Reply To: The Captain Swan thread!

Do you think that the writers planned to have Hook be the one to end up with Emma right from the beginning when they introduced him? Or do you think they saw how much the fans liked him and switched the story to kill off Neal and begin Hook’s transformation into a better person so he can be worthy of Emma? Do you think they killed off Neal bc they felt they couldn’t really give Hook the full spotlight as Emma’s true love if Neal was still around?

Parts of this. I think 1) Hook was always intended to be a villain who would turn hero and join the Scooby gang for an adventure 2) That Hook and Emma were always supposed to have this “Will they/Won’t they” thing going on. Everyone admits they had/have chemistry, that is undeniable. 3) That Neal wasn’t planned to die. He was too big of importance to the story and characters to have died without doing anything or resolving anything with anyone. No way that was planned. His death as a way to pave the road for CS? Sure. Emma would never have been able to go on had he lived (Emma said it in the show, JMO said it in a panel I think.) And just imagine how Hook would be perceived had Neal still been around. Look at the things Hook does now. Having Neal there as a constant comparison would only make Hook look worse (and I don’t mean this as a bash against Hook, but outside of Emma he has no story. Bae could still be a valid part of this story without being with Emma. Hook can’t. He’d constantly feel “in the way”, at least for me personally. Neal seems like a pretty decent dude, Hook is still a work in progress who thus far is still making excuses for his actions and not facing punishment for them). So yeah, I think in order for CS ship to sail, there had to be no one else for Hook to “compete” against. But most importantly:

I think the show itself, in a meta way, was supposed to be a new, original, modern, unconventional fairytale with the original characters (Neal, Emma, and Henry) being the stars. I don’t believe for one second Captain Hook was ever intended to be the endgame for Emma.

Especially up against Neal or Graham. Seriously, I think Graham would have given everyone a run for their money, even Neal.

Hook and Emma having chemistry from the start, flirting with eachother from the start, or whatever doesn’t really make me feel like that’s a sign  they were meant to be endgame. The entire story of Emma and  Neal makes me see that was supposed to be something major that got sidelined.

So put me in the boat of thinking the writers cast this dark and handsome popular pirate knowing he would eventually be Emma’s right hand man

Yeah, Right Hand Man. Not her husband, in my view. I always felt Hook and Emma would be flirtacious and all that, but in the end would just end up as friends. He’d be the Jacob to her Bella, the Damien to her Elena, the Eric to her Sookie. The Spike to her Buffy….. Okay, I’m all out of examples, but you get my point. I felt it was a huge missed opputunity making Hook so Emma centered instead of focusing on him, Rump, and Bae with Emma being secondary to that. I don’t feel he was supposed to live past S3A because it got to a point where it felt like he would just be there for no reason other than to be on screen for a moment. As Regina called him “the pirate mascot”.

So yeah, I think what kept Hook here was the fact that his character was popular and nothing more, and the story ( which i think started losing ratings more around S3) probably figured banking on him would save the show. It didn’t. And now with a good portion of the remaining watchers being those who are content with CS, it wouldn’t make sense to get rid of him now.