Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-32042217-20170518162408/@comment-31564770-20170522125742

I also agree that this curse won't necessarily be another dark curse. If we recall, the first 4 curses, including Pan's which was stopped, all had similar characteristics and were all cast with the curse scroll. The BF's curse presumably is pretty much the same thing, but in a much more complex and damaging way and it was cast with only a bunch of black dust, so it's probably the perfected version of the curse scroll one. Probably the strongest evidence of they're all pretty much the same spell is that they all used SB as their destination/cursed zone in a way. Curse 1 creates SB, sends everyone there where they lose their memories. Curse 2 fails because Regina undos the original curse and SB fades from existence. Curse 3 recreates SB as the destination. Curse 4 sends everyone in Camelot back there. Curse 5 is slightly different in that it doesn't recreate SB or send anyone there, it just renews the memory wipe and returns Emma's family to their story realms. Of course, that curse wasn't designed to do anything except act as the stage for the final battle, and it's decidedly more powerful because if left to it's own devices without interference from Henry or whatever, it can destroy even the Savior's belief to the point where all the realms are destroyed.

Basically what I'm saying is that all the curses had one thing in common: SB. If this new curse is in a new city, presumably somewhere on the west coast, (Emma lived in Boston, SB was east coast so presumably if Henry lives in Seattle then new city is west coast) then it's safe to assume that this isn't the dark curse as we know it. They have said that SB is still out there, it just isn't the focus, so I guess that means the last dark curse was never undone. They never actually did break Emma/Hook's curse, did they? They just undid the memory wipe part and sent the people who wanted to go back back. They basically just removed the bad stuff, but the curse is still there, so SB should still be there.

Ooooh, wouldn't it be cool if after Henry rescues his family from the new curse they try to return to SB but they find it totally abandoned? That could make for good setup for the rest of the season- the most likely times they'd do that are end of the premier/some point in ep 2 or as a winter finale. That'd make for good setup as an arc of them trying to figure out what happened to everyone. Option two seems more likely, because then they can have a whole arc in 7a of Henry and what's happened to him in the last 10-15 years to make him like this comboed with stuff in the present as Henry is dragged to the new city by Lucy to find his family who are cursed and don't remember anything.

Speaking of memory loss, I think that generally Once pulls it off decently. The first season is obviously the best example of it, since it was both the longest memory loss and the entire point of s1, but I did enjoy the missing year in s3 and the 6 weeks in Camelot. It was really cool how they were able to play the missing past off the present and reveal at equal pace what's going on now and how we got to now. All that said, it's starting to get old. The writers have pulled the "simutaneous present day reveal/past reveal" thing too many times at this point. Watching Emma in the finale thinking she had been in an insane asylum was a bit painful, even though it didn't have flashbacks and didn't need them. But the flashbacks that enhance and explain present day have been Once's model forever. Literally the opening scene of the show is a flashback. I'm totally ok with flashbacks, and now we have a really long timejump to do them in. What I'm not ok with is being dragged away from the characters we know to meet their cursed personas for half a season. I deem the "ghost town Storybrooke" as most likely a winter finale thing, but I'm not down for putting up with cursed Regina Hook and Gold for more than 5 episodes. 5 is pushing it, even.

My ultimate 7a timeline is something like this:

Episodes 1-5(max) are Lucy trying to get Henry to believe again and save his family from whatever cursed memory wipe hell they're currently suffering in. End of ep 5/beginning of ep 6 we get Regina Hook and Gold remembering. I'd peg this as an end of ep 5 event because it's a great cliffhanger. Episodes 6-9/10 (assuming winter finale is episode 10 or episode 11, respectively) are Henry, Lucy, Regina, Hook, and Gold returning to the EF to try to defeat whatever evil is causing havoc. Episode 10/11 (winter finale) is them trying to return to SB only to find it an abandoned ghost town. They must then travel the realms to find where everyone's gone.

Alternatively, we could switch the last 2 and have 6-9/10 be them returning to SB, finding it abandoned, and searching the realms for the missing people. Then we get the winter finale being a return to the EF and them finding it terrorized by some horrible evil, setting up 7b to be a fight against said evil.

Wow, I just realized how much of a tangent I went on here. Lol, this started as me trying to explain how this new curse isn't a dark curse and ended with me predicting 7a as I want it to go down. Imma stop typing now before I go somewhere else XD