Thanks for the answers Phee 🙂 Rumplesgirl actually gave me the answer I was more wondering about as far as 8:15 goes- that was exactly what I was pondering about, Thank you 🙂
No worries. 🙂 And it honestly never even occurred to me that the 8:15 had anything to do with Hook, because like RG said, that’s when Emma woke up, it’s not when Hook showed up. She’d had time to make a whole stack of pancakes plus scrambled eggs and hot chocolate by the time he showed up.
Yes, I was referring to Tamara, but also about the many beliefs/truths he held onto about his father & their relationship in general (both as father & son, as well as Rumple/Milah/Bae family unit), with what he now knows happened after Rumple let him go & what his father actually was doing to find him etc (like how Emma, knew & believed her parents hadnt abandoned her on purpose, but it doesnt change the fact that for 28yrs that is what she lived kind of thing & she had to work through those emotions etc.)- though much of this may get answered when we come back from S3, since a yr will have passed.
Well, when he accepted his father and believed that he did love him, that was obviously a massive weight off, which he’d been carrying around for forever. And very soon after that, he watched his father give his own life, in order to protect his. So while he’ll undoubtedly be mourning the loss, (the way he stood still for a moment longer than everyone else when they were released from the spell, because he was just standing there in shock, was heartbreaking), especially considering they could have started to build a life together after all this time apart, I think he’s also filled with pride for his old man, and if he had to lose him again, at least this was how it happened.
I don’t know that that necessarily impacts his relationship with Emma or Henry, because he’d already dedicated himself to them both before all of the stuff with Rumple came to light. If it does impact those relationships, I’d guess it would be in a positive way, because now that he’s accepted that he was actually loved by his father, that’s gonna make him feel better about himself, which will have a flow on effect of him being stronger in general.
Emma’s deal with her parents isn’t exactly the same, because she was starting from a place of knowing absolutely nothing about them, or why they’d given her up. Neal knew Rumple for 14 years, and there was a specific event that they were involved in, so he had a specific grudge that’s now been resolved. In Emma’s case, she’s starting completely from scratch when she’s trying to accept that these people who she never knew existed, are actually her parents, and the same age as her, and they’re fairytale characters, which is another thing that Neal doesn’t have to deal with the shock of, because he’s always known that those “characters” are actually real people.
Basically, Neal is better equipped to deal with his parental dramas, as opposed to Emma being able to deal with hers, so I don’t really expect to get similar parental relationship stuff from Neal that we got from Emma. And now that his storyline with Rumple has come full circle, seeing him do the brave thing, instead of being a coward like he was over the portal, I think it will be an immense sense of closure for Neal. There’s nothing left unresolved between him and Rumple that he needs to wonder about, and regret, and dwell on.
(I’m REALLY hoping we see Neal reconciling his Bae self with his Neal self- I feel really bad for him, when he say’s “he’s not Bae anymore”, Bae was wonderful & I hope Neal can start to embrace that part of himself again, which I think would be the perfect time to show us his back story- of Bae, becoming Neal as such).
Honestly, it baffles me a bit when people say that they see Bae and Neal as being two separate characters. I really don’t think they come across as being different people at all. Bae grew up poor, then lived on the streets in London, then in a cave in NL. We don’t have much of Neal’s history in our world yet, but we do know that he was homeless and having to steal (like in London) in order to scrape by with a meagre existence (like in FTL) and survive on his own (like in NL). He’s resourceful, we know this especially from his time in NL as a child when he figured out how to capture the Shadow, and he’s still resourceful in present day, as we saw with him searching for a way out of FTL. He’s always longed for family, like he did with his father, and like he had with the Darlings, and then like he had with Emma, and then found with Henry. He’s still self sacrificial, like he was when he was willing to give up everything to save his father, and then he gave up his new found family to save the Darling boys, and then he gave up Emma so she could find her family, then he gave up his life (so he expected) at the portal so that Henry wouldn’t lose both of them. These are major traits that are consistent between the boy Bae, and the man Neal.
All he’s ever wanted is a safe family, and several times, both as a child, and an adult, he’s sacrificed that for himself so that others could have it instead. Thankfully, even though he’s now lost Rumple, Emma and Henry (though all of them almost certainly temporarily), he has new family because he’s related to Snowing through Henry, (and even Regina, who I think is starting to soften and accept that she’s a part of the larger family), and he’d likely consider Belle to be family as well, so at least he’s not been left completely alone this time.