This episode has me asking more questions than all the others combined.
On the question of Emma and magic, I believe she is the key to breaking the curse; but I don’t think she has magic. Unless her magic is to convince the others that FTL exists and that their true identities are these characters.
I was wondering how Regina felt during the 28 year fog. I’m thinking she would have been more frustrated, because although in a fog, Mary Margaret didn’t seem to be unhappy in her new role. We know Gold and Regina could not have been in the 28 year old fog because he got Henry for Regina. On the other hand, if Regina was not in that 28 year old fog, she probably would have figured out Gold wasn’t either fairly quickly.
So now things don’t make as clear a sense to me as before this episode. Regina would have wanted to revel in Mary Margaret’s suffering. Right now I’m not seeing the 28 year old fog over the characters as being a viable option. Not with Henry coming to Storybrooke. Unless the fog is selective, and only acts during certain situations. When someone thinks about leaving, they forget all of a sudden then pop back into that reality. If they notice nothing changes, they forget what they were talking about. A selective short term memory loss. A town fully of Dorys from Finding Nemo.