Regarding Peter Pan, I thought I remembered reading somewhere that Kitsis and Horwitz said they don’t have the rights for those characters. Just googled it and found this from an Entertainment Weekly article:
What other characters are we going to see in Storybrooke?
So far the writers on Once have used characters from ABC’s parent company, Disney, and classic fairy-tale characters in the public domain to avoid dealing with outside rights, permissions, and fees. Kitsis points to Peter Pan, a personal favorite, as a character who won’t be popping up in Storybrooke anytime soon: “Unfortunately Peter Pan is not public domain, so that is a rights issue that has to be worked out. We’re hoping that someday we can, because it would be such a shame to not be able to have Captain Hook or Peter Pan on the show.”
@infinitypalm wrote:
Another possible identity I find interesting is the 7-year-old boy who found baby Emma on the side of the road. In fact, this is what Emma was reading about in her files moments before August first arrived in Storybrooke (Ep. 9 “True North”). What if the boy actually saw the baby appear out of nowhere, got curious about what he had seen, and became determined to figure out what had happened?
The math seems to add up. 7-year-old boy + 28-year-old Emma = 35 years, which is the age of Eion Bailey, the actor who plays August.
Also, August did refer to himself as a “believer.” Did his faith in what he had seen lead him to become interested in magic or other worlds?
If August did find baby Emma, could this have something to do with how Gold found baby Henry for Regina? Could August have been in contact with Gold before? Did August help track Emma/Henry down? Did he work with Gold to make the book?
The theory I’m currently subscribing to is that Geppetto made a deal with Rumple to save Pinocchio from the curse. The “payment” for that deal had something to do with Pinocchio being a guardian of sorts for Emma. Which would mean he picked her up when they came through to our world, and has been shadowing her her whole life, working as Mr Gold’s “man on the outside” (of Storybrooke). If Mr Gold can’t leave Storybrooke, he’d have needed someone out there helping steer people in the right direction to set up his master plan. Emma had to hook up with Henry’s dad, Emma had to end up in jail so she had no choice but to give Henry up, Mr Gold needed that specific child to be sent to Storybrooke for Regina. And he needed someone to write the book. It’d be hard for him to watch over and manufacture all of those events on his own if he’s trapped in Storybrooke, (with the possible exception of writing the book, which I guess he could have done himself, but then why all the stuff about August being a writer and showing him altering the book instead of Mr Gold?). He needed a right hand man and August/Pinocchio was it. That’s what I think for now at least.