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I think Henry’s main storyline should be trying to bridge the magical world with the regular. I know A and E think that all storytelling must be BIG and MYTHIC with some BIG BAD but….I go weary of that (especially when it really doesn’t live up to expectations). Henry should be struggling with school because he’s interested in learning magic. Henry should be making friends but trying to keep them at a distance cause he knows that people “go away” inexplicably. Henry should be in mourning for his father and struggling with his identity now that he’s lost a parent. (side note: but I swear to heaven…if they make Henry A-OK in S4 with Neal being dead, barely showing any effects of having lost his father. I swear to….I will TEAR through this forum like a mad person) I’d love for him to hang out (and for us to see him hanging out) with Red or Belle or the Dwarves. Show that the whole town loves Henry,not just his family.
Agree agree agree!
Especially about the Neal part. Granted when you look at the literal storyline (which, I try not to do most of the time – fewer headaches) they only got to know each other for a short time, their relationship should not be cast aside. Personally, I’d love it if all of the people that had been in Nealfire’s life to help Henry learn about and understand his father – they have a number of characters that Nealfire affected in major ways, so it would be an excellent opportunity for a nice little Henry arc.
[adrotate group="5"]I don’t think Emma will be happy about Henry learning magic which is kind of…hypocritical.. *recalls the scene where Emma makes a certain hooked hand disappear with a smile on her face* xD but yeah I think Emma may want to keep henry away from all that, but I can see her teaching henry how to use a gun
"A Man Without A Heart Is A Man Without Heartache" -- OnceWL
“What if Henry develops a crush on Elsa? Didn’t the boy in The Snow Queen fancy her or something?”
IN the Snow Queen (depended about the version or adaption Kai sort of does in the orginal and he’s about Henry’s age. (recalls the older kai in Hallmark’s Adaption does and he forgets his love for Greta (there older teens/young adults in that one.) Reminds me of Snow after the forgetting potion) Course it’s the mirror pieces inside him fault. As it skews his perceptive of what’s good and bad/ beautiful and ugly etc. Fun fact: The snow Queen is also one of C.S. Lewis’s inspirations for the White Witch. ‘Puts Narnia under a evil spell/enchantment that makes it always winter but never Christmas.’ for a hundred years.
As to the Henry learning magic or how to use a gun vua Emma bit (i’ve read fanfics with both. the latter also has him and Emma dealing with PTSD after Neverland . Is called Terror Lingers. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9539811/1/Terror-Lingers)
Personally I would like to see him learning how both to use his magical gifts and get some prince/knight lessons from Snow and Charming (and maybe Rumple can teach both Emma and Henry together if Merlin or one of the fairies shows up on the regular to do it *crosses fingers* wishesTink wasn’t on some blech zombie show. *shudder I’am sick of zombies’ *grabs supersoaker filled with salt & holy water*
Keeper of Emma’s Magic Wavy Hands, True Love Care Bear Stare and Snowing’s True Love Charm Heart
i’ve read fanfics with both. the latter also has him and Emma dealing with PTSD after Neverland
This is one of the biggest faults with Henry and ONCE. They don’t follow through. This is a kid who grew up in a cursed town, son to the Evil Queen and the Savior, DIED but came back, has discovered a slew of new family members, was kidnapped, held hostage, gave away his heart, was body swapped, lost his memories and had his father die.
Henry SHOULD NOT be the picture of mental health. He should be angry and depressed and struggling. But ONCE just brushes off these experiences as if they were nothing. I really wanted a scene in 320 where Archie and Henry talk (instead of houses) about all that Henry’s been through. The writers act as if all that happened to Henry wouldn’t affect him, but it would.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"i’ve read fanfics with both. the latter also has him and Emma dealing with PTSD after Neverland
I really wanted a scene in 320 where Archie and Henry talk (instead of houses) about all that Henry’s been through. The writers act as if all that happened to Henry wouldn’t affect him, but it would.
You know what…a talk between Archie and Henry about everything recent would have been really nice to see! I no longer trust Adam and Eddy, after Lana explained the struggle she had getting Henry a relationship with Regina, and I’m very very worried that they’d disregard Rumple’s connection in S4. The potential of Regina and Rumple training Henry is too much to pass up!
"If you go as far as you can see...you will then see enough to go even further." - Finn Balor
Perhaps in season 4 they might explore Henry’s feelings some more since he’s not a little kid anymore so he might start getting edgier storylines?
Henry kind of walked off when Snowing decided to call their baby Neal so I could see him starting to act out in season 4 because everybody is acting like everything’s okay but it isn’t because his dad’s dead.
All magic comes with a price!
Keeper of Felix@POM. I was thinking that they could use the dead dad angle mixed with the new lives of everyone, Rumple with Belle, Snowing with new baby, Emma and Hook and new drama with Regina, while Regina deals with Robin, Marian, and Roland. Then there is Henry
If they go with the shard of glass in eye and heart thing this can heighten latent feelings in Henry, which may want him to bond with Elsa, who may want to teach Henry magic and want to help a lonely kid like herself. I think Elsa would be a lonely sad dark character.
But then again I know nothing. I’m just speculating and guessing 😀
"I will be kind but I will speak my mind."
I’ve been away from the forums for some time so please forgive me if I try to tie some of the recent posts to earlier ones but I just found this thread and can’t resist addressing a lot of the ideas that have been raised.
RumplesGirl said:
Henry SHOULD NOT be the picture of mental health. He should be angry and depressed and struggling. ..
I agree and I think this ties in to the discussion earlier in this thread about Henry’s behavior. WickedRegal probably expressed most clearly a frustration with Henry which I have heard from many people but I have a different view of it. WR wrote:
“And before anyone brings up the whole Regina tried to make Henry think he was crazy, what was she supposed to do….”Hey son, I’m the Evil Queen who cursed this entire land, and trapped your grandparents to be miserable forever! I hope you enjoy the stay!”
I think that is very close to what she should have done! My own assumption has always been that she intended to do this eventually but Henry got the book before she had a chance to have this conversation with him and that had enormous implications for the story, as I’ll explain below. After all, why would a book of fairy tales be enough to suddenly turn a boy against the only mother he had ever known?
I must disagree with WR’s statement that
“…Henry was really happy right up to the moment when he first got that book from Mary Margret, and that’s when things got miserable for him.”
RG cited a scene in “Going Home” that contradicts this:
“Go re-watch Going Home. Henry is miserable staring at his homework, lamenting to MM that his mother doesn’t love him and that he doesn’t have a family. THEN MM gives him the book. And the book gives him hope, because that’s what Fairy Tales are supposed to be.”
and there have been others as well, going all the way back to the pilot. When Emma is discussing Henry’s “delusion” with Archie, she says, “But he got the book a month ago, has he been seeing you longer than that?” and Archie replies “Yes, he has” and when Emma says, “So it’s Regina, isn’t it?”, he says “…over the years, her attempts to bring Henry closer have only backfired.” (emphasis added.) Likewise, in “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter”, Emma refers to Henry and Graham, saying “…both were miserable.” So we have evidence that there were serious problems between Henry and Regina for years.
On the other hand, we saw in the flashbacks of “Save Henry” and several other episodes, that Regina clearly loved Henry, so what happened? I don’t think knowledge of his adoption had anything to do with it (I believe you are mis-remembering that, WR. I may be wrong but I’m pretty sure there was never any comment that Henry pulled away from Regina after he learned he was adopted.) We know Regina loved Henry but we also know, as RG reminded us, that Regina admitted “I don’t know how to love very well.” (That line always gets to me!)
The rest of this is pure speculation on my part, but I’ll ask all those like WR who find Henry’s behavior in Season One unreasonable to consider this (I think) likely explanation for that behavior.
Based upon what we have seen of the characters, I think Regina wanted to be a good mom from the beginning. That leads me to assume that she and Henry were very happy when he was little. Everything we’ve seen suggests that she was devoted to him so it seems reasonable to infer that Henry responded by loving Regina as the only mom he knew. We saw a hint of that in the plaster hand cast “For Mommy” which we saw in “Queen of Hearts.”
The change in their relationship must have come when Henry became old enough to notice that time was frozen in Storybrooke, probably a few years after he started school (We have a hint of his fascination with time in his room – it is filled with clocks. That kid must have received clocks as Christmas and birthday gifts for years!)
None of the discussions I’ve seen about this question seem to me to really address how frightening and gut-wrenching this must have been for a child. Henry’s whole still-developing sense of reality would be shattered by a realization that none of his classmates ever grew and moved on in school like he did. Thanks to the curse, the other kids would forget they had ever been in class with Henry. It’s not surprising that by the time of the pilot he was described as “a loner” with “no friends.” How could he make friends when he got older every year and they never did?
Worse, when he was confused, there was only one person Henry would turn to help him make sense of this – Regina. After all, she had always been there for him. But as WR points out in the quote above, she couldn’t tell the whole truth to a seven or eight year old Henry, so as I said, I like to think she planned to tell him someday when he was older but, like someone afraid of going to the dentist, she fell into the trap of putting off an unpleasant task until the problem had grown too big to handle. Regina would have been terrified that the truth might turn Henry against her, so she would try to hide that truth from him and, in the best tradition of classic tragedy, her own actions would create the very outcome she feared (That’s why i love this show so much!)
So not only was Henry’s world not making sense, but the one person he had always counted upon to help him make sense of confusing things now offered no help at all. On the contrary, Regina was probably getting into the same stern denial mode which we saw her display in Season One toward Henry’s claims. I think this is what brought about the strained relationship we saw in the first season. He would persist in his questions, with Regina growing more worried and annoyed with each question. They probably had endless arguments about these questions. A cycle would develop: Henry would demand answers and Regina would lie or dismiss his concerns. Frustrated and confused, Henry would do what any child would do in the face of such frustration; he would misbehave. Regina, now irritated by the constant conflict with the more and more troublesome Henry would respond by punishing him and the punishment would only increase his anger and confusion, fueling another cycle of conflict. As the arguments increased, Henry must have felt his world had turned upside down. Why was his mother, who had always been so loving and protective toward him, now always angry with him? What had he done that was so bad?
We saw a hint of this in Season 3B in amnesiac Henry’s reactions to Emma’s evasions about Storybrooke but with Regina it went on for years. There was a work of fan fiction some time ago which I think gave a pretty good view of the conflicts in these unseen years between Henry and Regina but I can’t find it right now. Does anyone recall it?
It was only after years of this conflict that Henry received the book and was ready to accept the explanation it provided. But even if he was prepared to accept its explanation it would still have been a shock to him. We know he loved Regina. Despite their conflict, he had a lifetime of closeness with her. But now he had to come to grips with the fact that she wasn’t just inexplicably angry with him, she had done terrible things that he couldn’t reconcile with the loving mother who had raised him. She killed her husband. She sent untold numbers of children to their deaths at the hands of the Blind Witch before Hansel and Gretel finally retrieved the cursed apple for her. She was even
willing to kill her own father, and then she named Henry after the man she had killed! Could he be next? Poor Henry probably spent many sleepless nights lying in bed, knowing that a sociopath was sleeping just a few feet down the hall and he was completely in her power.So, to finally return to where we started, I agree that Henry should have a lot more emotional scars. So far, we’ve only seen this briefly addressed in his conversation with Regina in “We Are Both”. We know Regina loves Henry and we know he loves and has forgiven her, but forgiveness is not the same as forgetting. I’d like to see both of them talking to Archie about how to deal with their past.
This also touches on the conversations about how Henry reacted to Regina in the second season but I’ll save that for a later post since this is already way too long!
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