Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5679696-20170417220109

I'll try to make it short. My theory is that Neverland is some kind of earlier version of Storybrooke, or what's more, Neverland is actually under an earlier version of the Dark Curse.

The Black Fairy was banished by the other fairies. Whether it was after the banishment or one of the reasons that led to it, the Black Fairy began to gather dark magic and to test her earliest prototypes of the Dark Curse. Before there was any memory wiping, protection/barrier spell, or any of the secondary effects that were later added in, she worked the earliest version of the curse over an Island. Maybe the native tribe that lived on that island were the first victims of the Dark Curse. Said island was transported to a new realm, which became Neverland. That or the island was created by its magic. Time didn't flow on this island. Her magic was so dark already, that pixie flowers began to grow on her island.

She would start luring young children who would "Think Lovely Thoughts" during their dreams. She foresaw that a child of hers and one of these boys was essential for the ultimate casting of her Dark Curse, so she had sex with Malcolm and gave birth to Rumplestiltskin.

After becoming Peter Pan. He began to work for the Black Fairy, kidnapping children with his shadow. She too began to kidnap physical babies from other realms.

The Blue Fairy knew about this curse, and she accidentally let Rumplestiltskin figure it out in the "The Return" flashbacks. The Dark One did end up getting her curse cast, only after adapting it so it would take him to the Land Without Magic. Just like Neverland, Storybrooke was also home to sporadic pixie flowers due to the extremely dark nature of the fairy's curse.

Eventually, the curse got broken. Pan, who clearly had his own agenda too, got defeated. She could no longer count on Neverland to keep her children, so she began taking them to her actual prison, the Dark Realm, where time was also acting weird because of all the tests she'd done while creating the Dark Curse's time-altering magic.

Soon, her own grandson was born, and when he was 28 years old she ripped his heart out and got him to finally free her from her prison, as we saw in recent season six episodes. 