Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-25926288-20170502151008/@comment-4636650-20170515000757

Anyone else wondering whether the Black Fairy's Dark Curse will be used as a set up for Season 7? It would be a good way to do a soft reboot; the show would go back to being a small, cursed town in need of a Saviour (It's still possible that Emma may not be the Saviour who is destined to defeat the Black Fairy; the Charmings have shown that they'd rather retreat and live to fight another day, or wait for the birth of the correct Saviour, than to throw away their lives in a fight that they stand no chance of winning). Especially if the correct Saviour is destined to be a relative of theirs, for example a future child of Henry's or Emma's. Hook remaining in Storybrooke could easily be explained away as either the Charmings being unable to break the curse on him, him being their contact within the town so that they can monitor the situation or even going with a similar idea as to with Maleficent where, for one reason or another, he can no longer pass the town border without dying.

Personally, I think that it would work quite well as a basis for a reboot as the main cast that are returning for Season 7 would ensure that the newer stuff linked in to the previous seasons while also allowing the writers to dispose of potentially problematic aspects of canon (depending on what the Black Fairy's Dark Curse changed) and giving them the freedom to revisit characters we haven't seen in a while and to introduce new characters. It would also bring the show back to the format of the most popular season, that is to say a general villain/ over-arcing plot involving defeating a curse but getting to focus on a completely different character each week (rather than the show revolving exclusively around the same handful of characters, even when there isn't much more to learn about them and their backstory episodes seem to be pretty pointless).