Yes, this post involves recent events on Once Upon a Time.  Spoilers upcoming.

You cannot kill Neal.  I strongly object to this.  While I appreciate the need to resurrect Gold / Rumple,  must we kill off Neal to accomplish this?  Of course the obvious caveats apply, mainly that no one really dies on a tv show, but still…why are the writers attempting to kill him off? It does not negatively affect what is happening between Emma and Hook to keep him alive, and this would just be yet another predictable conclusion to a storyline if Hook was the only good guy left alive.  I want more surprises.  I do not want to know everything that is going to happen on this show before it happens.   Do not misunderstand this – I am in favor of Emma and Hook as a couple, but I do not want this to be decided right now.   I would have liked her to have to choose between Bae and Hook.

The problem Once Upon a Time is starting to have is the amount of evil / bad characters turning good, or at the very least, redeemable because of a singular moment where they did the right thing.  Making the evil queen a sympathetic figure because of her love for Henry works in the context of the story.  But Rumplestiltskin / Gold needs to be evil.  That is when he is most compelling and interesting as a character.  A Rumple-Zelena matchup (whether they are united in evil or opposing one another in a magic dual) would have great potential.  I want to see something similar to those two options.  I want some bad guys to stay bad, and for Belle to move on and fall for someone other than Gold.  Belle deserves her own good guy.  Make this happen, OUAT writers.

So when are they going to find a way to get Henry’s memory back?  The belief Henry has in magic and the power of that belief is what made this whole story work.  Fairytale characters – existing in real life, in modern situations, without their memories, far from their original home – this is not an easy scenario to accept.  But we do, because Henry does (or did, before Pan’s curse). We started out sharing Emma’s skepticism of everything Henry was trying to tell her, and then we saw the evidence and embraced his reality.  Not having Henry deeply involved in the recent story is a mistake.  Yes, I know we need to develop the future relationships between Emma/ Hook and Regina / Robin Hood (he really needs a Storybrooke name BTW),  but the story lacks something without Henry”s involvement in it.

So, I hope two things happen in future episodes.  One, bring Neal back.  Make the future Emma / Hook pairing less inevitable.   Second,  let Henry remember his past.  That could only strengthen the story.