Thought I had at lunch during work yesterday:
Why did Zelena need Neal specifically to use the life for a life triangular exchange thing? I mean, beyond the needing/wanting to write MRJ out angle I’m assuming exists…why couldn’t she just manipulate some random Joe Schmo to do it? Did she just want revenge on Rumple for…IDEK what he’s supposed to have done except mock her pseudo crush on him…whatever, so she chose to bring him back by killing his son?
So I started thinking–you know what small detail would have made 315 make marginal more sense to me? Make it so the life exchange had to be by a blood relation. Blood magic (specifically between Rumple and Bae) was introduced at the beginning of the season, I could swing that as ironic foreshadowing. Zelena specifically targeting Neal because he was the ONLY ONE who could do it rather than Neal acting like an idiot because PLOT could have been much more strongly written. Heck, this theory isn’t even necessarily wrong, why she had Neal do it is kind of a mystery to me. If she’d kept Neal or the prospect of Neal being alive dangling in front of Rumple, wouldn’t he cooperate with her much more willingly?
I still wouldn’t like it AT ALL IN ANY WORLD EVER, but Neal sacrificing his life because he was literally the only who could bring Rumple back has much more narrative strength to me than what we got.
"Death cannot stop true love...it can only delay it awhile."