But now that he has his memories back and knows that Emma turned him into a Dark One, he suddenly feels the need to go and challenge Not A Dark One! Cripple! Rumple to a fight (to the death!!!!!–probably) even though in 504 it was all “I was villain in that story!”
*Watches promo. #headdesks*
Hook admittedly killed someone for drinking wine. (To paraphrase Lily Sparks’ review). He’s probably just going down the list of the people who ever slighted him. Emma, being the current DO, is too big a chunk to bite off, but Cripple!Rumple will do nicely.
Except for Emma, the revenge thing seems to be a big part of the DO characterization, and is a big theme this season. Nimue was/is very much revenge-driven. Rumple was somewhat more casually vengeful (*whoosh -> slug -> squish*) — but the core of his character was the search for his son.
But Hook was already driven by revenge when he was human. As a DO, it figures that he’d be vengeful ^2.
I admit that’s the fear he’s been dealing with this season–he knows he’ll go back to the dark side without his savior raft
Right. I think if Hook is to ever grow as a character, he will need to stop projecting onto others his own sense of self-worth (or lack thereof). In some ways, he’s written similarly to Rumple — he has a tendency to blame (and seek revenge on) others for his troubles, and also attributes to others (Emma) the ability to save him/absolve him. The one big difference from the Rumbelle dynamic that I can spot is that I don’t think that Rumple ever framed his feelings for Belle as conditional, or suggested that he’s “conditionally” a good guy as long as his love interest loves him. Anyway, no wonder Hook hates Rumple so much — the two characters are “aspects” of the same archetype, especially now that Bae is out of the picture.
This is a problem, of course, from a narrative perspective. If you’re going to have essentially two of the same kind of character, you’re going to need to address this similarity. I think the writers are aware of this, but don’t quite know how to productively exploit the parallels. I think this is because they wrote themselves into a bit of a corner with Hook by making him a good guy/central love interest for Emma: the problem is that what comes across as Rumple’s character flaws are, in Hook’s case, spun, often unconvincingly, as “positive”, “vulnerable” or “romantic” — mostly through the acting, cinematography, and Emma’s reactions. But that doesn’t mask the underlying relationship structure.
Oops, sorry, that was more verbiage on this topic than I originally intended. #Hookrelatedwalloftext O_o