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In a rather impressive feat of show - and deceive a little - but don’t tell, we were introduced to the other side of Snow & Charming’s sleeping curse.

Charming didn’t wake Snow from before the time Emma ended up in the wish realm. We saw him state his intent to go home and finally wake up Snow during his conversation with Hook after giving him his blessing.

This scene happened in Snow’s parallel Universe. We were cleverly deceived into feeling like he had temporarily woken Snow up by having him take a nap next to her and watching a video on his phone, but the timeline and the dialogue make it clear that never actually happened.

When Charming states he is going to wake Snow up, we don’t actually see it happen. 

Instead we see a sleeping Charming and another conversation between Snow and Regina, this time at the loft with Charming sleeping in the background. This is where our brain plays a few tricks on us. We remember the previous conversation between Snow and Regina - which was about Robin Hood - so we forget we never saw her reaction to finding out her daughter went to a wish realm. We forget she never actually woke up before.

Secondly, we never saw Charming actually wake her up after he talked to Hook. This scene could be taking place after Charming woke her up but it could also be before. If it is before then we are being shown that when they sleep, they go to a parallel universe that looks exactly the same, with the other one asleep. After a few cycles, they wouldn’t be able to tell in which universe they are. 

This last scene put us in exactly the same position. We don’t know which world we’re in anymore.

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“True love, the only magic strong enough to transcend realms.”

It seemed like poetry at first. A beautiful sentence, a statement about the elusive nature of love. Fit for a fairy tale. Magic strong enough to transcend realms. Vague, but pretty.

...until the realization hit there is something we call realms in our world. Realms of consciousness. Different states of awareness. Asleep, meditating, high, in trance, focused, dreaming. We have all been in different states. Some realms take us to different worlds. This isn’t something elusive at all. We have all experienced this, we know these different realms. It’s part of the human experience. We don’t always understand them, we wonder about their nature - but we know they’re very real.

When we took a look at Jung’s theories on the realms of consciousness - for Freud click here - things really started to click. Jung distinguishes three realms. Consciousness, the Personal Unconscious and the Collective Unconscious.

Consciousness

Consciousness is what we’re all most familiar with. It’s what we’re aware of, it’s the realm where we spend most of our time. It’s our day to day. It’s what you’re experiencing right now as you read this - at least I hope you are.

The Personal Unconscious

We’re all also pretty familiar with what Jung called the Personal Unconscious. It’s what we usually call our subconscious, everything that’s happening below the surface of our thinking. Our memories, our traumas, our secret desires are all part of our Personal Unconscious. It is tied in with who we are as people and what we have lived through.

The Collective Unconscious

The one that’s a little complicated and specific to Jung is the concept of the Collective Unconscious. Jung believes that during the evolution of human beings, we didn’t just physically evolve. He believes that there are clusters of meaning tied to symbols in our minds that are the same for every human being. He calls these concepts of the mind - these symbols - archetypes. 

We are probably most familiar with this concept from dream dictionaries. If our subconscious mind was limited to the Personal Unconscious, with everything in our minds tied only to our personal experiences, then dream dictionaries wouldn’t make any sense - except maybe in small communities with many shared experiences and values. So when you had another dream where you were falling, flying, losing your teeth or guided by a wolf - to name but a few - those could be expressions of the Collective Unconscious that - according to Jung - have a similar meaning for all people.

Interesting for us is that these archetypes in the Collective Unconscious are also linked to mythology and fairy tales. Myths and fairy stories resonate with us because they are a very pure expression of archetypes. Compare a fairy tale to a story in a novel. In your novel, usually you get to know your main character. You get their name, you learn about their past, the way they dress, the way they move. Meanwhile if you read a fairy tale, often you don’t learn the names of the characters. There is a young man, a princess, a king, a witch. We don’t learn about their pasts, we don’t know much about what they look like. The main focus is on how they interact with other characters. We follow their actions and we never really learn much about their personalities. Fairy tales are a lot like dreams where often we seem to jump from place to place and everyone we see and meet is symbolic. In fact, Marie-Louise von Franz, one of Jung’s students dedicated many years of research and books to analyzing the archetypes and the psychological meaning of fairy tales.

With the theory out of the way, let’s get to the juicy bits. What does all of that have to do with our characters? As it turns out... a lot.

The story starts not long before Emma crashes her car. From that point on she is cut off from conscious reality as we normally experience it. The world she is in is very real, but it isn’t the world of Consciousness. You could say for all of season one, she is stuck in the realm of her Personal Unconscious. How do we know she isn’t also connected to the Collective Unconscious, then? If it is something that is inside of all of us?

We may all have the potential to connect with the Collective Unconscious, but that doesn’t mean we are actively doing it. Emma scoffs at the idea of her not being ready for fairy tales. How could you not be ready for a bunch of stories? Emma is jaded. She has lived her entire life on high alert. Food stolen from her plate, people around her always ready to take from her, sometimes in very visceral ways. Emma hasn’t had the luxury of ever standing still and looking inside. She has grown up in survival mode. Henry brings the fairy tales, but he and the book represent so much more than that. He brings the guidelines for psychological and spiritual development that are hidden in fairy tales and myths. On the symbolic level, Henry represents the Collective Unconscious. Henry has the heart of the truest believer. It requires belief to acknowledge there may be something out there that is bigger than our Self. Something that could help guide us. Most of used to believe as children, but as life happens that connection is usually cut, with a firm line drawn between what is real and what is not. It is Jefferson who tries to point out how it may be a good idea to start questioning that line. 

Emma: History books are based on history. Jefferson: And storybooks are based on what? Imagination. Where does that come from? It has to come from somewhere.

First the link with history is drawn, the stories in the first season are all influenced by Emma’s personal history. Imagination doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s our personal experiences that find their way into fictional stories. Everyone who has ever written anything knows it’s impossible to take yourself out of it. In a sense stories are history books as well. The question where imagination comes from is a deeper one. And he doesn’t stop there.

Jefferson: You know what the issue is with this world? Everyone wants some magical solution for their problem and everyone refuses to believe in magic.

This is again a reference to belief and to the dreams, signs, hunches, stories and the myths containing answers to our questions about life. As long as we are not taking them seriously, as long as we see them as nothing more than escapism we don’t allow for the magic to happen in our life. We need to allow for their meaning and wisdom to enter and impact us.

As this conversation happens, the Enchanted Forest and Storybrooke are still two separate worlds and it really gets to the heart of why Emma isn’t accepting the fairy tales are real - even after seeing so many magical things happen. It challenges her world view on the deepest of levels. The question we are being asked as an audience is if we are really that different from Emma?

Emma’s Personal Unconscious is still driving the stories at that point. She isn’t aware that she has stepped away from Consciousness, but curiously everything that happens to the Storybrooke characters relates to her own past. Henry is most likely reading the fairy tales from his book, so while the fairy tales are present, they are not integrated yet. Emma is resisting, even if the classic fairy tales are already being warped by her own experiences.

Finally at the end of the first season, we are clearly shown how True Love literally transcends realms. It’s not just poetry. It has meaning. Emma’s love for Henry makes that she recognizes and accepts that if she wants to be his mother, she will need to accept the guidance of the ancient stories to survive emotionally - and physically. Emma kisses Henry and the Personal Unconscious connects with the Collective Unconscious. The connection gives her the tools to start learning and healing because in the fairy tales and the myths lies the wisdom of the ages and she is now directly connecting her personal stories to the guidance of a greater force. Snow White & Prince Charming become her chosen mythological parents to guide her in this land.

As soon as the realms are connected, magic is brought to Storybrooke and the fairy tale world merges with our world. This is really the moment where Emma accepts her Hero’s journey using the archetypes in the stories she knows and the ones in the fairy tales being read to her, in order to work through her own past and present.

After Henry and Emma form their alliance, Regina is shown to go through a very lonely time. She is completely isolated. Regina represents Consciousness and she isn’t allowed to play yet as the Personal Unconscious and the Collective Unconscious explore their new connection. The brain damage Emma suffered is still preventing her from going back to Consciousness...

...even if Consciousness is really trying to tempt her. A lesser known interpretation of the story of the Garden of Eden and the Forbidden Fruit is that the fruit represents - you guessed it - Consciousness. The beginning of consciousness in the human race. It is something I want to get into in another post, because it would lead us too far astray, but the apple in the second episode is an invitation for Emma to wake up. Regina brings an entire basket of them. She really, really wants Emma to come back to Consciousness.

Just like Emma Regina is jaded. She’s lost too many people in her life and she is completely rooted in a harsh cold version of reality. She doesn’t want Henry to believe in fairy tales because she wants to minimize the shock that comes when you’re first confronted with the cruelty of life. She doesn’t have any hope for Emma and she wants to do everything to keep her son from becoming attached to a woman whom she is certain will never wake up. On top of that she is completely repressed. She’s a conservative Mayor in a small town who spent her entire life living up to other people’s expectations. She’s not only cut off from the Collective Unconsciousness, she’s also not in touch with her own Personal Consciousness. She doesn’t know who she really is without all these forces pulling at her.

When finally it is Henry who takes a bite from the apple turnover she gives to Emma, it turns out to be lethal. Henry is the Collective Unconscious directly connecting with Consciousness and it almost kills him. Henry is a little boy and you could say that this is literally him taking a bite of reality. The apple has two entirely different meanings depending on if Emma or Henry eats it. If Emma had eaten it, she would have come back to reality. And Regina only meant it for her. It wasn’t meant to kill. Now if Emma refuses to wake, it is Henry who will be confronted with death, with reality for the first time in a very harsh and painful way. Not only will he lose his birth mother, he will feel responsible for it for the rest of his life because without his intervention in her life, she might have lived. The psychological stakes for Henry in this moment are very high. Emma’s death would have killed him. So at this point if Emma doesn’t eat the the apple of Consciousness but dies instead, Henry will be forced to do so. 

When Regina and Henry finally share True Love’s Kiss, it marks an incredible evolution in Regina and Henry. True Love transcends another realm, this time Consciousness and the Collective Unconscious do connect. Instead of the harsh reality check he would have gotten if Emma had died, Henry has had time to start seeing the gray in the black and the white. Emma fought like hell to stay alive for him and Regina decided for Henry’s sake to keep Emma from dying. Even if she didn’t believe Emma would wake up and even though there were consequences for her Henry was too young to understand. It is thanks to the fight both of his mothers put up that he didn’t get a rude awakening.

Where Emma and Henry’s kiss was immediately followed by magic coming to town, this new kiss is followed by Regina committing an act of faith. A willingness to believe that things might work out in spite of all the experiences to the contrary she’s had.

We see her helping Snow and Charming share a heart, something she has no idea will work. In her reality, this is most likely the moment where she arranges for her and Emma to share custody over Henry to save Emma’s life and keep her unlikely family together.

She isn’t even sure if the legal construction will work and she is now legally sharing her son with a woman in a vegetative state. She is willing to take a risk again and that’s something you simply don’t do if there isn’t a small part of you that has regained hope.

Where before Emma and Regina sporadically made contact, now they both have access to the Collective Unconscious. We’ve seen what that meant from Emma’s perspective as we’ve seen them grow closer, but it’s interesting to take a look at what that looked like for Regina. Now that she dares to hope again, she decides to look into different approaches for Emma’s treatment. When we first started research about comatose patients for the purpose of this blog, we found site after site with statements by doctors that communication with coma patients was simply not possible. Any responses were purely meaningless spasms. That is still the prevalent medical opinion. That would have been the same message Regina would have gotten. That Emma’s condition was pretty hopeless, that she wasn’t a person anymore. That she wasn’t really there.

However, it seemed like in the third episode, through Mary Margaret and David, they gave us a summary and foreshadowing of how Emma communicates. She responds to the stories and she reaches out to touch. After a long search, we finally found two psychologists who took a different approach to people in a coma. Amy and Arnold Mindell have been working with people in near-comatose states since the seventies. Their work is called process-oriented psychology. Curiously - and we only found this out much later - Arnold Mindell was a student of Marie-Louise von Franz - we mentioned her earlier - who applied Jungian psychology to fairy tales and who herself was a student of Jung. 

The difference between their approach and the prevalent medical approach is that they believe comatose patients can communicate. The very assumption that someone in a different state of consciousness can’t communicate has as a result that people generally don’t even try. Research in the exact sciences has started to back up their claims when a few years ago scientist managed to prove comatose patients could answer yes/no questions. What makes it even more interesting for us is that they found out that people in a coma actually inhabit this symbolic world just like Emma. They have developed a technique where they mimic breathing, touch, imitate sounds, look for little signs and eye movements, twitches in order to start communicating. 

So let’s check back in with Regina for a second. She may have connected with the Collective Unconscious, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t still skeptical at first. The difference is that she is willing to try this new method.

Coma work is slow. Some websites describe the coma worker just breathing in the same rhythm as the patient for 20 minutes before a connection is made, before a response is registered. It looks like the stake out may have been that very first session with someone teaching her how to start communicating with Emma. Regina isn’t the most patient person...

...and she’s trying really hard to give this thing a chance...

...for about 20 seconds.

Despite her initial reservations, she doesn’t give up and continues to talk to Emma. It’s why the hand touches between them are maybe more important and more intimate than anything, because they’re doing something that most people don’t even believe is possible.

Depending on the state Emma is in - states of consciousness fluctuate and in some cases patients can sometimes even utter some words - Regina and Henry can start to find out more about the world Emma is in. Regina and Henry’s True Love’s Kiss opened Regina up to the Collective Unconscious - it was the start of the process where in the end she was able to completely go there with Emma. While she can’t literally see what Emma sees, she understands the significance of her world. She takes it seriously and she has some idea of what is going on.

When patients are coming out of their vegetative state and moving towards consciousness - like Emma is currently doing - part of the therapy is role playing their world with them based on their cues and responses.

That is what is happening in the wishverse. Regina wished to be in Emma’s world, so she is trying to do exactly that. Emma is seeing and hearing real Regina. If you watch the episode again with this in mind, it’s very clear. She seems amused, a little self-conscious, but she is not holding back. She is also completely convinced the danger in the wishverse is not real and she’s acting as such.

When Emma thanks Regina for coming to this crazy land to save her, she isn’t just talking about the wishverse, she is talking about the entire process Regina had to go through to get there. She had to fight the medical establishment, probably deal with people who didn’t believe what she was doing with Emma was real and significant. She had to invest her time and probably her money as well. Although the biggest sacrifice of all must have been that she opened up her heart again after losing Daniel in similar circumstances. She went ahead even though it brought back memories and she took the risk of caring again. Knowing that she is the kind of person who goes all in.

Emma is moving closer and closer to consciousness. Regina is slowly allowing herself to feel and connect with the personal unconscious. Henry is ready for his fairy tale family.

Time for true love to work its magic and transcend realms once more.

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Emma wakes up to a world full of mirrors, just like Charming did when he was under a sleeping curse. The mirror right in front of her shows us Storybrooke’s main street. It’s the first thing she sees and thus the most significant. In mirrors we see ourselves. The entire town of Storybrooke mirrors the inside of her mind, that’s why it’s the first one they’re showing us. Storybrooke is Emma’s psyche.

All of the mirrors show us different inhabitants, telling us that every character is in the first place a representation of a part of Emma. 

There is one person who is in there with her. Someone she knows is primarily a real person outside of her and not one of her inner archetypes. Regina.

The next part of the scene is about how Emma communicates with the outside world. To most people she’s almost like an inanimate object. They stare at her, but they think she isn’t in there. They think she can’t see them.

There isn’t much she can do. It takes someone on the outside who believes she may be in there. That she may still be alive. In Season One Henry was the only one who did. The truest believer. He was the only one who believed she would wake up.

It’s not a coincidence we see the Queen trying to distract Henry. This is meant to show us how far Regina has come. In season one she was still the Evil Queen, she was pessimistic about Emma’s chances and tried to keep Henry away. Now Regina’s fighting for and with Emma, trying to help her to wake up completely.

Only a person who is paying close attention could see the little tremors in the mirror, can hear the faint voices. Same applies to Emma. Therapists working with people in a near-comatose state pay attention to detail. Fluttering of eyelashes. Eyes opening, little movements. Patterns in the sounds they make. It takes a person who believes that there is something they should be looking for to begin communicating. Henry was the first person.

The Dragon’s presence represents the mystical aspect of Emma’s journey. It suggests that there is purpose and that there is guidance from the other side. That what Emma is experiencing isn’t disconnected, that it’s driven by a force bigger than herself. Not just whatever her mind conjures or what her surroundings dictate. The Dragon can’t help her directly, but he can provide some guidance.

The broken mirror represents Emma’s fragmented state. For her to wake up, she needs to start putting the pieces of herself back together. The title of the episode being “I’ll be your mirror” suggests Regina wants to help her.

At the same time Regina is struggling with the same thing on the outside world. She is looking to find balance between the person she was and the person she has become.

They only manage to put back one piece before they are interrupted, so let’s find out if there are any significant changes in some of their relationships in the next episode.

[operation-out]

The Heroine’s Journey

Most fairy tales - and other stories - follow the pattern of the Hero’s Journey and Once Upon a Time is no exception. While the show has seemed chaotic at times, if you take a step back the overall journey seems to reveal itself.

“I actually made a wish, that I wouldn’t have to be alone on my birthday. Then Henry showed up.”

Emma’s journey starts with a single wish. The wish not to be alone. A wish for change. A very fundamental wish. The entire show, the entire journey is about finding out what it takes for a human being to make a real and true connection with another. Making a heartfelt wish doesn’t present us with a ready made solution. What Emma is given is the opportunity to do the work. The opportunity to make the wish happen. There is no direct wish fulfillment, the gift is the opportunity to make the change.

While we see Emma make the wish, we only find out what she’s wished for later when she’s talking to Regina -  after she’s already crossed the threshold. It’s not a coincidence, because at this point both of these women are incapable of making real connections. The reasons why they can’t are very different however. In that sense they are each others’ opposite.

Regina grew up in a cage, she had never been truly alone, but she was fundamentally lonely. She was taught her own desires and ambitions on every level were wrong. When we met her, Regina was still emotionally in Cora’s clutches and under Gold’s thumb. Even if she was the Mayor, she was in no way free. There was a semblance of freedom, but she still had no idea who she was without all the people exerting power over her. She had stopped trying and all she was left with was a constant need to act out her anger and a permanent state of emotional repression. While we saw Regina as the Evil Queen, in reality Regina was depressed and completely out of touch with herself. Emma’s arrival forced her to make life and death choices for Henry’s sake. She had to step up and go against the two people who controlled her to protect Emma’s life - for Henry. Emma’s arrival was the catalyst for Regina to start breaking free. You cannot have a real connection with another human being if you are out of touch with yourself. Regina is passive and has internalized much of her pain. She needed to start taking control of her life and make conscious decisions to break free instead of lashing out against the world and herself. 

Emma on the other hand was always alone. She was free, but she was the only one looking out for her interests. She couldn’t trust anyone. She’s been betrayed and abused and she’s never had a break to actually deal with the aftermath of that. Emma grew up in survival mode. For her to make real connections, she would have to stand still and do the inner work. She would have to heal and deal with her anger. How can you risk falling apart when you have no safety net? How do you feel safe enough to do inner work when you have nobody to pick up the pieces? Emma couldn’t emotionally afford to make her own wish come true. She’s been hurt and bullied, she’s forever vigilant. She’s not the kind of person who would easily take a break, which is probably how she’s gotten as far as she did in the first place. She’s active, she’s part of the world. For Emma to really start to connect, to not be alone, she needed to turn inward and deal with her issues.

Henry showing up at Emma’s door is as much a literal call to adventure as it is a metaphorical one. Henry was born in jail. Emma got pregnant when she was only a teenager. He is connected to many of the traumas she hasn’t dealt with. He also represents what she’s always wanted. He is family. He is the call to adventure, he is a strong enough reason, a strong enough motivator for her to want to go on the journey.

After meeting Henry, Emma meets three other people. Archie, the therapist, indicating the importance of psychology as part of her journey, Graham, the sheriff she will replace and Regina, who will be reflecting her journey as she goes through her own struggles.

Emma’s real mentor however, seems to be the wolf. There is a moment when Emma is driving away after taking Henry home when she seems to catch herself as she's falling asleep. She spots the storybook next to her, then looks up to see the wolf. It seems like Emma actually fell asleep behind the wheel and that’s when her inner journey really started. 

When we sleep, we travel to another realm of consciousness. In - what I know as the commercialized westernized version of - shamanism when you meditate and turn inward for answers, on the first journey you meet your guide animal. Emma meets the wolf, her inner wisdom, at the beginning of her journey. The symbol is important, because it tells us that the journey isn’t a regular dream, it’s about emotional and spiritual growth. Ruby’s story is Emma’s guide, as she is the wolf.

It’s significant because the journey started before she was launched into her coma. The wolf created the situation that gave her the opportunity to come to a complete standstill and to stay on this inner journey without interruptions. This dream journey will present her with the opportunities to fight the inner battles she needs to fight to be able to fulfill her wish.

As Emma lies passed out we can see her almost falling into the storybook. We’re crossing from the normal world into the unknown. We cross the threshold to Emma’s inner world, her personal Unconscious and we see the invite to cross over into the collective psyche, the Collective Unconscious. All the characters are archetypes who represent aspects of Emma’s personality. She is a hero on an adventure that is available to all of us - if we’re brave enough - which makes this so interesting as a modern fairy tale. There is nothing more unknown than our own inner world. We’re in a society that doesn’t even recognize that world as real.

There is a karmic aspect to Emma’s journey as well, as we just saw her bang a man’s head against the steering wheel and then she hits her head in a similar way. It tells us that it’s not going to be an easy journey and that there is a price to pay for her past. The opportunity is a gift that comes with a challenge.

After the curse breaks, the characters take on their fairy tale identity and put it before their real world identity, although they never completely forget they are both. Emma has accepted the fairy tale world as her current reality. Her personal inner world, her personal Unconscious and the fairy tale world, the Collective Unconscious connect. When magic is added to Storybrooke, she crosses another threshold deeper into the dream.

Most of the markers of the Hero’s Journey take place in the Pilot. Seasons one to four are mostly a repetition of the next two steps “Trials & Failure” and “Growth & Skills” as they allow for a lot of freedom in storytelling. I think we can all see how these apply. When first in the Enchanted Forest Emma learns her usual methods of protection don’t work. Her gun doesn’t save her. You can’t protect yourself against your feelings with your fists. Magic is emotion. Emma needs to learn magic, she needs to learn how to control and be in touch with her feelings.

Emma’s failures don’t take place during magical battles, she makes the most significant mistakes when it comes to parenting. Kidnapping Henry probably wasn’t the greatest idea and her lies about his paternity later on end up causing him to really reject her for the first time. 

Other trials are of course connected to her medical condition in the real world. We get glimpses of it, for example when Henry begs her to stay for a week at first, it’s a request to stay alive. One week is probably what the doctors say gives her a better chance at survival. At the end of the first season when Henry lives, it’s really Emma who again pulls through. In season four her liver starts failing, probably due to the many medications and a pre-existing condition. The villains and monsters she faces are both connected to that side of the story and to her inner demons.

The biggest focus of the story is on Emma’s emotional growth and gaining the emotional skills and maturity needed to work through her issues and process her past, but she is also learning to communicate with Regina in the outside world. A small part of what we see is her evolution in reaching out through touches and little signs. She is also working on physically healing and waking up.

Part of learning to be Henry’s mother is learning to be a daughter first. Emma regresses and in many ways becomes a teenager again. She holds a lot of resentment and blames the parents who abandoned her for everything that went wrong in her life. By forgetting who she was, she gets to experience who she would have been if she’d had real parents. While she learns trust, she also learns that her life with parents would have come with its own challenges. 

Season five finally took us to the next step of the journey. When Emma took on the darkness, it meant her body stopped fighting. In reality she was terminally ill, she couldn’t survive without getting a new liver. She did it for herself and in a sense she did it for Regina, because her and Henry’s life are on hold as long as Emma doesn’t wake up. Emotionally on hold, but I imagine there are financial repercussions as well.

On the journey itself, Emma has never been as far removed from who she really is. If you scroll up and look at the circle, we’re at the lowest point. She has lost herself, she doesn’t remember who she is - she isn’t able to tap into the life lessons she’d already learned when we first met her. There were valuable lessons for her to learn by being Snow White and Prince Charming’s daughter, but when she held on to her parents too tightly she wasn’t able to speak out for herself in the real world and she almost paid with her life. The journey is taking its toll both on a physical and an emotional level.

When Emma killed Hook she became herself again. Killian Jones in this moment represented a man who was after her heart. Literally. He needed a heart transplant. In her dream Hook set up all of her loved ones to die, because it was in fact Emma who was about to die as indicated by the episode title “Swan song”. Along with her all the fairy tale versions of her family in her mind wouldn’t survive. Against all expectations it wasn’t Emma who died during the surgery, but she received a new liver instead. The Underworld was an emotional journey, but it was also the time in which Emma’s body could reject the new liver. I suspect Robin represented Emma’s own liver, so when he died and Hook came back, it represented the end of the critical period. She accepted Killian’s liver as her own died forever. She kept trying to give her his heart out of guilt, because it was supposed to happen.

Physically, she was reborn, nothing should be keeping her from waking up now that she has had a liver transplant. Of course, on an emotional level, it is taking far longer for her to realize what is going on. When we saw her interacting with Regina and Henry in the finale, it was the start of her reaching out again, of showing signs of life. However, Hook being back however means that she is still stuck in the dream, but something has shifted.

The next point of the Journey, “Revelation”, was shown quite overtly as we see the word in the background right before Emma wakes up from a dream. Or rather wakes up into her dream again. She tries to follow Neal into the world - their dialogue suggests he was speaking to her from the real world - but she can’t get out of the car.

Emma coming to the realization of what is going on is a very gradual process. There are moments of lucidity when she’s starting to realize something is going on, like when there’s another wolf in the middle of the road before they meet Lily. In this instance it is Regina who distracts her from finishing the thought.

Additionally during the Alternate Universe Isaac created we had a glimpse of what the characters are like in our world. When Emma is in a waking state, she knows what’s going on, but she does not know how to wake up yet. She goes on the say she’s not the Savior in this world and that she has no magic. It speaks volumes those are the things she brings up, because she wants to be the Savior in order to be something to Henry and magic gives her ultimate control over her world. She has the power to keep herself and her loved ones protected in a way she can’t in the real world.

Just like the realization is really a gradual process, so is the change, but I think the moment when Emma puts on her red leather jacket again and says that she has to get to work marks her decision to actively try and wake up. Cleo represented the Emma Swan we met before she entered the dream. She was confronted with what would happen to Henry if she didn’t wake up. Emma wouldn’t be much more than a file and old pictures to him. They’d only spoken for a couple of hours in the real world and she had left him with Regina after he came to her for help - even if it was the right thing to do. Cleo’s daughter represented Henry and what would be his fate if Emma doesn’t get on with her journey.

In many ways, Emma is suffering from the same condition as the fairy tale characters who were living under Regina’s curse in Storybrooke. As Emma herself sums up “For decades people have been walking around in a haze not aging with screwed up memories stuck in a cursed town that kept them oblivious.” She is stuck in her mental version of Storybrooke and it is effectively keeping her oblivious. She is aging, but we haven’t celebrated her birthday since the Pilot, because in the real world she is standing still. Her memories are screwed up, because the flashbacks we saw weren’t real memories. They were coded memories, we saw Emma create new memories for this new version of herself in real time. Her real memories were played out by fairy tale characters or are hidden in the seams of the story. So we have arrived at a point where there are two versions of Emma Swan, both with a different life story and different attributes, but both are Emma Swan. Both have reacted to the world as Emma. Now in order for her to wake up, she has to start merging the two versions of herself.

Lily is the key to Emma’s memories before she became the Savior. Lily’s past is Emma’s real past as in the real world Emma never lost her darkness. She lived through it. On some level she knew exactly what she was angry about, because Lily’s life was the life she did lead. As it’s been announced that Lily and Maleficent will be coming back, this could be part of the atonement. The balance between Emma and Lily needs to be restored somehow before Emma can wake up. Emma is ready to confront her issues, but they have to become her issues again first.

Splitting Regina from the Evil Queen is one of the first major moves Emma makes after she decides to ‘get to work’. Regina was never really the Evil Queen and the Evil Queen is as much a symbol of Emma’s psyche as she is of Regina’s darkness. While we would expect the lesson to be that you cannot split from your own darkness and that the Queen and Regina should merge again, if we look at the bigger picture, then Regina and the Evil Queen should stay split. It’s a sign Emma is starting to distinguish between the real people and the fairy tale and she wants to come back to our world.

The Land of Untold Stories will provide a new avenue into the characters we’ve come to know and love over the last five seasons. “The intent is that these new characters and new stories are really a reflection on what’s going on inside of our characters,” says EP Adam Horowitz. “With Lana and the Evil Queen, that’s the starkest example, which we’ve already teased. We’re literally going inside her and pulling her apart. There are elements of that that we’re planning to do for each and everyone of the characters.” [x]

The spoilers suggest that Emma is going to continue to try and separate the dream from reality while we explore untold stories. The most important untold stories are Emma’s real world memories that she should now be ready to deal with. As Regina said “Maybe this dream is about you, dealing with your issues.” She’s spent the first four seasons learning the skills to be able to deal, then she went to the Underworld - her subconscious mind - and released the issues she should be dealing with. She’s ready to finally confront the memories she has been running away from. The Savior might finally stop running and save herself.

The gift Emma receives is something that should enable her to cross the threshold again. Traditionally on this show people wake up from sleeping curses when they’re given a True Love’s Kiss. I think another gift could be something that symbolizes she can always return to the fairy tale world and its characters when she really needs them. That while she has to say goodbye, her fairy tale parents are still at her disposal. The most important gift Emma could receive is a promise, a promise of family. A promise that Emma will still be part of Henry and Regina’s life as she wakes up.

As you can see, the Hero’s Journey is always depicted in a circle. In the end, the Hero ends up at the starting point, but this time better equipped to deal with the situation. Emma will have made the progress she needed to fulfill her own wish not to be alone. Emma makes her wish early on, but interestingly, we only hear about the content of the wish during a scene with Regina after Emma has already entered the dream. It’s the moment where everything falls apart. Regina is wearing dreamcatcher earrings to differentiate her from the woman we met earlier and what she voices are Emma’s fears about how she’s being perceived and what could go wrong. While this scene isn’t what really happened, it may as well have been if things had gone down the way we saw them. We were shown what would have happened if Emma had tried to be part of Henry’s life without her coma and her inner journey. It wouldn’t have ended well. Emma and Regina both weren’t in a place to be able to connect. They needed this journey together to get there. So when Emma returns she should be changed enough to revisit this moment and have a different outcome.

It is incredibly important that both Emma and Regina did the right thing during the time they both were in the same realm of consciousness. Both of them were forced to deal with a situation that neither one of them chose to be in. Nobody imposed anything on the other. This entire Journey was both an opportunity for growth and a practice run. While they may have hurt each other, the regular rules don’t apply, because they’re not in the same realm. They’re communicating through the veil. There can only be one happy ending to this story.

A crazy, slightly dysfunctional, but - finally - happy family.

[operation-out]

MiniMeta - Operation Cobra

I’d like to talk about the latest episode in terms of OperationOUT, but we need to do a little detour and talk about Operation Cobra first. They’ve actually been quite overt with this. Emma and Henry kept on mentioning Operation Cobra even after it shouldn’t apply anymore. It was about breaking Regina’s curse and exposing the Evil Queen, but in reality it was about making Emma believe in the fairy tales. Henry started out just reading her the stories from the book, but at some point he started writing them. The narratives have given Emma something to hold on to, they have literally kept her alive.

When, at the end of the AU, Henry became the author, it was actually Emma realizing that he was the author of her story, the story she was living in. She realized she was holding on because of him and when we saw Henry breaking the pen, it wasn’t actually Henry doing the breaking. It was Emma’s subconscious deciding to break free. She rejected the power he had over her.

After Henry breaks the pen, Emma takes on the Darkness with everyone but Henry present. He comes running and he has no choice but to witness the very thing he’s been working to prevent with his stories. Emma letting go and starting to give in to death. We were told the Dark Swan was going to be selfish and free. This was her first selfish act. Rejecting her son. Stepping away from Operation Cobra.

After that, Emma tried to do it on her own, which is why the storytelling became very confusing during the first half of the season. They literally showed us that the author broke the pen and next we get a completely incoherent season full of confusion. We were warned, but we didn’t realize it. Those two events were related. So what we had in Camelot was Henry still feeding Emma the Camelot story, but Emma pulled away more and more. In Storybrooke, she was completely free. She stopped being responsive, she was free-falling and we were in her mind. Many of the lines of dialogue that didn’t make sense, make a lot of sense once you realize it is deeper layers of her subconscious speaking through the characters.

When Henry confronted Emma about doing it all by herself, he was talking about Operation Cobra.

In reality he was expressing his anger. It was one of the stages of grief, he was angry about Emma dying on him. When Regina said “He needs time, Emma.”, she was talking about Henry needing time to accept his mother’s impending death. After that Emma comes to find Henry and she tells him she really heard him. He lets her choose the name for their operation and she calls it “Operation Cobra Part II”. It is on again. Emma’s going to trust Henry and follow his lead again. The first thing they do together is go to the clock tower to find the dreamcatchers in which the memories are stored.

That’s right, Henry is the one who helps Emma get access to her memories again. Now we have to rewind a little bit back to season one. Remember what Henry’s solution was to wake up John ‘Prince Charming’ Doe from his coma? He wanted Mary Margaret to read him their story.

So it seems like Henry’s going to tell Emma her own story in order to try and jog her memory. Except he can’t just straight up tell her the story. Emma herself tells us why.

Like her son, Emma has a very active imagination, so it’s Henry’s challenge to hide reality clues in his story. Henry is taking his mother to the Underworld and he’s trying to tell what’s really going on by writing his mother a version of her own story. He can’t talk her out of her beliefs, so he’s going to have to show her.

That’s where we are at now. Henry is trying to introduce his mother to reality. We have arrived in Storybrooke again, just like on the day it all started. The prices at Granny’s are suddenly current day prices. Emma sees her bug in the state it probably looked after the accident. Hook’s injuries and his lack of response are showing us the state Emma was in after the car crash. Regina makes another apple reference, reminding Emma of the real Regina offering apple cider and it is her birthday, just like it was Emma’s birthday when she first got there. 

So Operation Firebird is really a part of the on-going Operation Cobra. Where Henry gets wise and tries to help his mother figure out the exit of her own subconscious mind.

[operation-out]

MiniMeta - Emma & Regina

This little theory actually started as a response to this Ask:

Anonymous asked:

I was a little sad when I finished the meta's read. How's Regina in the real world? What does she really feel for Emma? If Henry is telling the story and Emma interprets in her own way, what is Regina doing besides her bed in the hospital?

Since I’ve been getting similar questions, I decided it would make more sense to answer in a more elaborate post. Many people are wondering how our theory actually benefits Swan Queen and how it is a good thing. Wouldn’t their story be erased?

I understand that the implications for the story are pretty big. I just read someone from the, shall we say, less sympathetic side who claimed our theory is that Emma and Regina will be married when Emma wakes up… which would make for a very creepy crack fic where Regina kidnaps a comatose Emma to Vegas, but no, we do actually care about consent. So yes, they would both have to get to know each other in reality again before they could be in a romantic relationship. We’ve only met real Regina once and since then we’ve only seen her through Emma’s warped coma perspective. That doesn’t mean Regina will be completely different from the woman we know, but there would be a bit of a shift. 

Interestingly, though, she also won’t be Emma’s ex-step-grandmother or the person responsible for Emma growing up without her family. The awful things they did to each other in earlier seasons won’t be real and in the real world everything between them would have been a complex ethical matter. Graham’s death seems like it was just a break-up in the real world. The real Regina wouldn’t be a rapist and mass murderer, even though she truly was a corrupt, manipulative right-wing mayor. The real Emma would have been a lost soul, with a lot of both guilt and shame about her past. Not an innocent. Both of these women committed crimes. Made bad choices. Operated in gray zones. 

Emma: “This is the real world, Regina. There are no heroes and villains... Just real people with real problems.”

Real world bad choices we can relate to, that we can understand. Their stories very similar, the main difference one in social class. 

A lot happened in reality. There were issues with Henry’s adoption and Regina lost her position as mayor because of a scandal. She did work on all of her issues and she did have a difficult past. Emma’s arrival set all these things in motion. Regina was bound to Emma because of Henry. She loves her son, so after trying to keep her distance, she had no choice but to work with him to try and wake Emma up.

Emma was always in danger, not just because of her injuries, but because she was valuable as an organ donor. And one with no next of kin. If Regina wanted Henry to see her as a good person, much like we’ve seen, she had to protect Emma’s life… One of the ways to wake someone up from a coma is to talk to them. Henry tells Emma stories, but mother and son also looked into Emma’s life, looking for something to trigger her. Tried to find friends and information about her past. So Regina did get to know Emma along the way. Found out that they weren’t all that different. Now, Emma could hear Regina talking in her room. To Henry, to others, to her. Coma patients open their eyes, so her subconscious may have very well registered how she looks. She would have found out a lot about Regina. Emma is good at reading people, she would’ve also picked up a lot of what’s going on between the line. She would have experience Regina with the mayoral mask, Regina the mother talking to Henry and probably Regina at her most vulnerable, because she wouldn’t have felt the need to hide herself from an unconscious woman. Which is why in season two, Emma already feels like she knows Regina.

For Regina, things were different. She met Emma once, so she knew what her voice sounded like, she had seen the way she moved, seen her attitude. She would have seen her uncomfortable little smile. Then any normalcy went out of the window. Suddenly she was just a ghost in a bed. Emma started out as something abstract. Records, official documents. A birth date. An address. Her things picked up from her apartment to jog her memory. Letters. Accounts by people from Emma’s life. The very few people who knew her. Emma’s life was a puzzle to Regina. Then there were the little moments. When Emma would grab a hand or make a noise. Regina had to work to connect all the information to this one person. That’s why it took until the fifth season for Regina to feel like she knew Emma. That’s why it took such a long time. Regina had to work hard to find out Emma’s story, find out who this silent stranger was.

Regina was a lonely woman during season one. She didn’t have many friends. Emma was safe to talk to. Emma didn’t judge, Emma probably didn’t even hear her or so she thought. Regina probably started talking to her because she had no choice but to spend time in her vicinity if she wanted to win back her son. Somewhere along the way Emma started to realize they weren’t so different. That Regina may have had a family, but that her life had been difficult. Regina talked. Emma responded. There are several hints Emma did give signs of life by reaching out, taking a hand or possibly talking in her sleep. It may not have been a normal conversation by anyone’s standards, but they did interact. Regina started to read the signs of life. The twitching or reaching out that didn’t seem random, but in response to what she heard. And she couldn’t help but start to care, because Regina feels with her entire soul.

We had a bit of foreshadowing during the last episode. Brennan Jones talks about being under a sleeping curse and falling in love with his nurse.

Brennan: Not long after I left you and Liam, I got caught and put under a sleeping curse. Killian: A sleeping curse? How the bloody hell are you awake now? Brennan: How does anyone break a curse? True love’s kiss. Killian: Who could ever find a way to love you? Brennan: My nurse. I could hear her speaking… as I slumbered. Her voice was so kind, so gentle. She made me see the error of my ways. I fell in love with her. And she with me. She changed me. I just… I just… wish… that I’d known her when we were together. [Sniffles] You could’ve had the father you wanted. The father you deserved. I’m so sorry. Killian: Where is this woman? Brennan: A few years… after we married… [Sighs]… she fell ill. The plague. She never recovered.

You have to remember this is Emma’s subconscious, her feelings are always hidden in the dialogue of all the characters. This sounds a lot like Emma apologizing to Henry because she’s going to die. Not long after she left Regina and Henry, she was put under a sleeping curse - had the accident and entered her coma. If she and Regina would have known each other from when Henry was a baby, she could have been a good mother to him. Emma sees them as a family. She has witnessed Regina’s struggle to become a better person and that has made her want to be better as well. However, since Emma thinks she’s going to die at this point, the story doesn’t have a happy ending...

Coma rules

Reading up on comas sure has been interesting and it’s really difficult to find out what’s realistic and what’s not. There’s a lot that isn’t known about non-waking states. The dream incorporating aspects of reality seems to correspond with many people’s personal experiences. Where it gets difficult is to know how realistic interactions are. If you want to read more, you can find some basic info here  [x] and here  [x]. 

What is a persistent vegetative state? Sometimes, following a coma, a person may enter what is known as a persistent vegetative state. The patient is able to breathe and may appear awake. People in this state may open their eyes, but not recognize things they see. They may move parts of their body, but with little purpose. People in a coma or vegetative state may do some of these things:

Open their eyes

Move about in bed

Grasp your hand when you hold their hand

Laugh, cry, or moan

People in this state are not able to speak or respond to commands. [x]

So even though in theory there doesn’t seem to be much talking going on, I’ve read accounts of coma patients who get closer to waking up and who do try to talk. I went back to the episode Snow falls, the third episode of the show where David is in a coma. I assume they’re giving us some information on how we should imagine Emma is responding to Henry and Regina. Henry asks Mary Margaret to tell ‘John Doe’ their story and as she reads he suddenly grabs her hand.

Then later Regina tells Emma they found out John Doe was talking in his sleep thanks to the security footage. 

So we may assume that Emma probably does give signs of life and responds to some cues from the outside world, even if she sees the world in a warped way through her dream.

No touching

We’ve talked at length about how Emma and Regina don’t seem to be touching each other much. It creates a certain tension between them and that makes them seem like something other than just best friends. An added reason why they still haven’t touched is that Emma somehow feels that Regina is more real than everybody else. She can have any interaction with the people who are figments of her imagination, but interactions with Regina are often based on reality. It’s why all of their touches are just touches of arms and hands. Places you’d touch when someone’s lying in a hospital bed. The important moments between them are always based on real interactions. Regina’s voice next to her, a real touch, whether it’s Emma reaching out or Regina taking her hand. While Henry writes the fairy tales and is more present in her dream world, for dream Regina to interact in a significant way with Emma, the real version has to give her a reason.

The real Regina

I may not have faith in many things in life, but I will never question Lana Parrilla’s ability to make me fall in love with yet another version of Regina. The AU from the Operation Mongoose season finale was a big clue that there was another version of Regina out there in the Universe. Bandit Regina was clearly still Regina and still different in a refreshing kind of way. I immediately wanted to keep her, so the real version’s probably some king of middle ground. Still a bit of a queen, but only part-time refined.

If one of the things you love about Regina is her snark, then I’m pretty certain the dream version has nothing on the real thing. During the second episode, Regina’s talking to Sidney who she’s asked to find out more about her son’s other mother. The following conversation probably took place around Emma’s bed. Sidney tells her Emma doesn’t like to sit still, to which Regina wryly responds “Well that appears to have changed.”

Sarcasm is Regina’s defense mechanism and we see another barb as Regina probably tells Emma - presumably after she’s been moved - to “do what she’s so skilled at and make herself at home.”

Now, if sarcasm isn’t your thing, these remarks may sound cold, but someone with Emma’s past would recognize those walls and appreciate the normalcy. Where most people would treat her as a hopeless case and as less than a person, Regina would just talk to her like she talks to most people. Wouldn’t refrain from using her wit just because Emma’s in a coma. In a weird way Regina’s remarks kept validating Emma as a human being, rather than the plant most people would have treated her as. So while Henry would have kept Emma going by reading the fairy tales she came to live in, Regina would have been her anchor to reality by somehow treating her like a human being. 

Emma didn’t have anyone, she was a loner. Medical staff is under a lot of pressure, they wouldn’t have much time to provide more than the basic care just to keep her physically healthy. So from the beginning, there was the - initially reluctant - mother of her son. She may not have been perfect, but at least, she was there.

During the first season, Emma let Regina voice all of the prejudice she’d ever heard. All the assumptions someone of Regina’s class would make about her, about someone with Emma’s background. In reality Regina wasn’t that cold. She was in a bad place herself and she was trying to deal with an impossible situation. She was never heartless. When in Emma’s dream Henry is dying in the hospital, in reality it’s Emma. Regina is standing by her bedside alone and she apologizes. She probably felt guilty about serving her alcohol and then sending her home. She never wanted Emma to die.

In Going Home, we have several moments where there must have been real interactions. Emma reaches out and grabs Regina’s hand. It gives Regina the idea of what she has to do to keep Henry out of the foster system.

When Regina’s life gets difficult, it’s Emma’s touch again that grounds her. Regina’s been working hard to change and Emma’s the one to notice, she been there with her. She was the catalyst for change. Emma somehow has become the Savior, because she keeps surviving against the odds. Regina is Emma’s opposite in that she’s depressed and doesn’t value her own life. Yet how can she justify that while she has this person in her life now who’s been dealt every reason to want to let go of life. And yet, she’s still there. Still holding on to life. She’s become a symbol of hope for Regina.

The touch of a hand behind a closed door

During the last half season, Emma became the Dark One. Regina’s finally in a better place, but Emma is starting to give up. And with Emma’s deteriorating health comes... a trial to prove Emma isn’t brain dead. A heart transplant can only happen with a living donor, so the donor will always be someone who is on life support, but who is assumed to be brain dead. You can’t receive a deceased person’s heart. So Emma really is a commodity. Emma herself needs a liver transplant to survive, but since she hasn’t woken up for years, we assume she can’t get one. Camelot is where the trial takes place. We have another little moment where we’re shown how far they’ve come in their silent communications. After Regina says she is the Savior - she will speak in behalf of Emma - we get the scene in the tower. They made a point of showing us Regina closes the door and only then Emma scolds her for taking her place. Regina has an attitude and casually says “Oh, now you’re talking to me.” 

This scene probably indicates that Regina’s main concern at that point was showing that Emma was somehow responsive, but Emma doesn’t respond until Regina’s alone with her. Regina by now speaks her language and can read the little changes in Emma. Like she’s done from the beginning, she talks to Emma like a normal person - and gives her a piece of her mind for not helping herself.

Later during that same scene Emma thanks Regina. We all thought it was strange that Emma took on the Darkness for Regina, yet she never once thanked Emma. Now we know why. Emma may have seen it as taking on the Darkness for Regina - taking away the burden, so Regina could go on with her life, but Regina doesn’t want her to die. Regina isn’t about to thank her for dying on her. So she tries to save her.

Another significant moment is when Regina revisits the memory of Daniel’s death. In reality Daniel had a heart condition and with Emma’s life on the line, she talks to her about Daniel and how it feels like she’s living that same nightmare all over again. Regina’s surprised “You could see it too?” is most likely Regina looking at Emma and seeing that she’s crying. Coma patients are reported to be crying and tears are a significant part of the scene. It seems like Emma’s crying for Regina’s pain.

Somehow they lose the court case and to punish everyone for “what happened in Camelot”, Emma stops being responsive altogether, as symbolized by cosplay Sneezy being turned to stone.

Considering Emma’s health and Regina trying to fight a legal and a medical battle to save her life, we can assume Emma suddenly hears Regina talking about her in the third person again, calling her “Miss Swan”. Regina has been the only adult treating her like a real person, so she’s angry when she stops being Emma to Regina. 

And Regina is frustrated with her lack of response. She’s working hard for her, but she’s spending less time with Emma herself. It’s again reinforced that Regina knows Emma’s little quirks and she wants Emma to start acting like herself again.

When you think about it, it’s incredible how deep this woman’s capacity for love is, because even in the reality, they have somehow become a strange little family. Emma most likely overhears Regina talking to Henry about getting ‘their Emma back.’ and it makes it into her dream. 

So, after years of hoping to belong somewhere, hoping to find a family, the Universe in all its cosmic irony, gives her one while she’s not even conscious. But Emma does what she always does. She runs. It doesn’t matter that the running she does this time takes her deeper into her own mind, the motivation is the same. Not only does she have to face the fact that she doesn’t have parents, but she has no way of knowing what reality has in store for her. What will happen to her relationship with Regina and Henry. Now she has them and part of her would rather die than to wake up and find out that again she isn’t enough for this family. This family is everything. This is her son. Will they even like her when she’s awake? Like us she doesn’t know what’s real. She’s scared to lose it all. Again. To not be enough. So she was selfish instead of brave and she decided to die and let go, rather than to wake up.

And that’s where we’re at right now. She was supposed to die, but she didn’t, she got a new liver instead and another chance at life. The question is, will she be brave enough to take the leap and wake up this time? Will she face reality? Her insurance is probably running out and her son and his mother’s life have been partly on hold for her. Henry’s been by his comatose mother’s bedside for years, not giving up hope that she’ll wake up. He probably feels guilty on some level, because he brought her to Storybrooke. He’s been through so much in his young life and it’s his belief that has kept her alive for so long.

So the Underworld is a place for closure, a place to let go of the dream. Yes, reality is scary, facing the real world is terrifying now that we’re so invested in this world... but she really is hurting the ones she loves the most right now. If she really wants to be the Savior, she has to wake up. She has to talk to the son that she gave up for adoption - something she’s still afraid to face - and his mother who’s been fighting for her to stay alive. She has to save herself to save them all. She has to risk her own pain in order to start ending theirs.

No, none of this in itself means that Emma and Regina will fall in love in the real world, but where else would this story go? The Hero’s Journey has many varieties, but it’s almost always depicted as a circle.  [x]

The story starts with Henry, Emma and Regina meeting. All the members of the family are present, the attraction is there... all the elements for all of their happy endings. Family. Home. Love.

Yet everything in that moment is against them. Emma has no choice but to leave and Regina can’t just risk her son getting attached to this stranger. They are from completely different worlds and they’re both emotionally in a bad place. We saw Emma’s anger, we saw Regina’s coldness. We got a glimpse of what would have happened if Emma would have tried to force contact. If she hadn’t just left. Without these circumstances, these people would have remained strangers to one another. Fate had a different idea. Emma had an accident. She embarked on the Hero’s Journey. An inward one, but isn’t that the most relevant one for a modern fairy tale?

Because what really happens - if you read between the lines of the fantastical story - is this woman coming to terms with her past. A difficult past, most of her traumas tied in with the birth of her son. Emma’s journey is about accepting her past, but also about accepting Henry and dealing with the demons that him coming back into her life caused to surface. While she faces does so in her mind, Regina does the same in the real world. They’re both growing to get back to the beginning as changed people. 

So when they stand facing each other again...

...this time they will be ready for each other. For love. For family. For a possibility of a happy ending together.

When Emma finally wakes up, they will have this deep emotional connection already. They will know each other. Emma owes her life to Regina, Regina has been wishing for Emma to wake up for years. Has invested resources, time and mostly heart in her case. At first it was all about Henry, but after she learned more about Emma’s life, she couldn’t help but care.

Suddenly it’s going to be real. These two people who would never have a chance with each other had Emma not been in a coma, will now not be able to imagine not being in each other’s lives. And since this is a modern fairy tale and they already share a son… what else would be a satisfactory ending than these two women getting to know each other in the real world, falling in love and being a family with their son? The only people Emma met in Storybrooke were Henry, Regina, Graham and Archie. The only ones who have been in her life this entire time are her son and his mother. They seem to be aiming for about seven seasons now… That would be enough time to give them a slow love story in the real world. Things will get worse before they get better… but then there are so many other things that will make this story compelling. So many other issues they have to deal with.

Imagine the awkwardness of not knowing what the other knows. Emma not knowing what Regina found out, Regina not knowing what Emma heard around her. Emma, a woman used to taking care of herself and keeping others out, having been vulnerable and naked, needing physio, suddenly being aware she can’t take care of herself. You don’t just sit up and walk away after having been in a coma. There is nothing about what’s coming for her, for them that will be easy. Her dream, it was a practice run, but she’ll get a chance to put everything to the test. Face her past, actually talk to her son about her life.

There are no conventions for this scenario. There’s nothing in their lives that has prepared them for standing in front of another person that they know completely and not at all. And that’s a story I want to see play out. I want to see these actresses tackle this. I want the rawness and the awkwardness. The love and the humor it would take to get to a place of normalcy. The fairy tales that maybe now more than ever will still be used to process everything.

I want to see this love they already feel to grow and become romantic. I want to see this family get a chance at happiness, because this time around they’re ready. And when life - the vicious cycle that it always is - shows them their next journey, maybe they can embark on it together in the same realm this time.

[operation-out]

MiniMeta - Why the liver?

I know we still have to give a lot of answers, but since I’ve been asked this one a lot, I’ll list some of the reasons why we came up with the liver transplant theory.

The Surgery

Our own first realizations came from the ‘surgery scenes’ themselves. There are quite a few visual hints that reality is seeping into the dream and that there’s an actual surgery going on. It’s more obvious when you watch the scene, but the way everyone is positioned is important. Robin, Henry and Regina are a unit, they stand back a bit and you can easily imagine them as sitting in the waiting area during surgery. If you you look at how all the characters are set up, it looks like there are invisible walls.

The spot where Emma seems to be stabbing Hook is the position of the liver, although it’s not the clearest shot.

There’s blood on the blade after Emma pulls it out. This show had Zelena cut off her hand and Regina fly through the clock tower without a drop of blood. This season has shown more blood than all of the others combined, because the stakes were higher in the real world.This scene would have worked without the blood, but this was a clue that it was more real than usual, as we’re supposed to have a very visceral response to seeing blood.

Emma turns healthy again right after essentially killing Hook, which again makes it seem like a metaphor for an organ transplant. As soon as he dies, she gets to live.

Hook is wheeled away on a hospital gurney. After something very magical, reality seeps in and this very mundane scene happens where we see him wheeled away by paramedics.

Here’s another example of the positioning and reality moments. Emma is still in the operating room, but because her parents are only alive in her mind, they can immediately get to her to comfort her. Robin, Henry and Regina are real people, so they can’t get to Emma yet. Visually they seem to be behind an invisible wall, sitting in a waiting room. The paramedics, the gurney, the white sheet. On a show where people don’t get injured easily, this was suddenly very real.

Apart from the episode being called Swan song hinting at Emma’s death, we had more foreshadowing in the previous episode, that things in reality were really bleak and that Emma was the one who was expected to die during that surgery.

Unexpectedly however, she didn’t, she was the one who made it out alive.

So once we figured this was a story of a medical match, it wasn’t too difficult to figure out that Killian Jones was after Emma’s heart. There is an incredible amount of talk about hearts. He says he wants to win her heart, he’s happy to know it still works, she’s his happy ending and he’s only interested in her as his savior.

Interestingly, Killian is introduced at the same time as Cora is. We suspect in reality Cora is a heart surgeon. I won’t get into the specifics, but she is the Queen of hearts and curiously, there are medical crosses on the heart boxes in her vault. 

As a heart surgeon, Cora could have been the surgeon during the heart surgery in which Daniel died. We also see her grabbing Emma’s heart and essentially it’s established Emma has a strong heart, Emma has life. As Cora and Hook have an alliance from the beginning, she seems to be the one who establishes Emma’s heart is a match for Killian.

Which brings us to the question, why do we think it’s a liver transplant? We found out that the most common transplants are the kidneys, the liver and the heart. Obviously Emma’s heart was fine, so she needed another organ. We checked back and found a couple of clues. 

During the Queens of Darkness arc, most people noticed that Emma looked sick. We compared the make-up with a list of some of the external signs of liver damage [x] and found that quite a few seemed to apply.

Skin rashes.

Itchy skin (pruritus).

Dark circles under the eyes.

Yellow discoloration of the eyes.

Red, swollen, itchy eyes (allergic eyes).

Acne rosacea – (red pimples around the nose, cheeks and chin).

Brownish spots and blemishes on the skin (liver spots).

Flushed facial appearance or excessive facial blood vessels (capillaries/ veins).

Other than that, her hair often looks wet, a sign in reality she may be sweating and feverish.

When the liver is overworked or under pressure, it generates too much heat within itself. Because the liver is such a large organ this causes our whole body to overheat. The excess sweating is a reaction of the overheated body to cool body temperature and allow increased excretion of toxins through the skin. [x]

Throughout the season, Emma spends quite a bit of time drinking alcohol, which is probably how she translates the liver pains into her dream. It’s not a coincidence she drinks Hook’s rum as he benefits from her failing liver.

During the AU, Emma wants to drink from Hook’s rum again, but it turns out to be goat’s milk. The characters in the AU are supposed to give us some more information about who they are in reality. If the real Killian Jones - the one we don’t know very well as per his own words - never drank, we can assume he has a good liver and that was why this clue was put in.

Another clue, and this one was pointed out to me after we released the meta - thank you - is the entire conversation about the yellow bug. In reality, Regina must have asked why Emma’s skin was yellow - jaundice, another sign of liver failure. I won’t go into the specifics, but this was during the first episode of 4B after which Emma underwent a bunch of medical test to establish what was wrong with her. Regina noticing something was wrong happened during the Chernabog’s pursuit, which was about Emma’s potential for darkness - for death. Without Regina paying close attention to Emma, they may not even have noticed that something was wrong.

Since we found a few clues that Emma used to be an addict, we’d already considered that she may have hepatitis before we came across this line in a conversation with Lily during the 4B finale. Emma says she nearly got hepatitis from stealing back Lily’s necklace from her boyfriend’s rat-infested place. Now, that seemed a little odd, as I think most people would say tetanus instead of hepatitis, so again, this must have been a clue about Emma’s health. She probably heard the diagnosis mentioned.

Then the last one and maybe the most obvious one is the Dark Swan actually talking to Hook about his heart and his liver.

...and those are the main reasons why we think Emma was supposed to die during Swan Song, but Killian’s didn’t make it and Emma ended up getting his liver. Because the blade chooses who it finds worthy and it chooses its miracles.