I’ve been thinking a lot about the echo caves scene in Ariel and Emma’s secret lately, and I don’t want to rehash arguments over interpretation because that is a very exhausting and pointless game to play, but I think that was SUCH an interesting, vital point for Emma’s character, and such a cool crossroads/connecting point for Emma and Neal so let’s tALK ABOUT IT. Putting it under a cut bc it’s really long, but I’m gonna analyze a LOT about Emma’s arc and how SF as a storyline fits in with everything else the show’s done with her emotionally because I don’t feel like it gets talked about enough.
First, here’s the line I want to talk about (I got this from a transcript so I apologize if the wording is a little off!):
“But my secret is I was hoping this was a trick. I was hoping you were dead, Because it would be easier for me to put you behind me than to face all the pain that we went through all over again.”
Here’s the thing: we know that Emma was mourning Neal. We saw her beg him not to let go of her hand in SSttR, we saw her comforted by David afterward, we saw her anger at his loss in the convo with Snow and David in Heart of the Truest Believer, we saw her with Bae’s sword and the sentimentality there with “He was always Neal to me.” And we especially saw this in Nasty Habits outside of Bae’s cave when she tells her parents that she spent a decade think he never loved her, only to find out that he did, and it was too late-- that she’s angry she can’t tell him all of this.
Emma didn’t want Neal to die. Emma’s mourning Neal. But for all of her grief, all of her anger at her loss, feeling that is still infinitely easier than parsing through all of it with the reality of a future with him it (in any capacity, regardless of where they ended up, because he’d be in her life no matter what). Neal was around for a few weeks in Storybrooke before all of this, and the closest Emma got to discussing the feelings she expressed between SSttR and early 3A was on that beach scene, and while they were hanging over that portal. And now that she thinks he’s dead, her feelings for him aren’t accompanied by possibilities or implications or further exploration. She doesn’t have to sort through what it means that she loves him, that she loved him the whole time, that she also hurt so so deeply for a very long time because of him. She gets to grieve for what she lost without all the scary implications of wanting it again.
Emma’s a character that historically does not like her own emotions, because more often than not, they hurt. She says in s1 “not feeling anything is an attractive option when what you’re feeling sucks,” and I think that’s such an important launching point for her development throughout the series. Emma is alone until her 28th birthday because when she’s not alone she gets hurt. Emma pushed Henry away in s1 because she didn’t want to get hurt-- giving him up hurt, but the possibility of having him in her life means she could lose him again, means she has to think about the ten years she wasn’t there, means it’s not a loss to move on from. She pushes away the idea of a relationship with Graham, she’s reluctant to move in with Mary Margaret. Emma is so loving, so capable of these intense and real connections-- her walls aren’t about not knowing how to do that, or not wanting to, even. They’re about being scared to.
And on top of that, we’ve dropped Emma on all of these situations where she has to reevaluate her perceptions: she gave up Henry because she thought his best chance didn’t include her, but he wants and needs her in his life-- she can’t leave and grieve what could have been, she has to deal with her own insecurities about her motherhood and her own guilt and maybes. She wasn’t abandoned by parents who didn’t love her, but now she has to reconcile how she grew up alone and feeling unloved-- she never gets to be a person who grew up with parents, it doesn’t just get to be easy and happy and okay. And Neal did love her, but that pain she felt for a decade was very real, and she never gets to be the person she was before it again-- they can’t ever be the couple they were before it. Whatever Emma and Neal could be in the future has to be colored by that past, they can’t go back-- but if there is no future, there’s no dealing with it. And the loss hurts, but the loss is something she’s known and has dealt with with him for ten years. It’s familiar. This is scary.
And I think a really interesting connection to what Emma’s feeling here is Neal’s own fear-- that after all that pain, she’ll reject him, that she can’t forgive him, that he can’t forgive himself. He’s been living with the idea that he hurt her for over a decade, and he’s used to the guilt and the pain and grieving what they had. It’s a familiar hurt and pain, and moving forward, dealing with all that reality in a way that moves forward rather than one that regrets is so so so scary. And Emma’s secret is where he actually faces that thing he’s been running away from. That’s our payoff for Neal recognizing his fear of rejection back in Heart of the Truest Believer.
Ultimately, the echo caves are a crossroads for two people who have very similar experiences with loss and very similar tendencies toward emotional avoidance-- the caves make them confront this very scary part of them, and that’s why they feel so threatening. And that’s why it feels like such an emotional payoff for Emma.
