I was thinking about the finale this morning, about how it didn’t make sense that they found the holy grail ‘end of magic’ right when they wanted it. Why was it in New York? How had it even got there from the Enchanted Forest? What was with Neal having this quest to destroy magic?

Then it hit me!

Tamara was Neal’s fiance – and she wanted to destroy magic. That was what she thought she was doing when she working for Pan (aka the home office), she thought that was what the mission was.

Given they were together any notes on destroying magic, left in Neal’s apartment, could have been hers. The holy grail in New York, could have been found anywhere in the world, it could have been tossed through by a magic bean by someone in the past terrified that magic could be destroyed. It wound up in New York because that was where Tamara was maybe.

So why did Henry say that Neal had wanted to destroy magic? That Neal had been in New York searching for a way to destroy magic. That sounds pretty irrefutable right? It must have been Neal and Tamara was just a coincidence, weird how they had the same goal but neither of them knew that.

August told Neal about the dark curse, how it brought everyone from their land to this one – the land without magic. The curse didn’t bring magic, that was never on the cards until Rumple threw the true love potion down the well and magic came to Storybrooke. Magic didn’t need to be destroyed, because as far as anyone was aware – there was no magic in the … land WITHOUT magic!

Neal and Henry couldn’t have spent all that much time together. I’m thinking a week or two at the most between arriving back in Storybrooke and Neal getting shot and falling through the portal back to the Enchanted Forest. I know time on the show is kinda fluid and it’s hard to tell, but with how fast stuff seems to happen it might have only been a few days.

Back in the Enchanted Forest Neal (Bae back then) would have searched for a way to destroy magic, because it was magic that had changed his papa. When he got the bean to go to the land without magic, that completed his quest. I know it was ‘canon’ because Henry said it on screen but people do get confused, misinterpret or mis-remember.

If Henry was thinking about destroying magic and then remembered his dad saying that he’d tried the same. It’s not a big leap. His dad meant New York and then the more stuff he found, the more he thought he was right in what he remembered. I don’t know, it’s just a theory.