Midnight, thanks for those thoughts, I hadn’t thought of the Rumpel connection and that makes possible sense, especially since the bottle of love looks like a DNA strand. But it still begs the question what about Emma breaks the curse? What did Rumpel set in place as the triggeT?
It is like each step she takes toward allowing herself to love and care for Henry and stay in his life has had some impact — clock starting, sinkhole, etc.. For each life she has poured a little care into, even for a moment, it has had an effect — Ashley keeping her baby, Ruby finding herself, etc.
She allowed herself to care for Graham and the impact was huge, he finally remembered. And we have seen MM’s character become stronger as Emma has befriended her, although I admit her most caring scenes for MM were in “Hat Trick”, so if that were some sort of trigger for people to remember who they are, that one should have done it. Thinking back, I am kind of disappointed about that.
Anyway, I’m not sure where I was going with that, but keep trying to find some kind of thread that says this is the trigger, this is what is needed to break the curse.
Maybe, Rumpel implanted a “seed of magic” in the curse to be carried by Emma to the new place they would be living — ‘land without magic”. That might explain his comment to August that he saw things changing and wasn’t sure, didn’t want to take a chance with Regina. That might also explain why the Mad Hatter/Jefferson disappeared into the hat she made. Emma may be carrying the magic to restore FTL but needs to believe for it to grow and save them all.
Bear with me, I’m processing here.