Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24721813-20140701025328/@comment-24674051-20140702175931

Faith and fate, indeed. There was obviously more at work than just the super powers of a 10 year old investigation.

Back up 10-11 years. What are the chances that 2 EF renegades with no knowledge of each other would meet, fall in love, and have a child. Yet that is what happened with Neal and Emma.

Then, after Emma gave up the baby for adoption, what is the chance that THAT specfic child would find it's way to Storybrooke, and into Regina's life?

Add to that the finding of the storybook when it happened (about 1 month before Emma's 28th Birthday), the fact that Henry immediately put the pieces together and determined that Storybrooke was the EF come to the LWM.

Either we have to completely suspend belief and accept that ALL of these coincidences just occurred. OR we have to assume that there is some other power at work manipulating key events. Given who constructed the curse, I opt for the latter.

I have always assumed that Rumple was deprived of his memory like everyone else, at least until he met Emma. But now, I am not so sure about that. I would consider it a possibility that Rumple engineered the entire thing, and was fully aware of all of his actions, during the 28 years of the curse. And if THAT is the case, I think it would be a safe bet that everything was controlled by Rumple. He could have even planted the awareness of Emma Swan into Henry's mind without him knowing.