"I feel like we've met before" [ending spoilers]

[[NeW]Spiked]

So, much of the debate raging on has been 'It was Faith all along' vs 'it was Nerissa all along'. I’m firmly in the ‘Faith’ camp at this point, but I thought it might be worth throwing yet another idea into the mix – that a third person has been posing as both the Faith and Nerissa that Bigby has encountered (though there must have been a real Faith and Nerissa previously, given the photos we have them together).

These 2 lines are repeated in Bigby's thoughts at the end:

Bigby to Faith: "I feel like we've met before"
Nerissa to Bigby: "You're trying to place me"

The 2nd line makes sense since, whoever she really is, Bigby already met her in the first scene. She goes on to say 'They used to call me the Little Mermaid', which you might interpret as her throwing Bigby off her trail.

But as for the 1st line - why should Bigby recognise her? I'd written off the line as just a reference to the Fables all knowing each other back in the Homelands, as Faith suggests, but hearing it again in the final reveal got me thinking it might be a suggestion that Faith/Nerissa is someone else entirely from Bigby’s past. Red Riding Hood is presumably out due to the comics canon, but what other girls are there that feature prominently in fables with a big bad wolf? This, of course, ignores the possibility that the true identity could be a boy (who cried wolf?), given that glamours have no reason to be gender-restricted.

If it’s not someone directly from Bigby’s past, another possibility is that it’s a fable whose story involves being forgotten by people - in ‘Nerissa’s’ speech at the end, she talks about how Fabletown citizens had fallen through the cracks and been forgotten, which might have resonated with her. I know this theory seems wild, but I’d previously read theories that mentioned the Girl with the Ribbon, and that turned out to be an important piece of the puzzle.

Any thoughts? I'm not convinced by this possibility myself, and I still believe it was Faith all along, but it would be interesting to hear from people with wider knowledge of fairy tales/the Fables universe.

[ThePlagued]

Well, if you wanted to be technical "The Little Mermaid" actually died in her story. the Grimm one. But i guess Fables does tale ALOT of liberties with the Grimm tales.

[Zebarnumaldax]

It was Nerissa, Faith was Woodys regular one, and the reason he was hitting her was case it was a different girl (episode 1).
However, we got no confirmation on Nerissa beign the little mermaid (apart from her words, wich i dont realy trust) and the "we'v met before" thing looked kinda suspicious too. Also, i gues it is safe to assume Faith was already dead when BigB met Nerissa.
On the topic who Nerissa ctualy is...mmm...any character in tales who was not afraid of wolf?...mmm...is wolf had any kind of connection with the "fox" characters? Im not realy familiar with the comic book, but in russian tales we got planty of wolf+fox action...and if there are some european version of em too, then my bet would be on this fox..she is red, she is sly and she got a history with BigB. And i am positively sure Nerissa is not Faith and not Mermaid (wasnt she called Ariel in first place?).

[Ethan Wulf]

****SPOILERSSSSSS***** SPOILS***** SPOILING YOU**********
But the way Nerissa danced at the club, I mean you can't discount that fact how she was moving her legs like a fish in water. And what she said about the price she paid for getting her voice back clearly implies, or atlest proves that she is the genuine Little Mermaid. Besides why would Faith (implying that she was "alive" the whole time) go through all that trouble that trouble just to help BigB bring a wanna be King-Pin in the Fable community to justice?

****MORE SPOILERS FOR YOU********
Even if that was the case then it would have to of been alot of sneaking around for those girls to just get a head on the steps of that apartment complex, concerning the fact that BigB was being watched since Episode 1.

[Smurffle]

Its a tricky one for sure, in my first playthrough i was 100% it was faith and from my experience it all added up that way, but on my 2nd playthrough it seemed like it all pointed to nerissa..... So im just as confused :(

Hopeing S2 will be all about solving this.

[[NeW]Spiked]

Originally posted by Zebarnumaldax:

It was Nerissa, Faith was Woodys regular one, and the reason he was hitting her was case it was a different girl (episode 1).
However, we got no confirmation on Nerissa beign the little mermaid (apart from her words, wich i dont realy trust) and the "we'v met before" thing looked kinda suspicious too. Also, i gues it is safe to assume Faith was already dead when BigB met Nerissa.
On the topic who Nerissa ctualy is...mmm...any character in tales who was not afraid of wolf?...mmm...is wolf had any kind of connection with the "fox" characters? Im not realy familiar with the comic book, but in russian tales we got planty of wolf+fox action...and if there are some european version of em too, then my bet would be on this fox..she is red, she is sly and she got a history with BigB. And i am positively sure Nerissa is not Faith and not Mermaid (wasnt she called Ariel in first place?).

I think Ariel was just Disney's name for her - don't think she was called that in the original stories.

Wikipedia has a neat article on different fables containing a Big Bad Wolf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bad_Wolf

The ones that haven't been covered by TWAU yet (not sure about the comics) are:
The Boy Who Cried Wolf (supposedly briefly mentioned in the comics as a little joke, but nothing more)
The Dog and the Wolf ('rich' but servile dog compared with poor but free wolf - no real connection with our story)
The Wolf and the Crane (wolf tricks a crane into removing a bone from his mouth, in exchange for sparing his life)
The Wolf and the Lamb (wolf justifies killing a lamb by launching false accusations at it)
The Wolf and the 7 Kids (wolf pretends to be a mother goat, eats all but one of her seven kids, she returns and cuts open his stomach when he's asleep, freeing the children, they sew him up with rocks and throw him into the river)
Peter and the Wolf (wolf tries to eat boy, boy with help of animals captures him)

Unfortunately, trawling through them I can't see any candidates for someone who Faith/Nerissa could be really.