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We Finally Know Lily's Identity On 'OUAT'

by Christine DiStasio

Hopefully you didn't forget all about Emma's flashback to her foster family past way back at the beginning of Once Upon a Time Season 4. Because, on Sunday night, we were finally reminded why we needed to see Emma's minor breaking-and-entering moment. During "Best Laid Plans," the series revealed that Lily is Maleficent's daughter on Once Upon a Time and I simultaneously realized that Snow and Charming are easily the world's worst parents. Once you get over the shock of how incredibly awful those two were to Maleficent and the baby that would become Lily, the ironic pieces will all fall into place — I promise.

It's been weeks since Snow and Charming panicked about Maleficent being alive again and their "secret" coming out. And, admittedly, I didn't imagine that their secret could be as awful as it turned out to be — you know, considering they're heroes and extremely dramatic and all. But it seems that OUAT has truly outdone itself this time. In an effort to ensure that Emma would grow up to be "good" — after a unicorn horn-induced flash-forward showed Snow that Emma would be evil (yep, as ridiculous as it sounds) — Snow and Charming kidnapped Maleficent's baby. Well, if we go by their messed up logic, that "baby" was technically an egg, so it definitely didn't matter that they were going to send all of Emma's evil potential into its heart.

That's right, The Charmings dabbled in some serious dark magic that resulted in Maleficent's baby being banished to the real world where she couldn't possibly hurt anyone in the Forbidden Forest. Trust me, the sheer evil of all of this behavior isn't lost on me. But, it suddenly makes perfect sense why Snow and Charming suffered the fate they did by Regina's first curse. All magic comes with a price and The Charmings' price was losing their daughter the same way Maleficent lost hers — through a portal and into the real world.

Oh, sweet symmetry, OUAT, sweet symmetry. And, as much as I'd hate to say it, it's made even better by the fact that, for approximately two hours, Emma and Lily were thick as thieves. We know that Maleficent is going to go looking for her daughter and probably bring her back to Storybrooke, so will Emma and Lily finally be the link between good and evil? Lily didn't seem to be evil when we saw her in Emma's flashback, just kind of like that bratty, rich kid that thinks they're intellectual above their parents' money. So, how will their reunion go now that Emma's this close to knowing the truth about her past? Will it be Snow and Charming's redemption to see that Maleficent's daughter made it through without becoming a villain? I suppose that all depends on how big of a price must be paid — if we've learned anything at this point, it's that even heroes have a lot of evil in them on OUAT.

Image: Jack Rowand/ABC; the-cat-of-the-canals/Tumblr