Reply To: Emma's Role as "The Saviour"

[Slurpeez]

I don’t believe Emma’s true love magic comes with a price, since we’ve only seen her use it to protect those she loves so far. If anything, Emma’s good magic always saves the day after the price of dark magic has arisen due to someone else’s evil actions. Nevertheless, Emma still suffers every time dark magic is used.

We need to look at the entire context in order to more fully understand the price of magic that Regina warns Emma about in “The Cricket Game”:

Regina: You can use magic… The saviour. Of course. Well, I can only assume he warned you, then.

Emma: About what?

Regina: That magic always comes with a price.

Emma: Yeah? Well, that’s a price we’re both going to pay.

Regina: How’s that?

Emma: Henry. He believed in you. His heart’s going to break. That’s both our prices.

Regina: No. I will not let you poison Henry against me.

Emma: It’s an interesting word choice, since you already did.

It is interesting that every time magic is used for selfish intent, the Charmings end up paying dearly for Regina’s evil actions. The first and most obvious case is that Regina cast the dark curse, which caused Emma to grow up alone. Even though Emma was just an innocent victim, a helpless baby, the dark curse still carried the heavy price that Emma was alone for 28 years. She suffered by consequence of someone else’s dark magic.

The second most obvious case is that Henry paid the price with his life in 1×21 when Regina unwittingly poisoned Henry. Regina would have lost him for good if it hadn’t been for Emma saving him with TLK. Fortunately for everyone, Emma not only saved Henry but she broke the dark curse and saved everybody.

The next price that Henry paid was losing Emma and Snow through a magic portal in “Broken.” Mr. Gold punished Regina for locking up Bell by cursing her with the Wraith medallion, yet Emma being the hero that she is saved Regina and instead got sucked into another world. Fortunately, Emma’s true love magic again saved the day when she repelled Cora’s evil magic in “The Queen of Hearts” which allowed her and Snow to return to SB.

Then there was the entire fiasco in the “The Cricket Game” which was really Cora’s dark magic at work but  which led Regina to spiral out of control and go full Evil Queen mode again. Regina’s selfishness about wanting sole custody of Henry led her to nearly kill all of Henry’s relatives in “The Miller’s Daughter” and again to seek to use the fail-safe in “The Evil Queen” which would have destroyed the entire town of SB had Emma not used her true love magic again to help Regina reverse the fail-safe in 2×22. Yet, the price that got paid for Regina even attempting to use the fail-safe arguably could be Henry’s disappearance.

I think PP planed to isolate Henry (since he would have been the sole survivor of the fail-safe having been born in this world). Yet, that plan was dependent upon Regina being selfish enough to 1) cast the dark curse in the first place and 2) to create the fail-safe which she then planned to use to have Henry to herself. So, despite Emma’s true love magic having saved SB, Emma still has to suffer the horrible loss of having her son kidnapped due to evil magic being used in the first place.