Balance of Evil

Cora as the Dark One would have been pretty awful. Even without his power, she hurt a lot of people–Rumple himself among them, as suggested by his reaction to her in “In the Name of the Brother”–including Eva, Daniel, Johanna, the random SB citizen she killed instead of Archie, everyone who was in Mulan’s encampment, Snow and Regina who both suffered intensely as a result of her actions…and so on.

Regina’s loss is still heartbreaking, but to put it in perspective Regina herself hired Hook to kill her mother. Took him a while, but since the wound he inflicted on Rumple was transferred to Cora…that’s kind of what eventually happened.

And yet the way this sets things up for the future is really tilting the scales. Rumple is now still the Dark One, with his dagger and his power, and he just caused the death of an enemy he once loved. That’s the second woman he’s loved and then killed. (Scary news for Belle–maybe Hook was right about people who get close to Rumple?) And while it wasn’t by his hand this time, he did arrange for it to happen. But while Milah insisted she had never loved him just before he killed her, here’s Cora saying that she did (even if she did apparently love power more, enough to rip her own heart out to avoid such weakness…Rumple’s twice chosen power over love, so yeah, he should understand).

So what does this do for him as a character? I’ve mixed feelings all over the place about what he asked Snow to do for him, as much as I didn’t want him to die. How does he redeem himself from this action (let alone all his previous actions…even if you do blame most of his killing on being the Dark One, he had to kill the Dark One to get that power)? He describes himself as full of love, but he wasn’t always–the hatred from that night with Bae stuck with him until at least 40ish years ago when he told Cora that was how he accessed his power. Yet, he wasn’t lying about the love he had for Bae or Belle, either. And his tantrums and lashing out almost always come when he’s thinking about one or the other. He’s such a complex character! So what does he feel about it–he tries to almost console Regina by saying that Cora did her no favors, but we’ve seen how often when he talks to someone else he’s really dealing with his own guilt and fear (like when he asks Milah how she could’ve left Bae–he’s angry at himself, when he whacks Moe for shutting Belle out, he’s angry at himself for letting her go). Is it that Cora did him no favors?

And of course now Regina has every excuse to be the Evil Queen in her fullness again; Rumple and Snow just killed her mother, manipulated her into playing a role in it, just when she had the first real loving smile from Cora, too. She already blamed Snow for Daniel’s death and Emma for taking Henry, and Rumple manipulated her into killing not only her horse but her father. Now the whole lot of them made her an accomplice in killing her own mother (again). It’s going to be very hard for her to embrace good again after this, if that’s what “good” does. Yet she’s learned a little, I think–and Henry might yet motivate her to be less evil. She wants real love and always has.

Snow tried to stop it, but she did the deed–she did what Rumple suggested, and she manipulated Regina (perhaps only because Regina caught her before she could do anything else) into putting the heart back. Yet this is exactly what Cora once told her to do–some poetic justice there. Yet, Snow’s the one who lit the candle and she’s responsible for bringing back The Dark One and killing Cora. That’s going to be a heavy burden for her. There’s no coming back from murder, as she has repeatedly said. What does not coming back look like? Will she try to make it right by surrendering to Regina? Will she forget who she really is? How will she look at Rumple after this (not that she entirely trusted him before)? If she turns evil as a result, how many people do we have on the side of evil?

Rumple is still the Dark One and still a coward who was willing to take someone else’s life to avoid death. He’s far from a good guy even if we love him and see good in him as Belle did.

Cora may be gone, but will her evil live on in Snow and Regina?

Regina’s done with trying to be good–the Evil Queen is back.

Snow just did the most horrible thing she could imagine doing, something she couldn’t do even for her own mother, and she did it for Rumplestiltskin, a man so dangerously evil she and David once imprisoned him (and who incidentally played a major role in their being together in the first place…). If this turns her into Evil Snow again the way that forgetting David did, things could get scary.

Oh, and Hook’s still out there. Just cuz he got his hook into Rumple’s chest once doesn’t mean he’s going to be pleased to know he was thwarted (though I’m sure he won’t mind Cora’s taking the fall after how she betrayed him). He’ll still want his revenge.

And then there’s the question of Emma’s powers. She’s using magic now, being trained by Rumple as Cora and Regina were, though it does seem that he is asking her to access positive feelings where he told Cora to access very negative ones and used Regina’s pain to take her to very, very dark places. Will being the product of True Love protect Emma from using dark magic–or is she already using it? We’ve seen with Regina and Rumple how corrupting it can be.

The side of good could be dwindling, even if the worst evil was just killed off (but how do you even measure that?).

I’m mostly trying to work through some thoughts here, so sorry it rambles so much.