Regina in turn cautions the Savior, “If you cross this line, the journey back isn’t easy.” Emma offers Lily not a bullet to the bean but help up off the ground, saying she won’t push her away this time - as she did years ago in flashback, when Lily shattered Emma’s idyllic teen life by stealing her adoptive fam’s vacation fund. Lily taunts Emma to pull the trigger, warning that if she is let go, she will punish her parents. Emma in turn steals a sweet Chevelle, and she and Regina are in hot pursuit.Įventually Emma cuts off Lily and the gals get into it roadside, trading punches and shoves and threats until Emma has her old BFF at gunpoint. Emma’s BS detector pings, but just as she and Regina find in Lily’s trailer home proof that she knows everything about her origin, Storybrooke and the Charmings who effed up her fate, the waitress is speeding off in their Bug. Lily doesn’t at first recognize Emma (why, was Young Miss Swan played by a Latina?), but once the connection is made, she shrugs off the suggestion that her lifelong problems are Emma’s fault, and then lies that she has a daughter and husband. A wolf in the road stops the Bug in its tracks and leads Emma and Regina to a nearby diner, where Emma discovers Lily working as a waitress who thankfully shows her star birthmark as she pours coffee. Back in the Bug, Emma denies she’s going bad, contenting that she merely feels guilt for her darkness being assigned to li’l Lily. Their first stop is a flop house where some guy reports that Lily died in a car crash - news that gets him a near-pummeling from the increasingly hair-trigger Emma. Entering, Regina notes, “Ain’t fate a bitch?” Likening the Evil Queen’s adoption of the Savior’s son to Emma’s own small world, Regina suggests they “make today the day we both beat fate” by teaming to find Lily and save Robin from Zelena/”Marian.” Underscoring the Sorcerer’s words, Emma discovers that Lily’s last known address is Lowell, Mass., a mere half-hour outside Boston where Emma spent her own adulthood! No sooner does that light bulb go off, Emma is at the library working the microfiche like a boss, quickly finding a 30-year-old, out-of-state baptism announcement for wee Lilith, who thankfully posed with her star birthmark showing.
All Mal knows is that her baby wound up in Minnesota aka the same state where Emma first met Lily.
Emma gets no support from her audience, who fear her descent into darkness, but finds a champion in Maleficent - in trade for the onetime bounty hunter tracking down her daughter Lilith. With that flashback to an apologetic Apprentice out of the way, we find Emma at the diner declaring to loved ones her determination to go after Gold, who manipulated Cruella’s demise at the Savior’s hand. The fates of Emma “The Savior” Swan and Lily “The Anti-Savior” Page were forever entwined and always shall be, the Sorcerer made clear at the outset of this Sunday’s Once Upon a Time.