I just had a moment of clarity in the chat when Mickstemp mentioned that if Emma runs away from her feelings for Neal in S3 to date Hook, then she’ll be doing the exact same thing that Neal did by choosing to pursue Tamara rather than seek out Emma after she broke the curse. Tamara would be to Neal as Hook would be to Emma (except without the Tamara only pretending to be in love thing since Hook seems to have sincere feelings for Emma). Neal said the biggest regret of his life was letting his fear of rejection stand in the way of his belief in love. By choosing not to deal with her insecurities and feelings for Neal, Emma would essentially be taking the easy way out and letting fear stand in her way of a second chance with Neal, whom she truly loves. Doing the hard thing means facing the fear of rejection in order to believe in love.
That’s such a great observation, it really would be the same situation! It may even be a necessary process that Emma will have to go through, before she’s able to fully understand what Neal himself did.
As far as spoilery speculation goes, I’m honestly not worried about Neal being tossed down another portal or anything like that. It’s been done twice now, plus we’ve seen him carried between worlds via Shadow, so I really doubt they’d rehash it. I think that whatever’s going on in NYC has to have something to do with him, because it just wouldn’t make sense for them to even be in NYC for any reason that didn’t involve Neal somehow. The police station stuff makes me think that it will most likely be something to do with Tamara’s disappearance. I hope it IS that, because like KFC said, even people who don’t ship SF, in fact in particular people who don’t ship SF, want to see Neal dealing with the aftermath of his relationship with Tamara. And people hate Neal for having got off without jail time while Emma got locked up, so having Neal incarcerated for the Tamara thing might placate some of that anti-Neal sentiment, because karma will have caught up to him from some people’s point of view. It looks like the statute of limitations on grand theft in AZ is 7 years, (*adding to the list of things I never thought I’d google, but OUAT made me do it* http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/criminal-case-statute-of-limitations/AZ-felonies-misdemeanors.htm ), so they couldn’t write a story where he does hard time for the watch theft, but if he’s being investigated for Tamara’s disappearance, and the cops can’t punish him for the watches, they’ll probably try extra hard to pin Tamara’s disappearance on him. He wouldn’t be able to tell the truth of what happened to her, and his father, who would be his defense lawyer, is the one who actually killed her, in a magical land. Everyone would have to try and circumvent the real world’s legal process to cover up the magical murder in NL and get Neal his freedom. It could be a great storyline IMO. And a storyline like that would involve MRJ shooting all interior stuff on a soundstage, which is why he hasn’t been seen out and about for the exterior shoots, even though they’re in the city where Neal lives.