Awesome catches! Every little parallel helps (and you CANNOT tell me these things are done this way for a reason!)
I can see Hook being torn and maybe at first being willing to kinda take a backseat and let Neal have the upper hand for a very very short amount of time and then Neal will make a comment or start a fight for no reason and then Hook will stand up and do what he wants which is to fight for Emma. Hook knows how he would feel should Milah be able to come back to him (which obviously can’t happen but Emma gets that chance with Neal since she thought he was dead…) and with his connection to Bae he’ll feel guilty for a bit but then be right back in Hook mode the moment Neal doesn’t play nice.
Hook showed us in the finale that he was willing to set aside something that is HUGE to him in order to give Bae a good life and Bae threw it in his face and so he went back to his old ways. I imagine it coming down to “if it’s a fight you want, it’s a fight you’re going to get” and then focus on wooing Emma later on. His quote needs to / has to count for something and while I see him definitely being torn I don’t think he’s going to just pick up and leave town either.
I agree that SF need to deal with their issues first though. I’m all for Emma & Hook getting close while they’re on their adventures in Neverland right now, but in order for it to be “real” for CaptainSwan, SwanFire need to prove that they’re no good together now. Emma HAS to make a choice, not just go for whoever is left standing.
I’m kinda waiting for her quotes from The Price of Gold to come back into play. Everybody has been telling her how to run her life, making decisions for her, manipulating where she ends up etc etc. Her speech to Ashley about doing what she wants instead of what everybody else wants could potentially be huge for CaptainSwan, especially if the rest of her family starts pushing her toward Neal and she wants to pick Hook. We know who Henry will want, Snowing aren’t going to be super happy etc etc, but ultimately it’s up to Emma because it’s her life.
I haven’t started my series rewatch yet but I’m definitely going to be on the lookout for quotes like that as there were TONS in season 1 of what kind of person she is, wants to be, and doesn’t want to be from the past (as well as her comments about Neal etc etc) and I really think there’s a LOT more we haven’t even thought of yet (ie: like those parallels that were just linked here showing just how similar the introduction scenes are for Hook / Milah, Hook / Emma.
So happy to see we’re over 100 pages now! We may be a fairly small group but we’ve been consistently defending / promoting / discussing our pairing from the start and the more we add to it, the more that is cemented in my mind that we have a really strong chance at being correct!
Totally agree on the Castle stuff as well!
Keeper of Hook's Trenchcoat.