Maybe she did try to give him up, because he might have just evaded the police. We don’t know, and there’s so much left untold about the sequence of all those events that people can have a lot of fun with the head-cannon. I like the idea that she stood by him, and it was only after years of not hearing from him that she gave up hope.
True, we don’t know for sure that she didn’t offer up info to the cops. But would she have spent a couple of years in Tallahassee looking for him if she thought he might have been in jail due to information she’d given? It’s not 100% confirmation, but it’s enough for me to believe that she didn’t give him up unless and until we’re shown otherwise.
(Frodo and Sam are SOOO endgame, but Gimli and Legolas are my OTP)
If not for that meddlesome Rosie Cotton getting in the way. Just sayin’. 😉
I’ve seen someone accuse him of running in the scene in Manhattan, which makes no sense to me. He walked away to a bar.
I love everything about Neal’s demeanour in that scene. There’s the mix of shock and happiness when he first sees Emma, the confusion when she starts ranting, then she says Rumple’s name and you see a switch flip inside his head and the scared kid resurfaces, then the realisation that there’s some serious explaining to do. (Honestly, is it any surprise he wanted to be where the alcohol was? I’d have ordered something stronger than a beer.)
He didn’t run from her, he was being sensible in realising that this was NOT a conversation to be had out in the street, which was really just common sense.
I also loved the way he casually said she could keep yelling at him once they got to the bar because it was a familiar sense of, “I know how you are when you get like this,” and her foot stomp head shake was that familiar, “OMG you drive me insane but I can’t quit you,” thing. Those few seconds said to me that despite all the years apart, they still knew each other.
Some people find Neal’s responses to Emma as “mocking”, but I think these two have an ease and banter to their conversations. Like some people think he actually got Henry drunk, but it was a total joke between Neal and Emma to compare an exhausted Henry to a passed out drunk person.
Wait up, there are people who think he was being serious about having got the kid drunk?! LOL
Also, I completely agree that they have the banter going on. What some see as “mocking”, I see as a reinforcement of their familiarity, because when you have a certain level of closeness with someone, you can rib each other safe in the knowledge that it’s not something that should be taken to heart. (My close friends and I will regularly straight up insult each other, but it’s done as an expression of affection and all of us know that it’s not said with serious intent.)
Yeah, he had a go at her saying he never believed in her lie detection superpower. But she instantly shut him down with, “Oh PLZ, whatever, you so did,” and keeps sticking to her guns. And he agrees to let her look into it, because yeah, she’s right, he totally did believe in her lie detecting thing, so even if he doesn’t wanna believe she’s right, he’s still gotta wonder and let her do her thing and see it through. He has no reason to not trust her. She’s never betrayed him in the past, she actually put herself on the line to protect him.
Neal and Emma have been through a lot, as individuals, and as a couple. They’re stuck in a seriously screwed up situation. They still have a whole lotta stuff to deal with. But in the midst of the madness of SB, he was something familiar she could hold onto, the only person in town who had known her before SB, the only other person who actually knows what living in this world is really like and the mindset it gives you. Since getting there she’s had everyone trying to redefine who she is, but he knew her before. So in the scene in Lacey where he tells her that he knows she always finds what she’s looking for and she’ll figure this new mystery out, he wasn’t saying that as someone saying to her, “You’re the Saviour, so you have the power to do it.” It was a vote of confidence in her as an actual person. So for all the ribbing he gives her, even if someone can’t see those interactions and interpret them as a sign of their familiarity with each other, THAT moment right there is what proves that he believes in her. The awkwardness of everything is stripped away in that brief moment and he’s just, “You’re awesome.”
If, after that moment, he tries to make out like he doesn’t believe in her, that’s his fear talking, because if she’s right, like he knows she usually is, that means Tamara has deceived him and he’s once again been betrayed by someone he cared for and is gonna lose them, and he doesn’t wanna have to feel that again, and frankly I don’t blame him.
One thing I like about Neal–even though at one point I sort of wanted him to BE PP–is he is not a familiar face from a fairytale. That aspect, that he, Henry and Emma are original characters as talked about in Schmacky’s blog post, is part of the appeal of this ship too.
Yes! I love that they’re their own original fairytale story. It’s cool how K&H have twisted all the old stories, and at the same time written their very own fairytale to weave in as well.
It’s one of the major factors that I think points towards them being endgame. The standard fairytale formula is a destined couple overcoming the odds. It’s not a couple falling in love, then falling out of love, and falling in love with other people. I know K&H have said they intend to explore the theme of finding a new love, but I think, if they want to stick with the fairytale formula, the only characters who will be given a second chance with a new love are those who unquestionably have no way of resolving things with a past love, due to the other person having died.