manhattan dreaming;

some thoughts on the episode

• okay though but I love when Emma took off her swan necklace and gave it to Neal?
• like she WAS letting go. Letting go of the past, of the hurt he gave her, of the heartbreak he caused her, of all the bad things she had related to him through her life. This is the woman who likely became a bounty hunter SPECIFICALLY in hopes that she might stumble across him and be able to ask all those questions
• “never trust anyone” and she gave that symbol to him
• but then Emma sees the dreamcatching, the thing he kept from hers, and she’s let go of the BAD but that only means she can rebuild with the good
• they can start over again; she let the hate go, hate of him, so she’s able to let him in again
• “she gave back the only piece of Neal she kept” um CSers… except like Henry, right?
• I’m not a fan of “stay together for the kids” mentality but I like Henry can be a bridging point with them. Neal acted highhandedly and grossly when Emma was younger, but he did do it out of some skewed noble hope that he was giving her what she truly wanted: her family. After all, Neal/Bealfire knows what it’s like to be betrayed by your family and he realized he could help Emma (the woman he loves) get the sort of closure and happiness with her family he never could
• I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but I’m in love with the idea of Neal = Peter Pan? It makes sense, and they’re already hinting at it. “For more years than you can know” seems an exaggeration of maybe 30/35 that Neal appears, but if the portal actually dumped him in Never Neverland than those 30/35 years could easily hid a 300 year existence as the Pan (MRJ crowing would do very nice things to my ovaries btw)
• “Neal doesn’t fight for what he wants” I would argue that Neal HAS been fighting for what he wants since we were introduced to him because he wanted was what was going to make EMMA happy. He tried (in a wrong wrong; there is little to no excusing what Neal did, making a decision for Emma when he should have trusted Emma’s own instincts) helping Emma, so he was fighting FOR her, fighting his OWN wants and needs (being with her) so she could have what she wanted.
• “Neal is a coward” yes, so much of a coward that when he heard Emma fighting Rumpelstiltskin over not fulfilling her bargain he barged into the room, faced down the man who has been running from who God knows how long, just to protect her. Not only that, instead of forcing Rumpelstiltskin to leave (which was what HE wanted; he wanted the man gone) he allowed him to stay and have his 3 minutes, all because it would help Emma and get her own of his father’s debt
• I don’t know if you’ve ever had a frighting/unwanted parent, but facing them down, saying the things Neal said to Rumpelstiltskin, takes bravery very few people have but Neal stood his ground, Neal has always stood his ground
• Neal is brave
• and Neal is going back to Storybrooke, with Emma and Henry, and together maybe they can try of bridge this gap of misunderstanding between them. Try to understand each other. Mend all the hurt and injury that has been stored up between them for the last eleven years
• and ya’all are just going to have to deal with that