Yes there was a LOT of good Hook stuff, so lots of reason to be buoyed by future possibilities.
@Mysterykat wrote:
sadly I don't think she'll ask Charming why he never punched Neal because of the current circumstances, but maybe someday that double standard will come into play. You'd think DaddyCharming would be more upset about that! But at least we know they work together later on!
We don't know the context in which Charming punches Hook.
Besides that, even if Emma told Charming what happened with Neal (at least, if she did so after Manhattan), I don't think he'd punch Neal.
Charming would likely see the parallel between his abandoning Emma as a baby and Neal doing the same thing to break the curse. Most people get hung up on the jail thing, but Adam tweeted recently that Neal did not set Emma up for jail Neal found out later but was still bound by the promise to let Emma be the savior. Both leaving a newborn baby or not rescuing the woman you love when you find out she is in jail are both awful, horrible things in the real world, but in the context of defeating a magical curse, it’s kind of “the price of magic”. Charming’s feelings about Hook will be based on what Snow has told him, not just Emma, as well as what he heard Hook say to Snow. It’s not about a double standard at all, and I think like with Whale, Charming will just get it out of his system and be ready to move on.
Snow will likely be the one who continues to doubt Hook, despite Emma and Charming. Someone mentioned getting irked at Snow for saying Emma’s lie detector doesn’t work, saying there wasn’t a time in the show it didn’t work. If you watch Fruit of the Poisonous Tree, Sydney Glass lies to Emma and does what Regina calls a “masterful” job of deceit. Snow tends to hold on to past incidents I think. I think Emma and Charming are more in-the-moment.
All the “Neal is worse” stuff just undermines CS to me, because it’s really not about the past and who is worse, but the future and who will be a better fit for Emma as her life as it is now. If Neal still wants to go to Tallahassee and settle down, if he is alive, that is not what I think Emma wants anymore. I don’t think she wants to sail off on a pirate ship either–but we have to see what Hook wants. Like Emma, I think Hook is about to go from one dream (killing the Croc) to another ( Having something and someone to make him want to live.)
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass