Whose Heart Did Emma Crush, Exactly?

We're already halfway through the first half of Once Upon A Time Season 5, and so much has happened that it's hard to keep track of everything. Here's what we do know: Something Big happened during the Storybrooke crew's six week sojourn to Camelot that caused Emma to give into her new identity as the Dark One, despite their best efforts — and despite the fact that they succeeded in getting Merlin out of his tree-prison. We still don't exactly know what the big event was that pushed the former Savior over the edge and into the darkness, given that she's cast her own Dark Curse to take everyone's memories a way and jettison them back to coastal Maine, but that'll all come out in time, I'm sure. In the meantime, there's one important thing we need to talk about, which is how exactly Emma accomplished her feat. After all, it requires the crushing of the heart of the thing you love most, so whose heart did Emma crush to cast the Dark Curse?

Talking to Entertainment Weekly, executive producer Adam Kitsis confirmed that Emma did crush someone's heart, but all may not be as it seems. After all, everyone Emma loves seems to still be very much alive back in Storybrooke, so what gives? There's always the possibility that she pulled a Snow White/Prince Charming and shared half her own heart with the victim in order to keep him or her alive, but that remains to be seen.

"The question you’re asking is whose heart is it and is someone going to die? We’re not going to answer that, but we will say the information you need to guess has not appeared yet... or has it."

Ugh, way to make me all angsty. The first thought that comes to mind is Henry, of course, as the thing (er, person) Emma loves most. He's her son, and everything she does is to protect him (or so she thinks). Of course, she would've had to have fallen pretty far even back in Camelot in order to even conceive of harming Henry to cast this Dark Curse. And it's still unclear why she even wanted to cast that curse to begin with. Clearly it's not just her decision to steal Violet's heart so that she would break Henry's that needed such a drastic cover-up, so what else is she hiding, and why?

If it's not Henry, it could theoretically be Regina. I know that may just be my Swan Queen 'shipper heart taking over, but think about it: who did Emma trust more than anyone else — and that's including her boyfriend, I might add — to guard the dagger? Who did she ask to save her? Just because they've never had a proper conversation about their feelings doesn't mean they don't exist. There's zero chance it could be Hook, given that True Love's Kiss failed on several occasions and Emma seems a little less than bothered to know that he's walked away from her just because she's no longer his perfect Savior. That doesn't leave us many options, now does it?

Whatever happened, we'll have to wait until at least the mid-season finale to find out what exactly that was and why, but frankly, I'm pretty excited by the prospects.

Images: Jack Rowand/ABC