Phee If you pause ep one when the camera pans around to show the tree being made into a wardrobe, the wardrobe IS the tree- its just been hollowed out & the doors are made from part of the hollowed out stuff, it was never chopped up & turned into an actual wardrobe in fact it appears it never even was removed from the cart they wheeled it into the council room with- so I just dont get where your interpretation of vessel is coming from re Pino/wardrobe, the BF speech has no context what so ever that could be taken as human vessel that I can work out.
After re watching ep 1 I went & edited my post to include when PC puts baby in it he could have in fact fit inside it himself, its just the extreme low camera angle that makes background stuff look much bigger/larger than it really is (we learnt this in high school photography classes lol) Also SW says ” the wardrobe, it only takes 1″ & “you have to send her through” Sounds like they already new the curse was going to transport them all & that the wardrobe was going to transport their child as well.
If Pino was made from that same tree & he was protected from the curse, fine I’d buy that- BUT he’d NOT have to be transported anywhere then as the curse (or EQ) took ALL FTL folk & plonked them in our non magical world, to live cursed lives – stripping them of their happy endings etc.
So to me if he’s protected from the effects of the curse, he’d still have been transported like everything else (remember the glass coffin is in our world as well, so it stands to reason Everything in FTL came- Im actually thinking that the transportation was more like a transference, FTL was transferred to its non magical or opposite equivalent & so our SB is sort of the non magical version of FTL, which is why the wardrobe spat Emma out well away from SB to help protect her from the curse), BUT would not be curse touched & therefore have ALL memories in tact etc- that Id buy I guess, but so not him being transported by the the enchanted wardrobe which can protect only one (Emma had to get AWAY from the EQ as she is the only one who can stop her, Not Pino, so EQ will hardly be looking for a non cursed Pino if he was indeed protected from the curse & so would not have needed transporting out of SB). I do have to wonder tho why it is Gep would have gone looking for away to save his boy if he was already protected from the curse?
At the end of the day if you REALLLLLLLLY want August (or any character for that matter) to be someone, you’ll find away to make any situation ‘prove’ whatever theory you want it to 😉 – I am liking the newest Wizard of Oz theory/ stuff – its very well thought out there (even though Im not a fan of WOO I gotta admit they have made a very good case for it lol). I would love for August to be PP, but know its entirely unlikely. I like some of the stuff people have come up with for him being Bae as well (Id rather he’s Bae than Pino- but cant fall in love with any Bae theoies enough to get my hopes to high 🙄 ). I do like your theory that Pino was protected before the curse hit (it makes WAY MORE sense than him being protected by becoming part of the wardrobe), but its the only one that currently makes any sense to me from a logical stand point 😉