Board Thread:Spoilers!/@comment-25375217-20170723021126

(I don't think I've made a thread for this before but there's this one part of my brain that claims I have, so if this is a double post... sorry.)

I've had this theory for awhile (and have even mentioned it) but I think I know who the Dragon's daughter is. It's a little far-fetched -- and has nothing to do with Mulan or Lily -- but bear with me.

According to the writers, they have planned since the beginning to have six seasons. Their intention was that Season 6 could theoretically resolve the series -- hence the happy endings for our core cast -- but set up Season 7 as a "new" story, continuing but still somewhat separate from the story in Seasons 1-6, switching to Henry, Cinderella, and Lucy's story rather than Emma, Regina, and Henry's.

If that's true -- if Season 6 was intended to tie up as many loose ends as possible and create a satisfying ending -- why would they introduce the loose end of the Dragon's daughter?

We all know that the writers are notorious for putting too much on their plate. Every season has one character who gets left out and leaves the series in the following season (Archie, Ruby, Neal, Will, Robin, and Zelena). Belle has been a series regular since Season 2 and never had any real involvement in the plot leading up to her departure after Season 6. And besides the series regulars, there are a million other plots that haven't been resolved properly: recovering Phillip's soul, Tamara's backstory, finding love for Mulan, Lily's dad, Lancelot and Guinevere taking over Camelot, Lancelot's mom, Zelena's first time travel spell... All of these plots have been introduced in Seasons 1-5 and didn't get a proper resolution in Season 6.

But the Dragon was -- Season 5's finale confirmed that he wasn't dead and revealed that his magic abilities came from Belief. I'll Be Your Mirror confirmed that he was a literal dragon. Why did they need to introduce this new plot thread when there were so many other plot threads they could spend time on? And the confirmation that he was never intended to be Lily's dad just makes this decision more questionable.

Well, there's a simple answer: it was set-up for Season 7.

I guess you probably want to know what my theory is. The Dragon's daughter... is Cinderella.

The Dragon says he lost his daughter because he made a mistake -- could this mistake be marrying Lady Tremaine? After their marriage, perhaps she forced him to leave somehow and separated him from his beloved daughter.

Assuming she is the same age as Henry, Cinderella would be around 10 when we first encounter the Dragon in the Land Without Magic. This gives plenty of time for her to have memories of her father (if that's even necessary) while still being under Tremaine's abusive control for enough time to be scarred by it.

Yes, I know their ethnicities don't match, but Cinderella's birth mother could still be Latina. Dania Ramirez isn't a Latina/Asian, but that's close enough to her real ethnicity to be believable -- especially when we have cases like Lily, who was born Hispanic and grew up to be Caucasian.

What do you think? Could the Dragon's daughter be Cinderella? 