Re: Stepfather Hook?

[Keb]

I think that the TL relationship trumps the marriage relationship in some sense in Once. But I also think that by just about every understanding of marriage, having a non-dissolved marriage with someone else preempts the possibility of marrying someone else. Hook and Milah were definitely lovers, and definitely had TL, but they were not married. In at least one sense, their being together was better than Milah staying with Rumple–because of the TL thing–but that doesn’t mean it was morally the right thing. We don’t know what annulment/divorce proceedings were available to Milah (though to say those things didn’t exist in their world is a bit presumptuous–they’ve existed in our world since the earliest written records at least, even if, during certain periods or in certain places, they were socially unacceptable or more difficult to obtain than they are now). What we do know is that she left Rumple without telling him or Bae that she was going, without offering them any sort of closure (and we see how important THAT was to Bae, in Manhattan). It was wrong and she acknowledges as much, at least where Bae’s concerned. Within the moral structure of the show, Milah is not in the right for what she did, though it is somewhat mitigated by her desire to be with her TL. The only thing that seems to equal TL’s value in the show is family (which we’ve seen has as much TL power as romantic TL), and she did break up her family through her choice to go with Killian.

But I think that reflects more on Milah than on Hook, in the end. He wanted to provide Bae with a family, apparently before and after Milah’s death. He was even willing to suspend his quest for revenge to give Bae that–or to honor Bae when he found out what happened to him. Killian’s not innocent in Milah’s affair and decision to leave her family, but he doesn’t bear the same moral burden to keep her family together that she does.