Board Thread:Spoilers!/@comment-3010035-20150701044944/@comment-24674051-20150707143436

First, I think that, just like season 4 opened with Frozen (The shipwreck, The girls visiting the graves, and the mention of the wedding), followed by a direct continuation of the action from the end of the S3 Finale, I think we'll see a similar thing with Season 4.

Possibly open with a flashback to Camelot and Merlin fighting the Darkness, with possibly a brief scene of the Merlin tethering the Dark One to the first "victim" (We don't see the face, so that we can revisit this story in more detail later in the season), or maybe Merlin doing something with the Dagger (Again, we do not see the name on the dagger at this point, we see the back side which does not have the name). This would set the arc. Then we see a replay of the final few seconds of the Finale, where Emma thrusts the Dagger into the Darkness and tethers it to herself, followed by showing Emma wherever she ends up, and the quick change from Emma to Dark Emma (Something along the lines of what we saw from Regina turning back to the Evil Queen in Shattered Sight). Title Card (Either a Black Swan on a lake, or a Black Swan flying through the O of Once), then cut to either Granny's or Regina's, where the gang is trying to decide the next steps to dealing with a new Dark One, while we also go to Gold's Pawn shop to finish dealing with Gold and the Apprentice.

This is all conjecture, mind you, but this is my guess for where we start.