Could it be Prince Philip heart????

I like that theory, it could be possible that it’s Phillip’s heart. We have never underestimated the power of ‘true love’, and that could connect people’s hearts and Cora found a way to manipulate that? It’s an interesting one 🙂

Do you think, Hook took the heart from Phillip’s body now lying around very much soulless in the castle, where before Aurora had slept time away? Guess his body will stay intact there and not rot away out of some magical reason, but think it makes a difference, to take the heart of a feeling, living, breathing being or a soulless body. Doubt that that heart would be of any magical use.

Hook very simply could have taken Aurora’s heart without her noticing anything while she was unconscious (Cora knocked her out, she was not just sleeping). Then Hook woke her up and let her go. Taking out the heart the magical way seems to leave mostly no physical visable mark and might even go fairly unnoticed by the victim if unconscious. Or did Graham had a scar? I know, when they find the bodies in the camp you could see some blood, something that actually bothered me, because before there never has been blood when a heart was taken magically, but it was somewhat necessary for the plot, to give them a clue it was Cora, who killed them all.

That we didn’t get to see, how Hook took the heart, has just story telling reasons. When he freed Aurora we couldn’t be told, to keep it as a surprise for later, when Cora finally made use of it. Same goes for the moment, when Hook offers it to Cora, we were left in the dark on purpose, to keep suspense up (come on, who was guessing he found some bean or something?). And later we didn’t really need to see it anymore, it was enough to tell, that Hook did it. You only have a certain amount of time every episode.

The deep connection of two hearts, uhm people truly in love is a motif in the show. “It’s the most powerful magic in the world”, “the only magic powerful enough to transcend realms and break any curse” (something Rumple says in 1×22 to Emma). And what Aurora said just fits into this motif.

Of course, if Hook took the heart of Phillip, I would go a step further, saying, he sold it as Aurora’s heart to Cora – otherwise the lines between Hook and Cora talking about the heart wouldn’t make sense. Because of the deep connection out of love between Phillip and Aurora Cora didn’t notice the difference and could use it to manipulate Aurora as we got to see it. All that would though mean, that Hook must have an extended knowledge of magically ripping hearts and what you can do with the hearts then, maybe knowing more than even Cora. But why do this trick? To have a failsafe, but of what kind? Like Aurora being free of Cora’s influence the moment she’s told what’s going on, because it’s not her own heart used to controlle her? To outsmart Cora? To look good to Emma in the end? But for the writer of course it might come in handy later to explain, how they could keep Aurora alive despite being manipulated by Cora via a heart, if they do take her to SB and not let her stay or die in FTL. Hmmmm. 🙄

Concerning the zombies: right, it looked liked she just needed to take one heart as a kind of master heart to awake some others – but what would be the connection between those hearts to make it possible? Or could she use hearts without special connections as long as she just needs some zombies, while what she is doing with Aurora is a little bit more sophosticated, thus it takes a strong connection between the hearts?

It just gets too complicate. Too much headaches. It sounds to me more plausible that it is Aurora’s heart.

@AntBee wrote:

I agree though that we weren’t shown Hook taking it because of time constraints and to maximize the suspense of what it was. (I also thought he had the bean that the Giant had around his neck after I convinced myself that they’d never have Hook cross that line and really take Aurora’s heart out. Glad I wasn’t the only one who thought that’s what Hook had if it wasn’t a heart.) Also K&H confirmed it in their podcast that it was indeed Aurora’s heart and that Hook was the one that removed it.

The question I would have is, ‘how did he (Hook) learn to do that?’ Because we’ve only seen very specific people do that. We’ve only seen The Queen, Cora and Rumple. I would say watch episode 9.”
— Eddy Kitsis (Regarding how Hook got Aurora’s heart during the ‘Into the Deep’ podcast)

What Edward Kitsis said left me questioning who removed Aurora’s heart. Eddy danced around the question of how Hook came by the heart and said that we’ve only seen certain people perform heart removal. Could Hook really have learned magic? I read another theory that it wasn’t Hook who removed the heart at all; it was Maleficent who took out Aurora’s heart when she became cursed, and Hook simply acquired the heart later either through a trade, by force, or by happenstance.