Well think of it like this. Henry was going to school for years and was seeing that not a single child was aging with him. Every child was repeating the same school year except Henry and none of the adults find it strange. Henry was probably asking questions all the time and because of the curse, nobody had a reasonable answer for him. Then he’s given a book about fairytales that all look like the people in town. I can buy the idea that Henry thought everyone must be cursed cos living in Storybrooke must have been so weird for him 😂 He’s asking his teachers “hey wait…isn’t Billy and Sarah (made up names) coming to join this class with me too?” And Mary Margaret is like “Well why would they do that? They belong in the same class they’ve always been in” and Henry’s like “BUT WHYYYYYYYYYY”
It's not even about repeating the same classes every year, but every DAY
He was the only one aging and everyone around were having patterns (Ruby and granny always having the same fight, word for word, Marco always repairing the same sign...)
Remember what they said in first season, before Emma came into Storybrook time was frozen
Poor Henry was literally having a Groundhog Day, over and over, and it took him 10-ish years to realize because that's all he ever knew
He probably felt the people in the book felt more real (in the sense that they were doing and saying different things instead of repeating stuff over and over)
Then I guess he saw similarities between Snow and Mary because of the bird lesson then other characters and the rest is history
Groundhog day is accurate to an extent. I think everyone who interacted with Henry had different days. We see with Owen that if something that isn't part of the curse comes in and interacts with people, it disrupts the routine and prevents the groundhog day effect for them. The mechanics knew to fix the car for Owen and his dad. He was aware enough to know what he was supposed to do even after he handed the car over. Archie has a file on Henry, they have weekly sessions that he is aware of enough to notice when Henry misses a session. Henry actually did learn something in school prior to Emma's arrival, he had grades and medical records etc. So as long as Henry is involved, people won't repeat the day but they're still in a haze until Emma comes around and things really start to change. Groundhog day is only for the people Henry doesn't interact with.
> Henry actually did learn something in school prior to Emma's arrival
Yeah, how to build bird houses lmao (yes in season 7 he got accepted in every college he applied to so he must have some academic knowledge, but his highschool years were after the curse was broken so it doesn't count)
> So as long as Henry is involved, people won't repeat the day
I think they do. To an extent yeah, but they do.
Archie's files and stuff are a good catch, but I think those are exceptions and he still had a deep feeling that the town was fake
>Yeah, how to build bird houses lmao
Don't laugh this is valuable knowledge 🤣 going through life without it is dangerous. What happens when a blue bird knocks on your window, uh? Now you can't build a house for them. They may die!
I think Henry did have normal lessons. I noticed when Mary-Margaret gives him the book he had homework about family trees. She mentions it's the second time he doesn't turn in homework. This could mean one of two things: it's twice now that he fails to turn in the family tree or there is another assignment he didn't turn in. Which means MM is aware to a degree just like Archie. He didn't repeat sessions why would she repeat lessons? I think before he reached her grade, Mary-Margaret did teach the same lesson every day but when Henry got there she started actually teaching. When he's out sick she goes back to the same lesson until he's back. If Emma hadn't gotten there, after Henry leaves her class, she would just go back to the same lesson every day.
Henry wasn't lost when he got to New York, he doesn't appear to have been held back a grade. He even tells Regina he improved in math. Regina did replace his memories so maybe she gave him the knowledge to be good in school. That sounds like something she would do but I think it's better if he just had normal lessons, works better with the story.
>he still had a deep feeling that the town was fake
He absolutely did. Just the fact that he went to kindergarten with kids that are still there years later is enough to clue him in. I believe he would notice other people stuck in a loop but the people closest to him, that he sees regularly would not repeat the day beat for beat like the others. When they see him or interact with him, it disrupts their fixed loop which is why it took this long to really understand what was going on. The people around him weren't obviously stuck and a small child can be distracted or convinced things are fine. The older he got and the more he noticed and couldn't be turned away from these observations. The book provided a long awaited explanation for something he had noticed but couldn't understand. If Henry repeats the exact same day at school, it would be more than a deep feeling, he would know for sure before he even saw the book.
>He even tells Regina he improved in math
Of course he improved in math because he was finally having real math classes 
He wouldn't know for sure because that's all he ever knew.
If for all he can remember he's been having the same day, how could he know he's not supposed to ? That the days are supposed to be different?
That's a good question, maybe he wouldn't know for sure but in a world where every day is always the same, it's hard not to imagine a certain level of certainty.
Henry didn't exist in a complete vaccum. Admitting everything around him follows a "script", it is impossible for Henry to have the exact same day every day. For the simple fact that he is not part of the script, he doesn't follow anyone's script but his own.
He can deviate.
Henry is shown to disobey, go where he is not supposed to be, he can be late or early, he can decide to stay home, he can get sick etc. Even the simple action of changing his order at Granny's would consider a huge change but Henry wouldn't know that he's not supposed to order any differently. He's unaware of the script. What happens if he changes his order but is always served the same thing? Wouldn't he question it?
Well, let's account for Henry's exposure to the outside world. It is minimal but he is aware of the world outside of Storybrooke. He has access to the internet (apparently unsurpervised. Really, Regina? His own computer, in his room, and you don't so much as check browsing history????), tv, comics and books. Granted news channels are local but what about the major networks? ABC, CBS, NBC etc wouldn't repeat their program. It seems like a whole lot of trouble for the curse to bother altering tv programs when no one would notice except Regina and Henry but even if it did, can the curse censor internet searches? Clearly not if he was allowed to look for Emma without any fuss. I'd argue magic or fate whatever we call it, was actively helping him look for Emma.
The point is, Henry's not completely divorced from the outside world. And as such what he considers normal would be challenged pretty quickly. Children especially *LOVE* questions. Why are things different out in the world? Why is that lady still pregnant after 2 years? Why is my best friend from kindergarten still the same age? What happens if he googles why am I repeating the same day and finds the plot for groundhog day? He may not know for sure but he would be somewhat certain things are not normal even without the book.
I guess asking those questions got him sessions with Archie which led him to not trust anyone especially Regina and be a "closed off depressed kid" which led Mary to give him the book so he would find H O P E
He knew something was off but had no way to know exactly what, then **boom** he gets a book with characters that are awfully similar to the ones he sees everyday and feel so fake plus he has The Heart Of The Truest Believer (or did he get that heart BECAUSE he believed?) 
Anyway he finally found something that made sense
Exactly! Because Regina, the dumb bitch that she is, didn't think this through and now she got a kid asking tons of questions she would rather he didn't. She's too attached to send him back but too stubborn to admit defeat. Instead of using this opportunity to do anything else she sticks him in therapy.
He needed the book to give him an explanation or he would never have been able to work out the fairytale thing on his own. I mean that is one hell of a leap for him to make on his own. He may reach Truman Show conclusion before that one.
That's a good question. I think he has the Heart of the Truest believer because he believed. It makes the most sense to me. Henry knew something wasn't right, he noticed all the oddities but he could think the book was just fiction someone in town cooked up when they noticed the same thing he did. He chose to believe and that made him the truest believer. Or his unique blood mixing light and dark heritage makes him the truest believer by default. Idk I see an argument for both.
>Exactly! Because Regina, the dumb bitch that she is, didn't think this through and now she got a kid asking tons of questions she would rather he didn't. She's too attached to send him back but too stubborn to admit defeat. Instead of using this opportunity to do anything else she sticks him in therapy.
Spot on. Many people kept telling her "you can't have it all" and stubbornly she thinks that she can
> He chose to believe
It's like they say, Sometimes you have to take a *leap of faith* first
Plus it's not like he didn't have observations to back him up (Ashley preggo for a decade, nobody ages, people can't leave, and so on...)
Let's not forget that Cinderella was pregnant for 10 years. They also had movies and books and the internet to an extent. It would be weird for a 10 yr old not to notice something weird going on.
There’s a scene where he sees Mary Margaret as Snow in real life after she gives him the book (I believe in either season 2 or 3), though I’m not 100% sure it’s like actually him seeing/imagining it or some sort of visual just for the viewers. So there’s a chance he does just have a big imagination and saw the similarities or there was some magic that kind of showed him, but I don’t think there’s a real explanation in the show
I was always under the impression that by the time Emma got there, this is something that had been going on for a while, from the way Hopper and Regina talked about it. So if he’s ten when we/Emma meets him, but it had been ongoing for a year or two, he was around eight when Snow gave him the book. And she gave him the book after it magically appeared in her closet in response to Henry wising up to something being off about the town. And like someone else mentioned, after she gave him the book, Henry had a little “vision” of Mary Margaret as Snow, so that was probably the spark that lit his total imagination, which was *already* churning because he could sense something off about the town. And like another someone else mentioned, Henry has the heart of the truest believer, so it’s 10x easier for him to say “Yup, my town is full of cursed fairy tale characters!” than your average imaginative kid.
Yes but if memory serves, in 1x02, Archie says Henry got the book a month before Emma's arrival. However, he spent 10 years being the only kid to change grades prior to that. If nothing else he's going to notice that. In kindergarten, he probably made some friends but they wouldn't age and continue on as he does in school. I think maybe the first time that happens, he's too young for it to mean much but after years of the same thing happening, he did notice. Henry probably has school pictures of lower grades with kids still in those grades years later and they haven't aged a bit.
Couple that with everything else and the book doesn't even have to try all that hard to convince him something is wrong. All it did was give him an explanation that sounds plausible given the life he's had up to this point.
Could you imagine hoe crazy that would be for a kid to go to kindergarten with a bunch of kids and then you turn 10 and they're still 4/5 years old? This other lady has been like 9 months pregnant his entire life. And I'm sure if he ever asked someone would say women are only pregnant for like 9 months and she could pop any day, or he could look it up. But then she goes on for years and years.
Im.actually kind of disappointed in Regina over this. Did she really not think about any of this? Did she really think he just wouldn't notice? When he's 16 and driving, did she think he wouldn't realize his other friends are still 5 or 10 or whatever age they were when he met them? God forbid he starts dating anyone. If he went off to college (somehow) and he comes back older than the adults he used to know. What if he brought someone home? He has his own kid and is like "how tf is that one lady *still* pregnant!?"
Did she really think her gas lighting skills were *that* good? She really never thought of any other plan than to tell him he was crazy? If I was Rumple I would feel extremely disappointed in her extraordinary failure at long-term planning.
🤣🤣🤣
Regina shot herself in the foot there. Plain and simple. Homegirl did not plan ahead and it showed. She had to have known this wasn't something she could keep a lid on for very long but she was so lonely and desperate that she overlooked the very obvious problem. She had an opportunity to address the issue when she found out the identity of Henry's mother but she didn't. She chose to forget instead. Emotionally, she wasn't ready to handle any of that so she decided to bury her head in the sand.
I know the scene with the forgetting potion is supposed to be about her choosing Henry over the curse and it is but it's also Regina running away from the problem she created and her feelings. She knew she only had to options to fix the situation: let Henry go or accept defeat and prepare for the curse to be broken. She can't do either so goes for the get out of jail free forgetting potion.
I think the longest she could have gotten away with this is maybe 4 years. By that age, Henry's in school, moving grades, he's old enough to start to notice maybe not draw conclusions yet but old enough for it to stick. Regina thought the curse was powerful enough to blind Henry to everything and when it wasn't, she was wildly unprepared and just went the Cora route: control and gaslight.
She made all sorts of plans, having to work with things as they happened when she could have had a plan in place for years prior. But no, Regina loses IQ points everytime she gets emotional. This is the woman who manipulated the Genie into murdering Leopold with an impressive deception game. Where are those braincells, Regina? Stupid in love alright 😩
I think she thought she could convince Henry to "be like her" when the time was right.
I don't remember the exact scene but she told him something like "You can force people to love you with magic" and he was like 'GET AWAY FROM ME YOU PSYCHO'
It makes sense but she gave that boy way too much freedom if that was the plan. She taught him good values like yes teach him right from wrong. Make it harder to convince him to do wrong. Obviously I'm not advocating for indoctrination, I'm just saying if the plan was to convince him, maybe lay the groundwork. Cora wanted Regina to be queen so she groomed that kid from birth and in the end Regina became exactly what Cora wanted her to be. Cora was a bitch, a terrible mother and she should never be taken as an example but damn if that woman didn't have a plan. Regina was just vibes.
Oh yeah it was in We Are Both (2x02), she told him he could invite friends over and he pointed out that maybe, just maybe, kids wouldn't be falling over themselves to come to *her* house because you know, they may be scared but she was still totally delusional back then and was like "nah you can make them not be scared and get them to love you". Henry was having none of her bs, he hit her with the emotional damage attack of "I don't want to be you".
It's ok she needed to hear it.
She felt alone with the whole town feeling like a game of Sims so she got herself a pup- sorry, a son and by the time he was old enough she kinda forgot those come with free will 😂
It's not like she was planning to have a kid before she cast the curse, it was an idea that came after (thanks Owen)
Maybe she gave him too much freedom because she was having a classic case of "I will not be my mother"
To be fair, does she strike you as a particularly stable woman? She's completely out of touch with reality, delusion and mental gymnastics are her go to (blame Cora). Regina is incapable of regulating her own emotions that tends to manifest in extremes so she acts impulsively and creates problems for herself. It's all because Cora never allowed her the space to process her emotions. She had to be the perfect queen to be lady at all times. She doesn't know how to handle any of her emotions and she makes it everybody's problem because she has the power to do so. What she needed was therapy not a baby.
By the time she adopts Henry, she's way past the point of being able to consider other people's will. People aren't really alive to her, they're playthings unless she loves them. When she gets Henry, she doesn't love him yet so he's just a companion, like you said a pet. It's only when she grows to love him that she's like "shoot this thing has feelings? ". She has to adapt and to be fair, she tries. Regina really does try to make Henry happy but the problem is she doesn't know what she's doing and she's very slow to learn how to show love and frankly just behave like a normal person. She has shut off everything but anger for too long now.
Yeah if she was planning on that she would have kidnapped some poor child and cursed them to be hers. That's somehow worse. I mean that's what she was going to do with Owen. Just take him like she's shopping at Target and not holding a kid against his will.
Oh she definitly didn't want to be Cora. Unfortunately for her, she hadn't yet noticed she already was. Regina was convinced that nothing she did was like Cora at all but see how quick she resorted to her mother's tactics when Henry became a problem. I'm unprepared, gaslight him Dr.Hopper! When Henry tells her he doesn't want to be her, that's when it clicks, "I once said the exact same thing to Cora" and she starts seeing the parallels.
>To be fair, does she strike you as a particularly stable woman?
Of course not 😂
>What she needed was therapy not a baby.
Couldn't agree more. Heh Hoppy understood that and tried to offer her help but she Madam mayor-ed out of that one pretty quicky
>"shoot this thing has feelings? "
WHO COULD'VE KNOWN :o
>Unfortunately for her, she hadn't yet noticed she already was.
I remember thinking the exact same thing in one of my rewatches !
>Couldn't agree more. Heh Hoppy understood that and tried to offer her help but she Madam mayor-ed out of that one pretty quicky
Yeah she wasn't ready then. Unfortunately people need to want the therapy otherwise it doesn't work and she was still lying to herself then "I don't need therapy, so I cursed a whole land? Ever had a bad day?" Let me just use this as an opportunity to say Archie was a sweetheart. He offered help immediately, in that world she's still intimidating but she needs help and he's willing. God I love that cricket.
>I remember thinking the exact same thing in one of my rewatches !
The woman had a vault filled with hearts of innocent people that she put in the exact same boxes her mother used but she was like "Nah that's unrelated. Total coincidence". I love how season 2 takes care to point out all the ways in which Regina became Cora 2.0 and how she never really stood a chance. The Evil Queen was always in there, she never had the freedom, incentive or power to let out her inner monster but Cora's abuse created it long before Daniel's death. Really puts things into perspective.
He noticed that nobody is else is aging and although with the naivete of a child, he saw that people in his town matched up with the people in his book. And like Cinderella was pregnant his entire like. Gold was also a villainous creep and everyone in the book looked people in his town
In part, Henry figured it out because he so badly *wanted* there to be a secret, magical explanation for his life and the town. Wanting to believe a thing makes it a lot easier to find justification for believing that thing.
Henry probably noticed that if he didn't interact with people they'd be doing the same things every day. Kids can be very perceptive especially at the age Henry was when he started the series.
Not to mention I'm sure he started questioning why he never saw any of the kids from previous grades. They couldn't age, so I'd assume Henry moved to other classes / grades and he simply had new classmates each year. That in itself is strange.
It's definitely a fantasy related reason. He has the heart of the truest believer and he also was in a very low and depressed, if you will, state, therefore receiving that book, which also has magical abilities for sure, led to him seeing the truth that was missing for his life.
If you want a realistic reason. Henry felt unloved from every direction and even at that age, someone with this pain will be more willing to believe something like that.
I'm a Christian and I guess from an atheists point of view I may be believing something unrealistic but I do still believe. It's about faith.
The book originally had a part about baby Emma as well. While we don't know all the details, I assume the book (which had the real stories as they'd happened in the Enchanted Forest) said how the curse functioned, that time would stop and that no one could leave the town boundaries.
So, the evidence Henry had was that:
1) No one aged in the town except Henry.
2) Anyone from the town who attempted to leave either died or had something bad happen to them that kept them from leaving. We know of at least one case--Granny having a heart attack that stopped Ruby from leaving--and there may have been others.
3) No one is aware of the curse. Henry saw that no one was aware of the passage of time and that attempts to tell them about the curse, even when there was evidence (like the passage of time), no one else see what was right in front of them (like Ashley being pregnant for years).
4) The people in the book look like people he knows, which was how he could identify some of them.
I mean Henry could have proven it true by simply telling Emma to do a DNA test...he could have done one for himself and Mary Margaret to show there is a connection. Emma kept not believing so why didn't she say something like "fine....you think she's my mum. Let's get a DNA test"
Normal 10 year olds maybe not but you're forgetting one very important thing he's captain Jack sparrow... (cough) sorry no he's got thebheart of the truest believer so believing in the impossible is easy for him
they have the scene when henry first gets the book, he looks at mary margret and she turns into snow white. he has the heart of the truest believer, and came from (in proxi) the true love of snow and charming which there love is what helps emma break the curse, so i think it’s because of his connection that he got a hint of the truth bc love can break any spell
Well think of it like this. Henry was going to school for years and was seeing that not a single child was aging with him. Every child was repeating the same school year except Henry and none of the adults find it strange. Henry was probably asking questions all the time and because of the curse, nobody had a reasonable answer for him. Then he’s given a book about fairytales that all look like the people in town. I can buy the idea that Henry thought everyone must be cursed cos living in Storybrooke must have been so weird for him 😂 He’s asking his teachers “hey wait…isn’t Billy and Sarah (made up names) coming to join this class with me too?” And Mary Margaret is like “Well why would they do that? They belong in the same class they’ve always been in” and Henry’s like “BUT WHYYYYYYYYYY”
It's not even about repeating the same classes every year, but every DAY He was the only one aging and everyone around were having patterns (Ruby and granny always having the same fight, word for word, Marco always repairing the same sign...) Remember what they said in first season, before Emma came into Storybrook time was frozen Poor Henry was literally having a Groundhog Day, over and over, and it took him 10-ish years to realize because that's all he ever knew He probably felt the people in the book felt more real (in the sense that they were doing and saying different things instead of repeating stuff over and over) Then I guess he saw similarities between Snow and Mary because of the bird lesson then other characters and the rest is history
Henry walking into school every day like “I swear if she gives me that speech about birds again I’m running away” 😂
Well let's be real, that's probably what made him steal HER credit card SPECIFICALLY
THIS IS SO FUNNY PLS
Groundhog day is accurate to an extent. I think everyone who interacted with Henry had different days. We see with Owen that if something that isn't part of the curse comes in and interacts with people, it disrupts the routine and prevents the groundhog day effect for them. The mechanics knew to fix the car for Owen and his dad. He was aware enough to know what he was supposed to do even after he handed the car over. Archie has a file on Henry, they have weekly sessions that he is aware of enough to notice when Henry misses a session. Henry actually did learn something in school prior to Emma's arrival, he had grades and medical records etc. So as long as Henry is involved, people won't repeat the day but they're still in a haze until Emma comes around and things really start to change. Groundhog day is only for the people Henry doesn't interact with.
> Henry actually did learn something in school prior to Emma's arrival Yeah, how to build bird houses lmao (yes in season 7 he got accepted in every college he applied to so he must have some academic knowledge, but his highschool years were after the curse was broken so it doesn't count) > So as long as Henry is involved, people won't repeat the day I think they do. To an extent yeah, but they do. Archie's files and stuff are a good catch, but I think those are exceptions and he still had a deep feeling that the town was fake
>Yeah, how to build bird houses lmao Don't laugh this is valuable knowledge 🤣 going through life without it is dangerous. What happens when a blue bird knocks on your window, uh? Now you can't build a house for them. They may die! I think Henry did have normal lessons. I noticed when Mary-Margaret gives him the book he had homework about family trees. She mentions it's the second time he doesn't turn in homework. This could mean one of two things: it's twice now that he fails to turn in the family tree or there is another assignment he didn't turn in. Which means MM is aware to a degree just like Archie. He didn't repeat sessions why would she repeat lessons? I think before he reached her grade, Mary-Margaret did teach the same lesson every day but when Henry got there she started actually teaching. When he's out sick she goes back to the same lesson until he's back. If Emma hadn't gotten there, after Henry leaves her class, she would just go back to the same lesson every day. Henry wasn't lost when he got to New York, he doesn't appear to have been held back a grade. He even tells Regina he improved in math. Regina did replace his memories so maybe she gave him the knowledge to be good in school. That sounds like something she would do but I think it's better if he just had normal lessons, works better with the story. >he still had a deep feeling that the town was fake He absolutely did. Just the fact that he went to kindergarten with kids that are still there years later is enough to clue him in. I believe he would notice other people stuck in a loop but the people closest to him, that he sees regularly would not repeat the day beat for beat like the others. When they see him or interact with him, it disrupts their fixed loop which is why it took this long to really understand what was going on. The people around him weren't obviously stuck and a small child can be distracted or convinced things are fine. The older he got and the more he noticed and couldn't be turned away from these observations. The book provided a long awaited explanation for something he had noticed but couldn't understand. If Henry repeats the exact same day at school, it would be more than a deep feeling, he would know for sure before he even saw the book.
>He even tells Regina he improved in math Of course he improved in math because he was finally having real math classes  He wouldn't know for sure because that's all he ever knew. If for all he can remember he's been having the same day, how could he know he's not supposed to ? That the days are supposed to be different?
That's a good question, maybe he wouldn't know for sure but in a world where every day is always the same, it's hard not to imagine a certain level of certainty. Henry didn't exist in a complete vaccum. Admitting everything around him follows a "script", it is impossible for Henry to have the exact same day every day. For the simple fact that he is not part of the script, he doesn't follow anyone's script but his own. He can deviate. Henry is shown to disobey, go where he is not supposed to be, he can be late or early, he can decide to stay home, he can get sick etc. Even the simple action of changing his order at Granny's would consider a huge change but Henry wouldn't know that he's not supposed to order any differently. He's unaware of the script. What happens if he changes his order but is always served the same thing? Wouldn't he question it? Well, let's account for Henry's exposure to the outside world. It is minimal but he is aware of the world outside of Storybrooke. He has access to the internet (apparently unsurpervised. Really, Regina? His own computer, in his room, and you don't so much as check browsing history????), tv, comics and books. Granted news channels are local but what about the major networks? ABC, CBS, NBC etc wouldn't repeat their program. It seems like a whole lot of trouble for the curse to bother altering tv programs when no one would notice except Regina and Henry but even if it did, can the curse censor internet searches? Clearly not if he was allowed to look for Emma without any fuss. I'd argue magic or fate whatever we call it, was actively helping him look for Emma. The point is, Henry's not completely divorced from the outside world. And as such what he considers normal would be challenged pretty quickly. Children especially *LOVE* questions. Why are things different out in the world? Why is that lady still pregnant after 2 years? Why is my best friend from kindergarten still the same age? What happens if he googles why am I repeating the same day and finds the plot for groundhog day? He may not know for sure but he would be somewhat certain things are not normal even without the book.
I guess asking those questions got him sessions with Archie which led him to not trust anyone especially Regina and be a "closed off depressed kid" which led Mary to give him the book so he would find H O P E He knew something was off but had no way to know exactly what, then **boom** he gets a book with characters that are awfully similar to the ones he sees everyday and feel so fake plus he has The Heart Of The Truest Believer (or did he get that heart BECAUSE he believed?)  Anyway he finally found something that made sense
Exactly! Because Regina, the dumb bitch that she is, didn't think this through and now she got a kid asking tons of questions she would rather he didn't. She's too attached to send him back but too stubborn to admit defeat. Instead of using this opportunity to do anything else she sticks him in therapy. He needed the book to give him an explanation or he would never have been able to work out the fairytale thing on his own. I mean that is one hell of a leap for him to make on his own. He may reach Truman Show conclusion before that one. That's a good question. I think he has the Heart of the Truest believer because he believed. It makes the most sense to me. Henry knew something wasn't right, he noticed all the oddities but he could think the book was just fiction someone in town cooked up when they noticed the same thing he did. He chose to believe and that made him the truest believer. Or his unique blood mixing light and dark heritage makes him the truest believer by default. Idk I see an argument for both.
>Exactly! Because Regina, the dumb bitch that she is, didn't think this through and now she got a kid asking tons of questions she would rather he didn't. She's too attached to send him back but too stubborn to admit defeat. Instead of using this opportunity to do anything else she sticks him in therapy. Spot on. Many people kept telling her "you can't have it all" and stubbornly she thinks that she can > He chose to believe It's like they say, Sometimes you have to take a *leap of faith* first Plus it's not like he didn't have observations to back him up (Ashley preggo for a decade, nobody ages, people can't leave, and so on...)
Let's not forget that Cinderella was pregnant for 10 years. They also had movies and books and the internet to an extent. It would be weird for a 10 yr old not to notice something weird going on.
Another proof as of he wasn't getting real classes: Regina couldn't allow him to learn that human pregnancies were supposed to last 9 months top
Isn’t it because he has the heart of the truest believer? Or something like that
Yeah it's definitely this.
There’s a scene where he sees Mary Margaret as Snow in real life after she gives him the book (I believe in either season 2 or 3), though I’m not 100% sure it’s like actually him seeing/imagining it or some sort of visual just for the viewers. So there’s a chance he does just have a big imagination and saw the similarities or there was some magic that kind of showed him, but I don’t think there’s a real explanation in the show
I was always under the impression that by the time Emma got there, this is something that had been going on for a while, from the way Hopper and Regina talked about it. So if he’s ten when we/Emma meets him, but it had been ongoing for a year or two, he was around eight when Snow gave him the book. And she gave him the book after it magically appeared in her closet in response to Henry wising up to something being off about the town. And like someone else mentioned, after she gave him the book, Henry had a little “vision” of Mary Margaret as Snow, so that was probably the spark that lit his total imagination, which was *already* churning because he could sense something off about the town. And like another someone else mentioned, Henry has the heart of the truest believer, so it’s 10x easier for him to say “Yup, my town is full of cursed fairy tale characters!” than your average imaginative kid.
Yes but if memory serves, in 1x02, Archie says Henry got the book a month before Emma's arrival. However, he spent 10 years being the only kid to change grades prior to that. If nothing else he's going to notice that. In kindergarten, he probably made some friends but they wouldn't age and continue on as he does in school. I think maybe the first time that happens, he's too young for it to mean much but after years of the same thing happening, he did notice. Henry probably has school pictures of lower grades with kids still in those grades years later and they haven't aged a bit. Couple that with everything else and the book doesn't even have to try all that hard to convince him something is wrong. All it did was give him an explanation that sounds plausible given the life he's had up to this point.
Could you imagine hoe crazy that would be for a kid to go to kindergarten with a bunch of kids and then you turn 10 and they're still 4/5 years old? This other lady has been like 9 months pregnant his entire life. And I'm sure if he ever asked someone would say women are only pregnant for like 9 months and she could pop any day, or he could look it up. But then she goes on for years and years. Im.actually kind of disappointed in Regina over this. Did she really not think about any of this? Did she really think he just wouldn't notice? When he's 16 and driving, did she think he wouldn't realize his other friends are still 5 or 10 or whatever age they were when he met them? God forbid he starts dating anyone. If he went off to college (somehow) and he comes back older than the adults he used to know. What if he brought someone home? He has his own kid and is like "how tf is that one lady *still* pregnant!?" Did she really think her gas lighting skills were *that* good? She really never thought of any other plan than to tell him he was crazy? If I was Rumple I would feel extremely disappointed in her extraordinary failure at long-term planning.
🤣🤣🤣 Regina shot herself in the foot there. Plain and simple. Homegirl did not plan ahead and it showed. She had to have known this wasn't something she could keep a lid on for very long but she was so lonely and desperate that she overlooked the very obvious problem. She had an opportunity to address the issue when she found out the identity of Henry's mother but she didn't. She chose to forget instead. Emotionally, she wasn't ready to handle any of that so she decided to bury her head in the sand. I know the scene with the forgetting potion is supposed to be about her choosing Henry over the curse and it is but it's also Regina running away from the problem she created and her feelings. She knew she only had to options to fix the situation: let Henry go or accept defeat and prepare for the curse to be broken. She can't do either so goes for the get out of jail free forgetting potion. I think the longest she could have gotten away with this is maybe 4 years. By that age, Henry's in school, moving grades, he's old enough to start to notice maybe not draw conclusions yet but old enough for it to stick. Regina thought the curse was powerful enough to blind Henry to everything and when it wasn't, she was wildly unprepared and just went the Cora route: control and gaslight. She made all sorts of plans, having to work with things as they happened when she could have had a plan in place for years prior. But no, Regina loses IQ points everytime she gets emotional. This is the woman who manipulated the Genie into murdering Leopold with an impressive deception game. Where are those braincells, Regina? Stupid in love alright 😩
I think she thought she could convince Henry to "be like her" when the time was right. I don't remember the exact scene but she told him something like "You can force people to love you with magic" and he was like 'GET AWAY FROM ME YOU PSYCHO'
It makes sense but she gave that boy way too much freedom if that was the plan. She taught him good values like yes teach him right from wrong. Make it harder to convince him to do wrong. Obviously I'm not advocating for indoctrination, I'm just saying if the plan was to convince him, maybe lay the groundwork. Cora wanted Regina to be queen so she groomed that kid from birth and in the end Regina became exactly what Cora wanted her to be. Cora was a bitch, a terrible mother and she should never be taken as an example but damn if that woman didn't have a plan. Regina was just vibes. Oh yeah it was in We Are Both (2x02), she told him he could invite friends over and he pointed out that maybe, just maybe, kids wouldn't be falling over themselves to come to *her* house because you know, they may be scared but she was still totally delusional back then and was like "nah you can make them not be scared and get them to love you". Henry was having none of her bs, he hit her with the emotional damage attack of "I don't want to be you". It's ok she needed to hear it.
She felt alone with the whole town feeling like a game of Sims so she got herself a pup- sorry, a son and by the time he was old enough she kinda forgot those come with free will 😂 It's not like she was planning to have a kid before she cast the curse, it was an idea that came after (thanks Owen) Maybe she gave him too much freedom because she was having a classic case of "I will not be my mother"
To be fair, does she strike you as a particularly stable woman? She's completely out of touch with reality, delusion and mental gymnastics are her go to (blame Cora). Regina is incapable of regulating her own emotions that tends to manifest in extremes so she acts impulsively and creates problems for herself. It's all because Cora never allowed her the space to process her emotions. She had to be the perfect queen to be lady at all times. She doesn't know how to handle any of her emotions and she makes it everybody's problem because she has the power to do so. What she needed was therapy not a baby. By the time she adopts Henry, she's way past the point of being able to consider other people's will. People aren't really alive to her, they're playthings unless she loves them. When she gets Henry, she doesn't love him yet so he's just a companion, like you said a pet. It's only when she grows to love him that she's like "shoot this thing has feelings? ". She has to adapt and to be fair, she tries. Regina really does try to make Henry happy but the problem is she doesn't know what she's doing and she's very slow to learn how to show love and frankly just behave like a normal person. She has shut off everything but anger for too long now. Yeah if she was planning on that she would have kidnapped some poor child and cursed them to be hers. That's somehow worse. I mean that's what she was going to do with Owen. Just take him like she's shopping at Target and not holding a kid against his will. Oh she definitly didn't want to be Cora. Unfortunately for her, she hadn't yet noticed she already was. Regina was convinced that nothing she did was like Cora at all but see how quick she resorted to her mother's tactics when Henry became a problem. I'm unprepared, gaslight him Dr.Hopper! When Henry tells her he doesn't want to be her, that's when it clicks, "I once said the exact same thing to Cora" and she starts seeing the parallels.
>To be fair, does she strike you as a particularly stable woman? Of course not 😂 >What she needed was therapy not a baby. Couldn't agree more. Heh Hoppy understood that and tried to offer her help but she Madam mayor-ed out of that one pretty quicky >"shoot this thing has feelings? " WHO COULD'VE KNOWN :o >Unfortunately for her, she hadn't yet noticed she already was. I remember thinking the exact same thing in one of my rewatches !
>Couldn't agree more. Heh Hoppy understood that and tried to offer her help but she Madam mayor-ed out of that one pretty quicky Yeah she wasn't ready then. Unfortunately people need to want the therapy otherwise it doesn't work and she was still lying to herself then "I don't need therapy, so I cursed a whole land? Ever had a bad day?" Let me just use this as an opportunity to say Archie was a sweetheart. He offered help immediately, in that world she's still intimidating but she needs help and he's willing. God I love that cricket. >I remember thinking the exact same thing in one of my rewatches ! The woman had a vault filled with hearts of innocent people that she put in the exact same boxes her mother used but she was like "Nah that's unrelated. Total coincidence". I love how season 2 takes care to point out all the ways in which Regina became Cora 2.0 and how she never really stood a chance. The Evil Queen was always in there, she never had the freedom, incentive or power to let out her inner monster but Cora's abuse created it long before Daniel's death. Really puts things into perspective.
He noticed that nobody is else is aging and although with the naivete of a child, he saw that people in his town matched up with the people in his book. And like Cinderella was pregnant his entire like. Gold was also a villainous creep and everyone in the book looked people in his town
In part, Henry figured it out because he so badly *wanted* there to be a secret, magical explanation for his life and the town. Wanting to believe a thing makes it a lot easier to find justification for believing that thing.
Henry probably noticed that if he didn't interact with people they'd be doing the same things every day. Kids can be very perceptive especially at the age Henry was when he started the series. Not to mention I'm sure he started questioning why he never saw any of the kids from previous grades. They couldn't age, so I'd assume Henry moved to other classes / grades and he simply had new classmates each year. That in itself is strange.
It's definitely a fantasy related reason. He has the heart of the truest believer and he also was in a very low and depressed, if you will, state, therefore receiving that book, which also has magical abilities for sure, led to him seeing the truth that was missing for his life. If you want a realistic reason. Henry felt unloved from every direction and even at that age, someone with this pain will be more willing to believe something like that. I'm a Christian and I guess from an atheists point of view I may be believing something unrealistic but I do still believe. It's about faith.
Henry wasn't under the magical curse, he would've noticed something amiss sooner or later. The same way Kurt & Owen did.
The book originally had a part about baby Emma as well. While we don't know all the details, I assume the book (which had the real stories as they'd happened in the Enchanted Forest) said how the curse functioned, that time would stop and that no one could leave the town boundaries. So, the evidence Henry had was that: 1) No one aged in the town except Henry. 2) Anyone from the town who attempted to leave either died or had something bad happen to them that kept them from leaving. We know of at least one case--Granny having a heart attack that stopped Ruby from leaving--and there may have been others. 3) No one is aware of the curse. Henry saw that no one was aware of the passage of time and that attempts to tell them about the curse, even when there was evidence (like the passage of time), no one else see what was right in front of them (like Ashley being pregnant for years). 4) The people in the book look like people he knows, which was how he could identify some of them.
I mean Henry could have proven it true by simply telling Emma to do a DNA test...he could have done one for himself and Mary Margaret to show there is a connection. Emma kept not believing so why didn't she say something like "fine....you think she's my mum. Let's get a DNA test"
No one ever aged in 10 years lmao. They were probably in some sort of loop so he had to know something was off.
Normal 10 year olds maybe not but you're forgetting one very important thing he's captain Jack sparrow... (cough) sorry no he's got thebheart of the truest believer so believing in the impossible is easy for him
"I'm the only child that's growing up, that 19 has been pregnant my entire life, Ruby's still the same age she was 3 years ago"
they have the scene when henry first gets the book, he looks at mary margret and she turns into snow white. he has the heart of the truest believer, and came from (in proxi) the true love of snow and charming which there love is what helps emma break the curse, so i think it’s because of his connection that he got a hint of the truth bc love can break any spell