Good theory, tabsicle.
Don’t remember what thread it was in, but yesterday I posted somewhere about how perhaps they could use the crystal ball in Rumple’s castle to find out where Emma ended up. Surely that thing will come back into play.
Perhaps WWW gets the crystal ball back, (assuming it was hers in the first place, but we know that Jefferson brought it back from Oz) and rigs it as a torture device of some sort for Regina, where she’s forced to watch Henry living without her, and making Regina watch that happen from such close proximity as SB would be an even sweeter punishment, so WWW takes them all back there.
Maybe we could even expand this idea and have it play into WWW’s past. Perhaps she used to use that crystal ball to watch her own family, which I’m guessing is probably Regina’s family, back in FTL, living their lives without her, while she was stuck in Oz. So now she’s turning the tables on Regina.
I think it’s a really solid theory that Neal is on the gurney. Have seen it suggested elsewhere that perhaps he gets injured in the process of them coming back to SB, but I prefer your idea, tabsicle, that he tries to get out of town to go to Emma and Henry and something bad happens.
I’d like it if Neal is the one who tells Hook to go and find her, because it could mean we’re gonna get some CaptainFire friendship progress. And considering Emma ends up in Neal’s apartment with the dreamcatcher, he’s gotta get that address somehow. Guess they could gloss over that and just have him know it because he’s been there before, but it’d be more believable if Neal told him the actual address.
On the other hand, if they wanna go for maximum angst, they could have Neal injured so badly that he’s actually unconscious.
Maybe it’s not just the one person on the gurney who ends up in hospital, maybe members of Emma’s family start dropping like flies for some reason, and that’s why Hook tells her they’re in trouble.
Getting back to Regina for a minute, if Emma and Henry do end up back in SB, would Regina still have to stay away from him? Would there be some magical barrier thing, like the town line, where if you got too close, bad things happen? A situation like that could explain Regina seemingly being angry and throwing stuff in that scene with Emma in her office.