For six mediocre seasons – and a few episodes in the seventh and truly unbearable final season – Jennifer Morrison starred as Emma Swan, the protagonist of the wishy washy ABC fantasy soap, Once Upon A Time.

As the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, Emma was given the unwieldy weight of being the Savior of the fairytale characters who found themselves trapped in our world. As stubborn and do-good as both of her parents, Emma was quick to argue and fight in the name of what she felt was right – even when she was prone to making her fair share of mistakes.

Over the course of the series, Emma was meant to be the moral center, the audience’s entry point into the story and the voice of reason in a world filled with outlandish scenarios and characters alike.

Yet time and again, Emma proved just how unrealistic, unqualified, and frankly stupid she could be when the time called. Sure, she did her fair share of saving when the series needed her to do so for the sake of a dramatic twist or a season finale, but on the whole, Emma Swan was a character full of contradictions and paradoxes.

She was a Savior who was rarely interested in saving anyone else but those closest to her.

With that said, here are the 20 Things That Make No Sense About Once Upon A Time's Emma Swan.

The entire Dark Swan plot

It was going to be a hard sell for the series to convince viewers that a world in which Emma Swan was a villain was remotely possible. However, it didn’t help that they went about it in the absolute worst possible way.

With a horrible costume design, ridiculously white spray-painted hair, and a career worst performance by Morrison, Dark Swan was the definition of an ineffectual villain.

Things made even less sense when it was revealed that her descent into villainy had only happened because of her being willing to sacrifice her light to save someone she loved.

None of her actions as Dark Swan had any consequences – and as a result, the series wasted about half a season that it could’ve definitely used otherwise.

She brought her son to the Underworld

Apparently, according to the rules of the Once Upon A Time universe, nothing says good parenting like bringing your young teenage son to the literal Underworld to save the man you’ve been dating for all of five minutes in Storybrooke-time.

When the gang of series regulars headed to the depths of Hades to save Hook from the Underworld in the second half of the series’ already awful fifth season, Emma decided the smart thing to do was to bring her son, Henry, along with them.

The logical choice would have been to leave Henry behind with any of the other qualified adults in Storybrooke, such as resident baby sitter Granny.

However, this didn't happen. Henry had to come along for the whole ordeal – even when he’d never personally taken to Hook.

How did she stay out of danger during her pregnancy?

Jennifer Morrison’s decision to depart the series after its sixth season certainly painted the writers into a corner.

What scenario could be remotely plausible, one that audiences would accept, for a reason as to why Emma would no longer be an active participant in the action even as the show carried on without her?

Of course, they chose the ever so enlightened idea to have her become pregnant off-screen, and eventually give birth off-screen, too, having a little daughter, Hope, with her new husband, Hook.

However, how are we supposed to believe that Emma, who is consistently endangered and leading the charge against the most fearsome of foes in Storybrooke, remained safe during that entire nine-month period?

How could she possibly stay idle, too, when she almost craved the adventure and the adrenaline rush that came with it?

How does she even have magic to begin with?

The rules of magic in Once Upon A Time are… well, murky at best, infuriating at worst. Sometimes, it feels like Oprah had wandered into the world of Storybrooke, shouting and pointing “You get to have magic! And you get to have magic!” whenever she felt like it.

The series expects us to believe that Emma has the power of magic because she was conceived from a True Love relationship.

However, if that were true, wouldn’t anyone and everyone who was born from True Love have the same powers that she, as Savior, allegedly possesses?

Clearly, this is just beyond untrue, or there would have been a whole lot more magic fighting going on, instead of the limited use it was showed to have in fights featuring Emma, Rumplestiltskin, and the Evil Queen, along with the occasional villain of the week.

Why does she, as Savior and sheriff, only date criminals?

It’s one thing to embrace the cliché trope of good girls falling for bad boys.

However, it’s another thing entirely to have your Savior, your hero, your paragon of goodness, exclusively date men who could be classified as criminals, psychopaths, and assaulters.

Emma’s first boyfriend, chronologically, was Neal, Rumplestiltskin’s son. He also happened to be a fully grown adult at the time he was in a relationship with a very teenaged Emma, who would wind up pregnant with his child.

After Neal came her alternate timeline relationship with Walsh, who – as it turns out – was somehow the human form of one of the Wicked Witch’s evil flying monkeys.

Then came Killian Jones, Captain Hook himself, a bloodthirsty, vengeance-hungry pirate who very rarely cared about anything other than himself until he was totally reprogrammed as a boyfriend character.

What's the big deal about her tattoo?

It was a mystery often teased in the early years by Jennifer Morrison herself, as well as series creators, Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. However, what’s the big deal about Emma’s flower tattoo? Why is it featured so prominently in so many shots? Why do we care that she has this smudge of ink on her wrist?

Fans were told, time and again, that the reveal would happen, and that it would be emotionally significant.

So they clung to theories and possible plot threads that could tie everything together, eventually wondering if maybe her past friendship with a runaway named Lily could be involved.

However, alas, the answers never came – not until a fan convention last year, when Morrison revealed that one of the longest held fan theories had been true all along: her tattoo was the crest on Prince Charming’s shield.

Somehow, that tiny detail could never be included anywhere in the series itself, though.

The creepy romanticization of her underage romance with Neal

Speaking of all of Emma’s unhealthy romantic relationships, we really need to talk about one of the show’s most uncomfortable decisions.

In the season two episode “Tallahassee”, viewers are expected to believe the thirty-something Jennifer Morrison is playing Emma at 16 years old in the flashback sequences opposite Neal.

Their scenes are openly coded with signs of predation and manipulation in nature, and would have been interpreted as such had the series cast an actual young actress to play the young Emma.

What makes this issue all the more troubling is that the series did eventually cast a teenage Emma with actress Abby Ross in the fourth season.

Had Ross been cast earlier, it would have been all the more clear that Emma’s relationship with Neal was toxic from the start.

Her "friendship" with the woman who ruined her family's lives

Nothing says best friends forever like one person ruining an entire family’s lives by separating them for 28 years, right?

Once again, Once Upon A Time logic is truly something to behold. For the first three seasons of OUAT, Emma and Regina are rightfully antagonistic with each other. Regina was in part responsible for the curse that separated Emma from her family for 28 years – and, in turn, separated them from each other for just as long.

On top of that, Regina has consistently manipulated and abused Emma’s son, Henry, something that Henry has repeatedly told Emma himself.

However, come season four, apparently, the writers decided it was time for the two women to get along – which they attempted to force by out of character moments in which Emma was forced to grovel and beg for the abusive Evil Queen’s friendship.

Her secret magical song in her heart, as revealed in the musical episode

Okay, fine. We get it. Musical episodes rarely make sense. Characters are breaking into song at random, expressing their desires and motivations with lyrics and music, and all the rules of the universe are suddenly upended and thrown out the window.

However, of all the plots that the series could have come up with, the best they could manage was the deus ex machina reveal that Emma had a magical song stored away for safe keeping inside of her heart since she was in utero?

How convenient to reveal this so late in the game, only to have her use that song to temporarily stun the cliched villain of the moment and… well, do almost absolutely nothing long-lasting in terms of protecting herself or her loved ones, seeing as the villain returned and got her way by the episode’s end.

However, hey, Emma sang a song. She really tried.

How is she not more disturbed by her childhood fairytales being real?

There’s no way to ignore this glaring issue at the core of the series: how does Emma Swan, someone who grew up with books of fairytales and the Disney Renaissance at her fingertips, not have more of a problem with the fact that these characters are apparently real – and her own family?

It takes her the entire first season to believe in the possibility of fairytales being real.

However, after that moment, with every additional fairytale character that the series introduces, she merely gapes with widened eyes for a moment before moving on as though nothing at all has changed.

Maybe she’s desensitized to it all, at a certain point. However, having Snow White and Prince Charming for your parents and Captain Hook for your husband aren’t exactly things that you can just ignore and wish away.

How did she stop caring about the abuse Henry was subjected to?

As we’ve mentioned previously, for the first two seasons of the series, Regina’s ill treatment and abuse of Henry was a main plot point.

It was the driving plot of why Emma was even brought to Storybrooke at all, since Henry sought out to find his biological mother and escape his adoptive mother’s tyranny.

In the first two seasons, viewers witness that Regina’s evil ways lead to Henry’s sudden passing, Regina lashing Henry to a tree and preventing him from escaping her, Regina wiping his memories and forcing him to love her, Regina manipulating him so that he thinks he’s crazy, and so very many more cruel deeds.

However, by the third season, Emma has suddenly stopped caring about Regina’s cruel behavior.

In fact, after that point, it’s never so much as referenced again, with Regina even being given the undeserved luxury of having a True Love’s Kiss with Henry at the end of the third season.

Her archaic, out of character style for "romantic" episodes

When the series begins, it’s clear that Emma Swan is a very modern woman. Totally strong and liberated, she holds her own against any threatening foe, whether a slimy divorcee running away from the child support he owes or any of the fairytale monsters she faces.

She wears comfortable clothes, jeans and baggy bohemian shirts and stylish leather jackets. When she wears dresses, they’re sleek, form-fitted, and short.

Then, suddenly, when she begins a romantic relationship with Hook in season four, it’s the 1950s all over again. In their first date episode, Emma dresses like she may as well be going to a sock hop with her bubblegum pink dress and hair in a ridiculous high ponytail.

When the couple marry in season six, Emma wears a costume store mockery of Grace Kelly’s iconic wedding dress that looks as if it’s stifling every last bit of color and joy out of her.

How did she forgive Neal when he never once showed remorse for his misdeeds?

Even ignoring the creepy way in which the series handled the behind-the-scenes aspects of their relationship, it’s impossible to deny that Neal and Emma’s relationship should have been on shakier footing than it was in later years.

When she was a teenager, Neal abandoned Emma to take the fall for his own crimes, letting her go to jail so he could save himself and avoid falling into the patterns that his father had set up for him.

While in jail, Emma learns that she’s pregnant, and as a result, she’s forced to give birth to Henry and give him away.

When Neal and Emma reunite years later, he mocks any and all forms of her pain, laughing in her face and berating her for never telling him he had a son – as if abusers who abandon their girlfriends suddenly get to decide they have the right to be parents to a child they were never even around to see, without the birth mother’s opinion on the matter counting at all.

She tampered with her parents' history and nothing changed

For better or worse, the series’ two best episodes are, far and away, the two-part season three finale, “Snow Drifts” and “There’s No Place Like Home”.

It serves as the show’s tribute to the Back to the Future franchise, and as such, it finds Emma traveling not only back in time, but also into the Enchanted Forest. While there, she encounters her parents upon their first meeting… only to totally interfere and prevent their meeting from happening at all.

By the end of the two-hour saga, Emma has somehow righted the course of history again, ensuring that the eventual couple of Snow and Charming find their way to one another and have their cutesy fairytale romance beginning.

However, back in the present, there’s never any sign that anything has changed, even when the story of how they met is now fundamentally different.

Her inconsistent Dark One opinions

The figure of the Dark One is one that Once Upon A Time could definitely have benefited from leaving further cloaked in the shadows of mystery.

However, the series’ fifth season totally changed that, with not only Emma but also Hook revealed to have become Dark Ones in the time during the fourth and fifth season. Emma’s acts of “villainy,” as we previously explored, mostly stem from her love and fear of losing Hook.

Hook, however, acts in totally violent, cruel ways.

He is responsible for Merlin’s sudden end and very nearly allows the Dark Ones of the past to bring an end to Emma and her entire family, which even takes place after he verbally humiliated Emma for ever thinking she could change him.

Yet somehow, even while struggling with her own acts as a Dark One, and never trusting the true Dark One, Rumpelstiltskin, Hook’s cruelty is all but immediately forgiven and forgotten.

How did she give Graham a True Love's Kiss when she didn't love him?

In the first season, the decision to suddenly write out Sheriff Graham Humbert, also known as The Huntsman in the Enchanted Forest, was one of the first choices to earn fans’ ire. He had a developing romance with Emma on the horizon, and he was also the first character to awaken from the curse.

However, the circumstances of his remembering his fairytale life are murky at best.

Somehow, when he kisses Emma, Graham’s memories are brought back to him, implying that their kiss is strong enough to break the memory curse. This, therefore, would imply that it was a True Love’s Kiss.

However, how could it possibly be a True Love’s Kiss when they had only known each other for a few days, and Emma didn’t quite seem to feel anything remotely similar in intensity?

Her lack of investigative skills is astounding

When the series begins, Emma is working as an apparently successful bail bondsperson and investigator in Boston, Massachusetts. She seems smart, sharp, and totally qualified for the job.

When she gets to Storybrooke, however, something clearly gets lost in translation, because one of the things Emma is best known for, among fans and critics alike, is her signature look of total confusion and inability to comprehend the most basic of facts.

It’s a wonder how she was ever able to succeed in so research-heavy a field, since research often seems to be totally off her radar and impossible when it comes to solving problems and mysteries as they crop up in Storybrooke.

Then again, the sleepy little Maine town doesn’t have much in the way of internet. So maybe she just had really fast internet in Boston.

The mystery of her unoccupied Boston apartment

Speaking of Boston… We know Emma is successful in the pilot because we see her apartment, which is pretty sleek and modern and definitely expensive in the competitive Boston real estate market. So we have to take for granted her level of success in her field, even if her qualifications don’t stack up.

However, what makes even less sense – if not being totally impossible – is that the season six finale expects us to believe that Emma’s former apartment in Boston has remained unoccupied for the past six years, and is untouched just as she left it when she needs to return to it to jog her memory all those years later.

It’s not the worst logical leap the series ever asked its fans to believe, but it may be the most real world logical mistake they ever had.

She's a pretty obnoxious hypocrite, especially about lying

Given Emma’s background and all of the trauma that came with it, it’s not surprising that this former foster kid turned Savior depends on lying as a survival mechanism. It’s not the greatest trait to have, for sure, but at least it psychologically makes sense for her character and for where she has been in her life.

However, what makes no sense at all, and only makes her character all the more infuriating, is her total hypocrisy when it comes to lying.

She claims to have a “superpower” that allows her to be able to sense when people are lying to her, but time and again, viewers see that that’s just not even remotely true.

When her parents or Hook lie to her in later years, lies of any size ranging from small to world-changing, it’s suddenly something she feels the need to rebel against, unable to hear any of them out even when she expects her own lies to be forgiven.

Honestly, she's a truly terrible sheriff

It’s a natural part of these kinds of stories that the hero has a bad day or finds themselves confronted with a foe that really knows how to beat them. However, what’s not exactly a normal part of these stories is for the hero to routinely prove that they’re totally inept at what they’re supposed to be doing for a living.

Early in the series’ first season, Emma becomes Sheriff of Storybrooke – because of course she does. However, under her tenure as Sheriff, Storybrooke only descends further into chaos, with crime rapidly escalating and villains all but flocking to the previously sleepy little haven.

Sure, part of that likely has to do with the fact that the town was cursed and “safer” before her arrival, but the point still stands.

For a Savior, she’s pretty bad at saving people.

---

What do you think makes the least sense about Once Upon A Time's Emma Swan? Let us know in the comments!