just messed up the timeline, as they’ve done numerous times before, which is why they no longer give specific dates or even vague amounts of time.
"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy