Poor, Poor Peasants
Thinking about Once Upon a Time, I came to a conclusion: the fairy tale world sucks. Only a few people get to have magic powers or be a princess. Everyone else is a peasant, dying early of disease or malnutrition, while getting caught up in the schemes of those more powerful than they.
They probably wouldn’t want to leave the real world. In the real world: food is plentiful, we have medical science that curing new things all the time, and, most importantly, for a people that are used to an oppressive feudal society, there is democracy in the real world. No more being serfs for the citizens of Storybrooke.
So, what does this mean for a character like Snow White, who will probably need a lot of help to get back to Fairy Tale Land? Why should the peasants help a person that was busy wearing pretty dresses and holding royal balls every week, while they were toiling in the fields? Will the royalty and magic users return to Fairy Tale Land without the peasants then? Could a world function filled only with princesses and witches?
Of course, I doubt any of this will actually come up in the show. It’s just interesting, sometimes, to think about the characters on the periphery of a story.