Reply To: Neal's death in not on Zelena's hands

[Keb]

To dismiss what characters say simply because you disagree with the writers is to ignore major parts of what happened. What a character believes is not necessarily the truth…but it’s not irrelevant, nor is it not part of the story.

I do agree it was a bit OOC for Neal to go for the magic solution instead of looking for something else, but the writers who created the characters said this is what he did at this point in his existence. They gave reasonable motivations for it, if not entirely convincing ones, and so that’s the story. Rumple and Zelena both behaved as if, within the story’s moral framework, Zelena was the one who bore the guilt for what happened.

I’m not absolving Neal (or the writers) for Neal’s mistake. What I am saying is that it’s ridiculously to dismiss Zelena’s guilt here. Neal’s death is at least in large part due to her intervention.