Yellow Bug

The Yellow Bug is an item featured on ABC's Once Upon a Time and Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. It first appears in the first episode of the first season of Once Upon a Time.

History
{{During First Curse| In an alley in Portland, Oregon, a seventeen year-old Emma Swan breaks into a yellow bug. She is able to start it with a screwdriver and is very pleased with herself until a man pops up behind her. He tells her to keep driving and introduces as Neal Cassidy. Emma reluctantly tells him her name before she runs a stop sign, causing a cop to pull them over. Neal comes up with a cover story that he was teaching Emma to drive stick shift. The cop buys it and lets them leave. Neal then moves to the front seat and reveals to Emma that the car is not even his, and that he was trying to steal it himself. {{Ep|Tallahassee}}

At night, Neal drives the yellow bug to a closed amusement park where he and Emma have a conversation about both of their pasts. Affection between Neal and Emma grows, and they fall in love. The couple carry on life as thieves. {{Ep|There’s No Place Like Home}}

One day, after a successful robbery, they jump into the car and kiss, right before making their way to a motel. When Neal finds a wanted poster of himself, Emma decides to sell stolen watches so they can earn enough money to run away to Tallahassee, where they plan to stop robbing and begin a new life. After getting the watches, Emma joins Neal in their yellow bug and the two celebrate their victory by kissing. Before he leaves to pawn the watches, Neal tells her to meet him at 9:00, but he never appears. Instead, a cop shows up and arrests Emma.

Two months later, Neal meets a man named August on the outskirts of Vancouver, Canada. Neal drives up in the bug and asks August how Emma is. August reveals that Emma was sentenced to prison. Neal demands to know more, but August reminds him of a deal they made months earlier. Neal tells the bug license is clear and hands over the keys to August, as well as a keychain he once stole for Emma and a large sum of money that he wants her to have. Via mail sent from Phuket, Thailand by August, Emma receives the keychain and car keys, but not the money. While in jail, she also learns she is pregnant. {{S|(“Tallahassee”)}}

In 2011, Emma is visited in Boston by a boy named Henry, claiming to be the child she gave up for adoption ten years ago. She decides to take him back home, to a town named Storybrooke. During the trip in her car, the boy reads a storybook. He believes every story in the book actually happened, and tells Emma all fairytale characters were brought to the real world by a powerful curse cast by the Evil Queen.

After a few hours, they enter Storybrooke. As Emma and Henry get out of the yellow bug, the boy’s therapist gives the address of Henry's mother, the mayor [{Regina Mills]]. Emma then drives to the house and gets to know Regina and the town sheriff, Graham. A few minutes later, on her drive out of town, she notices Henry left his book on the car seat. When she looks back up, a stray wolf on the road causes her to swerve the car, hit the town marker and fall unconscious.

The next day, she wakes up in jail for driving drunk, but is released to help Regina and Graham find a missing Henry. After meeting the kid in his castle playground, Emma drops him off at his house and later checks in the local inn, determined to stay for a week to get to know the boy better. {{Ep|Pilot}}

The next day, Emma is evicted from the inn by the owner, due to the mayor's last minute reminder of a "no-felons policy". Next, her car is booted just as Regina calls to arrange a meeting with her, during which she says Henry's idea of a curse is crazy. The boy overhears her and is upset, but later that day they reconcile as Emma seems to accept to move on with his plans against the Queen, in a mission he calls "Operation Cobra". {{Ep|The Thing You Love Most}}

Out of a place to stay, Emma begins sleeping in her car while looking for open rooms in the town newspaper. The relationship between Emma and Henry's teacher, Mary Margaret, who he claims to be Snow White, grows stronger and Emma ends up moving in to her apartment. {{Ep|Snow Falls}}

Emma is offered the position of deputy by Sheriff Graham, but takes time to think on it. The next morning, pawnbroker Mr. Gold asks for Emma's help in tracking down a pregnant girl, Ashley. Emma drives to Ashley’s boyfriend Sean’s house and talks to him while Henry waits in the car. Along some investigation on the girl’s whereabouts, Emma and Henry rush to stop her from fleeing town for Boston. On the side of the road, Ashley is going into labor, to which Emma drives her back to the hospital. Later, Emma drives Henry home just before Regina arrives back. On the side of the road, Emma calls Graham and accepts the job as deputy to further cement roots in Storybrooke for Henry's sake. {{Ep|The Price of Gold}}

As Emma puts the deputy badge on, an earthquake hits Storybrooke due to an old mine collapsing. When Henry enters the cave to search for proof that the curse is real and is getting weaker, Emma drives there, just in time for Dr. Hopper to get trapped down in the mines with Henry. Emma manages to rescue them, aided by a group that includes Regina, Graham, Marco, Ruby and Billy. {{Ep|That Still Small Voice}}

Graham develops feelings for Emma. As a consequence, he starts having recollections of his old life as the Huntsman. When he leaves the mayor’s house after a conversation with Henry, Graham finds Emma’s car parked on the street. The woman tries to convince him that the idea of a curse is insane, but they are interrupted when a wolf shows up and attracts the couple to a mausoleum. Later that night, Graham suddenly dies. {{Ep|The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter}}

One evening, Emma, now sheriff, venture into the woods with Sidney to investigate a mysterious meeting between Regina and Mr. Gold. When the pawnbroker reveals the mayor plans to buy some of his land, Emma and Sidney drive to the town hall and break into Regina’s office to search proof that the transition is illegal. When they expose Regina, she proofs that all she plans is to build a new playground for kids of Storybrooke. Angrily, the mayor forbids Emma to see Henry. One day, the blonde talks to Henry via walkie-talkies, from inside the car, and promises to find a way to reunite with him. {{Ep|Fruit of the Poisonous Tree}}

The presence of a stranger named August in town makes Emma curious. After sharing a drink with the man at a wishing well, Emma goes back to her car, parked near the clock tower. She brushes leaves off of the yellow bug and then finds a red metal box in the street gutter. Inside it holds Henry's book, that had gone missing. From around the corner, the stranger watches her. {{Ep|What Happened to Frederick}}

By car, Emma and Ruby, who is temporarily working for the sheriff department, go to the woods after Mary Margaret reports meeting a very confused David. Finding him unconscious, Emma takes David to the hospital as Ruby goes back to the station. Later, upon Emma’s instruction, Ruby drives the yellow bug to the Toll Bridge to see if she can find anything about David’s wife, Kathryn, who went missing. Not long after she gets there, Ruby finds a box buried under a wooden plank and screams upon realizing its content is a human heart. The box contains Mary Margaret’s fingerprints, which leads to her being arrested for investigation. {{Ep|Red-Handed|Heart of Darkness}}

One night, Emma walks in the sheriff’s station and finds Mary Margaret missing from the cell. Emma drives in search of her and accidentally hits a man, Jefferson, on the road. To make it up to him, she drives Jefferson home. He invites Emma into his house, where she eventually finds Mary Margaret. When the two women escape from an insane Jefferson, they find the yellow bug where Jefferson had hidden it. Emma offers Mary Margaret the keys to the car so that she can leave Storybrooke, if she wills. However, Emma admits to consider Mary Margaret like family, to which the latter decides to trust her and goes back to jail. {{Ep|Hat Trick}}

Emma leaves the diner followed by David. As she is about to get in the car, he asks how is Mary Margaret doing. Emma says she won’t agree to see him since she is upset because he did not believe in her innocence. {{Ep|The Stable Boy}}

After Mary Margaret is released from jail, Henry calls Emma via walkie-talkie and she goes to the diner to meet him, followed by August. On their way, they pass by the yellow bug, parked near the library. Later that day, August reveals to Emma that he is the 7-year old boy who found her in the woods as a baby. When he claims to believe Emma is the savior who must return everyone’s happy ending, Emma says she did not ask for such a responsibility. Under pressure, she decides to leave Storybrooke for good. She picks up Henry for a drive in her car, but is actually leaving town with him. {{Ep|The Stranger}}

Henry begs Emma not to depart from Storybrooke since she still needs to save everyone from the curse. When she does not listen to him, Henry purposely swerves the car as the vehicle crashes into a ditch. Pushed by his insistent pleads that Emma's family needs her, she decides to drop the plan for now. After talking to Archie, Emma realizes it might be better for Henry if she stopped the fight against Regina. She drives to the mayor’s house and explains she will leave Storybrooke on the condition she and Henry can meet from time to time. {{Ep|An Apple Red as Blood}} }}

Trivia

 * The yellow bug license plate is 836-M4X.
 * The yellow bug is featured in the title card of “Going Home” and “Smash the Mirror”.

Appearances
Note: "Archive" denotes archive footage.
 * The yellow bug appears in a photo in “The Crocodile”, “Second Star to the Right” and “And Straight On ‘Til Morning”.