Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5106672-20141117061053/@comment-1916997-20141117164608

GothicNarcissus wrote: So, Smash The Mirror has opened a giant question about these subject.

From the show continuity, we know that travelling between worlds is difficult, especially the Land Without Magic which is cut off most of the conventional means. That's the standpoint of the whole show. We know there are five regular options to do so: 1. Magic Beans, a freeway to any world. 2. The Dark Curse, which aptly does that. 3. The wood from the Enchanted Trees, which counteracted the Dark Curse providing a curse-free passage to two people (I'm coming back to why I'm saying that rather than just "magic wardrobe yay" in a second). 4. Pan's Shadow, it can travel anywhere. 5. Some specific objects such as the Silver Slippers, possibly there might be others. In regards of other worlds, it is still difficult, but there are other means which seem to be very rare (the Hat, Pegasus' feathers, the Rabbit Hole).

As of time travel, apparently it is even more difficult to achieve and the only one who succeded in doing so was Zelena with her spell. Also, Neverland has a somewhat weird time flow which can feel either faster or slower than other lands', so that when you travel forth and back you can pop up earlier (the first time, Wendy stayed there for quite some time while only a night passed in the LWM) or later (as apparently in Neal's case) than you expect.

Still, we have a few as of now unexplained world travels, namely:

1. Zelena sending Glinda from Oz to the Enchanted Forest with basically a regular spell.

2. The tornadoes from other lands to Oz.

3. Now, the Sorcerer opening a portal to the virtually unreachable Land Without Magic.

Also, we have two time travel issues. Three-ish, to be completely fair.

1. Jefferson and Regina reached into the past to grab the poisoned apple.

2. Ingrid travelled a few years into the future. She started off way before Snow and Charming even met and ended up in the year the Dark Curse was cast.

3. Baelfire popped up in the second half of Nineteenth Century (the Elizabeth Tower was completed in 1859), about 150 years from present time, while Rumple says he's been around for abour 300 years, so there's a century and a half gap which is unexplained. This is the third-ish issue, but we can kind of overlook it.

So, how do you all think these "exceptions" fit into the general LWM-can't-be-reached, no-time-travel rule? On with your theories. Traveling between worlds is always going to get easier the longer the show goes on. One reason is simply they need for it to happen for the plot to work (lazy but true). A slightly better reason is: look at the source material, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, the Oz books, the Chronicals of Narnia, etc. all had children (and sometimes adults) going to magical lands using various methods, so Once, being a mashup of all these stories, naturally has many of these portals used in it. The longer the show goes, the more we will see, and it will appear traveling between worlds is not as hard as it was first implyed.

Time travel is the bigger issue here, but I'd argue that since Zelena did it, in theory others could do it, so I would not be suprised if we see it again (although Adam and Eddy swore they weren't doing time travel again). I'd also like to point out that being sent forward in time, is not actually time travel, it's simply your put in limbo until you come out at some time in the future. You existed and waited for the time, you just didn't know it, since you were in a sort of frozen state.