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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.
[adrotate group="5"]And right after I submitted that post, I went to check tumblr, and the first post I saw said…
This is the best Baelfire video I have ever seen! So melancholy but so beautiful.
If anyone needs me, I’ll just be over here curled up in a sobbing heap on the floor.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.
Yes and he said to keep watching, I’m just not sure it’s August. It could be Tink if she’s been August’s “handler” this entire time.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"The cop who arrests Emma specifies that it was a “he” who called in the tip…
Cop: Sorry to tell you, but your boy took off. Probably in Canada by now. He called in a tip – told us to take a look at the surveillance footage at the train station.
So unless Tink disguised her voice, it can’t have been her. We dunno if August knew the details of Emma getting the watches from the train station.
While Neal is responsible for letting Emma try and steal back the watches for him, I highly doubt Neal ratted out Emma to the police. I think the “he” who called the cops on Emma was most likely August. He told Neal that he’d been tracking Emma and had only convinced Neal to let Emma go. It must’ve been August who tipped off the cops, just as it was August who knew Emma’s jail sentence and her whereabouts to send her the keychain in prison. It makes me think before he split with the money to Thailand, August was the one who helped procure baby Henry for Mr. Gold, since August needed a reason to lure Emma to SB on her 28th birthday to break the curse. He might’ve guessed that the only reason Emma would have to stay in a cursed town would be her son in the clutches of Regina. That makes August a pretty selfish person, which is exactly in lines with his character up until 2×18. The writers basically have made August culprit for everything that went wrong between Neal and Emma in order to make us sympathize with Neal more.
"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy
I agree, RumplesGirl! Some of the issues people have with what Neal did of course isn’t motivated by some other ship, either, plenty of people just feel strongly that Emma’s pain and heartbreak shouldn’t be waived away. I think most of us who ship SF agree with that too.
Then I also don’t fault those who thought the worst too much, because the scenes did play out in a very subtle way. August says “steer clear”–he doesn’t say “DOOM SHALL BEFALL THY LOVE IF YOU DO NOT STAY AWAY” with thunder and lightening and ominous portents so everyone gets reminded –we’re talking about a magical curse. How in the Blue Fairy’s Jellyfish Dress are we supposed to know or think we know what would be required?I do understand that for some it was hard to imagine reasons that make sense for the “terrible things”. For me though, thinking up doomsday scenarios wasn’t that hard. In addition to what Phee said about “My boyfriend’s gone pscyho”…I thought about a few basic things we now know about what it might have been like if Neal wandered into town with Emma on her 28th birthday.
1) Her name triggered Gold’s memories of being Rumple the moment he heard it, no waiting for the curse to break
2)Regina rolled out the unwelcome mat for strangers, used Graham like a robot, and repaid a boy’s kindness with trying to kidnap him and kill his father.
3)It took Henry dying for Emma to break the curse with her TLK. She believed in the curse before that point and it wasn’t enough.
4) the prophecy that Gold had about a boy leading him to his son but being his undoing, and his vow to kill the boy before that happenedSo take your pick of terrible things–Gold turning the clock on Bae, letting Emma and Henry die at the hands of crazy Regina? The curse broke either way if Emma died, and with Bae there what reason did Gold have to care? Without Belle, without knowing she was alive, it could have been a shocking moment like mute maid and Milah all over again. I could see this alternate universe Rumple saying as he turns Bae to 14 and wipes his memory, “I know you love her and the boy but you won’t remember them in a minute and it will all be just like it was before”.
Even if as a writer you imagine how they could have still overcome all this, and at least Emma wouldn’t have suffered for ten years, the more important thing is, what did Neal think might happen, and what, in retrospect, does Emma believe about why he did what he did.
Emma didn’t blame Gold for almost killing her and Mary Margret in order to prevent Cora from getting to town. She said she understood why he did it. She didn’t want to hug him and call him her new best friend either, but it seemed like she is the sort of person who realizes that sometimes life forces you into tough spots. She says to Snow that maybe that optimism of Good Always Wins skipped a generation, and I think in some ways, it did. Emma, if she put herself in Neal’s shoes in hindsight, would come to terms with what he did as necessary. Yet she would still struggle (as she does with her parents) to reconcile her mind with her heart’s pain. It’s a struggle though–not a forgone conclusion that she could never get over it.
Adam of course shortens all that on twitter–terrible things would have happened, she has not taken him back and there is more story to tell. As a SF shipper I like to add in “yet” after the taken him back bit, and think the story plays out that they do renew their love, after more adventures yet to come that show why they are good to and for each other.
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
*stands up and applauds KFC’s post*
Sometimes people, like that troll who has been harassing Adam for days now seem to think that Emma can’t forgive or that she isn’t capable of understanding the hard choices people have had to make. But Emma has made a lot of hard decisions too: like giving up Henry for his “best chance.” She knows what it’s like to give up something you love for the right reasons. And speaking of understanding hard decisions, this is one of my favorite examples:
Emma: Oh, I am. But, see… Here’s the thing – no matter what the circumstances, for twenty-eight years I only knew one thing. That my parents sent me away.
MMB: We did that to give you your best chance.
Emma: You did it for everyone, because that’s who you are. Leaders, heroes, princes, and princesses, and that’s great. A-And amazing. And wonderful. But it doesn’t change the fact that, for my entire life, I’ve been alone.
MMB: But, if we hadn’t sent you away, you would’ve been cursed, too.
Emma: But we would’ve been together. Which curse is worse?
that’s from Broken and then by the end of Lady of the Lake she understands why Snow and Charming did what they did and that they had planned an entire life for her, and by the end of ASOTM, she is calling them mom and dad. Emma knows that people make hard terrible decisions in sucky situations for the betterment of everyone.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"How in the Blue Fairy’s Jellyfish Dress
Your whole post was spot on, but this made me LOL!
But Emma has made a lot of hard decisions too: like giving up Henry for his “best chance.” She knows what it’s like to give up something you love for the right reasons.
This is why I don’t get it when people think it would be out of character for her to forgive him and take him back. IMO they’ve set up Emma’s story in a way that makes it completely believable that she of all people could understand the position he was in and why he did what he had to do, even if it hurt his heart to do it.
Awww, thanks RG 🙂
@ Slurpeez– I had no problem with August being the fallen hero, if it set up drama and conflict between Neal, August and Emma. What we got though, felt so rushed and contrived!
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
I was thinking about how Baelfire might react to using good magic in order to contact Emma and Henry from the EF in S3. He may have to use a magic mirror in Rumple’s dark castle. It would be ironic given how much Baelfire has disliked dark magic ever since magic destroyed his family and caused him to sacrifice himself for the Darlings. Let’s look back at his complicated history with magic. In 1×19, there was this conversation:
Baelfire: You’re different now. You see it, don’t you? You hurt people all the time.
Rumpelstiltskin: I created a truce in the Ogres War, Bae. I walked into the field of battle, and I made it stop. I led the children home. Surely, a man who’s saved a thousand lives-
Baelfire: Is done. A man who’s saved a thousand lives can be done with it. You can stop doing things.
Rumpelstiltskin: I can’t. I need more power so I can protect you.
Baelfire: I wouldn’t need protecting if you didn’t have power.
Baelfire wishes his father would be done with magic, despite having saved a thousand lives, and he just wants his papa back.Yet, Bae wasn’t completely opposed to using all magic, since he clearly sought the Blue Fairy, who gave him a magical bean. It was a type of “light magic” that Bae was willing to try to save his Papa.
The next time we see Bae confront magic was in 2×21 when he warned Wendy Darling against the allure of magic, because magic had ripped his family apart. Bae then sacrificed himself for Wendy’s brothers so that they wouldn’t have to pay the price of magic. He did it to spare Wendy from having her family torn apart by magic.
How will Baelfire act to Emma, who is True Love Magic incarnate? He sacrificed his relationship with her in 2×6 because he knew it was her destiny to break a curse. The curse his father created to find him. Yet, he did it because he wanted Emma to have her parents, so that her family wouldn’t forever be torn asunder by dark magic like his was.
Then, we caught a brief look glimpse of this question of Emma’s magic in 2×16:
(At the front of the shop, Emma draws a line with the invisible chalk in front of the door. Neal watches her.)
Neal: Missed a spot.
Emma: You’re hilarious.
Neal: I didn’t know you were magical.
Emma: Oh, my. Are you getting judgey about this? Cause you’re not allowed to have opinions about surprises, Mr. Son-of-Rumpelstiltskin.Neal: Oh…
Emma: What ‘oh’?
Neal: I didn’t mean for Tamara to be a surprise.
Emma: You think I care that a guy I dated a decade ago is engaged?
Neal wasn’t visibly concerned that Emma was using magic chalk to help protect his father. The issue about Emma being magical intrigued him more than anything. Emma’s magic comes from a place of doing good. Instead, he picked up on Emma’s being upset about Tamara. He even looks amused by Emma using light magic and her sass that comes with it.
In 2×18, Neal witnessed the Blue Fairy use her fairy magic to turn Pinocchio back into a real boy again. He looked happy to see Pinocchio and Geppetto reunited. Again, Baelfire was unopposed to light magic.
All in all, I think Neal would have been proud of Emma in 2×22 if he’d been around to see her save the town of SB using her True Love Magic. So, seems like Neal isn’t opposed to all forms of magic–just the use of dark magic and the price it carries.
Here is a really good video character study of Bae called ‘Magic Destroyed my Family:”
"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy
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