If you asked Emma (who’s opinion is really the only one that matters) if she regrets finding her family or her son or realizing her destiny I don’t think she’d say yes.
THIS times a frillion! It may not have been all sunshine and roses to get where she is today, and she may still be coming to terms with it all, but if she was told she could go back and live her life differently but never find her family…she wouldn’t want that. The SF heartache was a necessary evil so that everyone in SB could get their memories back…get their families back…so Emma could get her family back. It was a necessary speedbump along the path to happiness for a whole lot of people, and if all that hope is being rekindled and all those loved ones are coming back together due in no small part to Neal’s personal sacrifice, then it’s fitting that Neal and Emma get to come back together, resolve their issues, and continue their love story as a result of it all as well.
There’s no question that Emma is the only woman Neal wants to be with. She is his happy ending. He’s sacrificed himself for people in the past. He sacrificed the only life he’d ever known to help his father…and he ended up alone in a strange world, living on the streets. He sacrificed himself so the Darlings could stay together…and he ended up alone in a strange land for a couple hundred years, imprisoned by PP. He sacrificed his love so that Emma’s family and all the SBers could be brought back together…and they’re gonna give him the shaft again by making him watch the woman he made that sacrifice for end up with someone other than him? How about the guy gets a break this time, finally gets a reward for a long life of repeated self sacrifice, and finally actually gets rewarded for his efforts by ending up happy? Don’t K&H keep saying that this show is about having hope? Not giving Neal his happy ending would fly right in the face of that. Be selfless for about 300 years and it’ll get you nothing but misery…is rather counteractive to one of the main themes of the show as a whole.
Sorry if I got a bit ranty there, it’s just that issues like this are what make me believe that SF make absolute sense as endgame. And now I wanna give Neal a hug.
Oh man do I want some more August and Neal flashbacks because I’m convinced that August called the police and Neal didn’t wan him to do that. I also think that Neal went looking for her but was constantly prevented from finding her by THO.
Didn’t Adam confirm in a tweet recently that Neal is not the one who sent her to jail? If not August making the call, it had to be someone from THO. And I could totally see them steering Neal in the wrong direction over the years if he did get it in his head to maybe try and find Emma.