7 Reasons Why the Crew Had Better Listen to Captain Hook

I think Emma will be the leader of the group but she will take on board any advice Hook has for her. Since Rumple will be off doing his own thing, the other 5 will be the ones having disagreements amongst themselves, particularly Snowing and Regina. Hook will most likely be the second in command since he has actual experience of Neverland and the Lost Ones.

I don’t want to sound Anti-Hook, because I’m not really anymore…or at least I’m working on it, but that list sounds like from the Hook-loving network press at ABC.  They’re really pushing him.  Sometimes I do wonder why they don’t market this show better and wonder why they’ve picked Hook as the angle to go at.  Fandom wise Regina and Rumple have a bigger fanbase.   Hook is big, but he doesn’t compare yet to Evil Regals or Dearies.

So my take:

1. He Knows What it Means to Lose the One You Love.
RG said, they all have lost someone they love, so this doesn’t float.

2. He May Not Even Be the Least Trustworthy Crew Member.
They’ve all got trust issues and problems.  It’s hard to tell who the least trustworthy is, but they are all there for the same purpose.

 3. He Knows How to Play Rough. 
While Snowing does go by a moral code, I think Regina and Rumple know how to play rough, too.  No need to go into details–the whole series so far has demonstrated this.

4. He Won’t Give Up.
Snowing’s catchprase is “I will always find you.”  Regina has harbored a vendetta against Snow for decades, and Rumple had been after his son for hundreds of years.  And Emma and Regina are in Mama Bear mode.  Nothing is going to stop them.

5. He Will Straight-Up Shoot Somebody in the Back. 
With the exception of Snowing, all of them would do this if it served their cause.

6. He Knows How to Work with Others.
Out of the whole bunch, I’d say Snowing were the best examples of people who can work with others without resorting to murder.  The others don’t know how to share their toys.

7. He’s Been There Before and it’s His Bloody Ship!
It is his ship, but Rumple and probably Regina have been there.  And who knows if Neal is coming, too.  All of those characters have a history with Neverland.

So really, these qualities can probably be rationalized to apply to all of them on the ship.

I appreciate that article from HappyEndings and it’s nice to see ABC doing some promotional work but this is basically a marketing ploy. When ABC looks at Colin, do you know what they see? Money.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the ABC marketing team is a bunch of greedy fat cats with dollar signs in their eyes but if your campaign (and that’s what this is) doesn’t bring in money/sponsors and viewers than you failed at your job. And they look at Colin with his–let’s face it–pretty face and dreamy accent and they see his enthusiastic fanbase and they realize that they can use him to promote the heck out of the show to bring in bigger numbers–both Neilsen wise and dollar wise. It also doesn’t help that this season we are going to “his” land. If we were going to Oz, I’d expect Dorothy to be shoved down everyone’s throats.
So what is ABC doing exactly? They are making you like Hook by suggesting that he is the only one you need to listen to for these reasons, which like Jo points out, basically applies to just about everyone.
I tend to agree with PoM that Emma is the real leader of the JR6. I think she and Regina will more or less reach an understanding (temporary perhaps) to do whatever it takes to get Henry back, Hook will go along because he doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty but the real problem is doing to be Mama and Papa Charming who, by virtue of being who they are, are moral to their core. Snow may have a black spot but she’s still Snow. And Charming is the consummate Knight In Shinning Armor.

ABC need to be careful that they don’t over market Hook to the point where the audience is sick of him. Everybody has there own favourite character, and for those whose favourite isn’t Hook, if Hook starts to take too much screen time from other characters, people may begin to resent him and want him to have less screen time or be gone from the show.

MAP fell into that trap from episode 1 in season 2. Mulan and Aurora are normally quite popular in their own Disney right. However, when they were introduced, it was the episode where everybody cared about what was happening in Storybrooke with their beloved characters and not what was happening elsewhere. MAP took up half the episode and nobody liked them for it. They would’ve benefitted more from being introduced in episode 2 or 3 when it dealt with Emma and Snow in FTL. The reason why Hook’s introduction worked and MAP’s didn’t was because Hook was introduced as part of a beloved character’s backstory.

They could kill off Hook this season perhaps by PP’s hand. It would tie into  the traditional PP/Hook rivalry and also show just dangerous PP is. At some point they are going to have to kill off a main character for real rather than doing fake outs just to show that any one could die.

Rumple and Regina have big fan bases and are considered by some to be one of the main draws of the show so it would be extremely unwise to kill off the two most characters on the show.

Belle is one half of RumBelle. She’s a lovely character in her own right and once again RumBelle has a pretty big fanbase and it would be unwise to kill that off. The fact that RumBelle seem to be constantly separated for one reason or another could be taken as a good sign that Belle may survive the series. RumBelle’s happy ending will actually be them together.

Emma and Henry will survive because Henry is a kid and Emma is sort of the audience character. It was through her the audience was introduced to Storybrooke. The audience feel a connection with Emma.

Snowing probably won’t be killed off because of the fact they’re Snowing. However, the writers did originally want to kill off Charming in the Pilot. One of Snowing dying would have a lasting impact for the rest of the series, and you want a main character death to have an impact. However since the writers said separating Snowing would be “a loss of all hope”, I doubt they would kill them off (same reasoning extends to RumBelle).

Which leaves us with, for potential main character death, Hook and Neal.

Neal has already had the OMG He’s dead, wait no he’s not moment at the end of season 2. I doubt they’d try and pull that same trick again.

Hook has not come close to death yet, his potential departure would have an effect on Emma and would be felt throughout the rest of the series. His on-going survival leaves him two options- go bad or go good. He can’t go bad because all bad guys get their comeuppance and he can’t go good otherwise he won’t be the same character people fell in love with. Death in a heroic sacrifice would be the way for Hook to go out in a blaze of glory, and what other end would be befitting for Hook.

PoM, I like your rationalizing.  And it makes a bit of sense.  They set Graham up as a potential major character, including him in all promo shots, publicity and the like, and then killed him off in Episode 7.   They did show that nobody was safe.  J.K. Rowling did the same thing with Cedric Diggory in book 4 for the same reason.

I think as an audience we’re all pretty cocky and sure that our favorite character is not going to get killed.  Rumple is going to his “undoing” yet not one fan believes he’s going to die.   And like you said, Belle has been tortured so much that it would be a real shame to just kill her off now.

I hate to admit this, but if they wanted to ax a character it’d make most sense to be Ruby.  Meghan’s on another show, she’s only been used conveniently and not well in the last season, and she’s a part of Snowing’s inner circle.  Her death would affect everyone.

Back to Hook, maybe he’ll take on the role of Sydney Carton (Snape also pulled a Carton).  Anyone who has read A Tale of Two Cities knows of the character’s sacrifice in the end for the greater good.  He wasn’t a nice man or a good man, but in the end he did something extraordinary.