Board Thread:Spoilers!/@comment-26225812-20150625072936/@comment-5106672-20150715014032

I've read most of the discussion and I tend to agree that, at this point in time, there isn't much space for a meaningful LBGT character to appear. The perfect moment to introduce one would have been Season One, which, along on the Emma/Regina feud, focussed on exploring the lives of the Storybrooke residents and their past and present identities, including their romantic relationships. In a S1-like format there would be space for a secondary character who, along with other aspects of their history, could happen to be LGBT. Nowadays, pretty much every secondary character is just an accessory to the Charming-Mills-Stiltskin family drama and what we only need to know about them is what led them to cross the core cast's path.

Take Ingrid, for example: although we spent a considerable amount of time with her, her whole story was told from the point of view of how it affected Emma, either directly or by proxy through Elsa. What we learned about her was what led her to have such a massive influence on Emma's life, but we have very few accessory details on other aspects of her life. Had we learned, for instance, that she was a lesbian, it wouldn't have mattered at all because it would have been irrelevant in the big picture: the story wasn't about her, it was about how she got to Emma.

Mulan is an exception to this because she was introduced in a moment when the show was still adjusting between the old "explore Storybrooke/EF characters" formula and the new "the Nevengers have to face a big bad" one, so there was space to explore her story while keeping it tied to the core cast's journey. We had enough time to see her relationship with Aurora kick off and develop and although much of it happened off-screen after MM and Emma left, her crush was a natural continuation of what we had seen at first. Then it all went to hell but it was mostly due to non-show-related circumstances, from what I gather.

So unless the show finds a way to balance the new plot-forward and the old fairytale-of-the-week formula, there's no point in introducing a LGBT character because that part of their life simply wouldn't be relvant to the overall plot.