Malcolm and Peter Pan

[swanning-off]

RIP Team Brothers. Hello Team DaddyPan

My thought process for this episode was:

1. gee PapaStiltskin is a piece of work. Feckless would be the best word for him.
2. But he tries to give him a good home – recognising that it won’t be with him! (side note: the spinsters cracked me up the way they finished each other’s sentences)
3. The doll – give him a name, he can be whoever you want to be. OK, maybe Rumple imagines Peter Pan into being via the doll?
4. Off to Neverland…. as soon as Malcom started raving about this place he went in his dreams as a boy, I could feel TeamBrothers dying as it seemed inevitable that DaddyPan was true

And you know what? I’m ok with that. I think from a storytelling perspective it was brilliant. Rumple’s always been clear: his father was a coward who abandoned him. Well…. hello! Letting a shadow take your child so you can be a boy again just so you can fly is a pretty epic level of abandonment!!

Then the Pandora’s Box…. oh the feels. RIGHT IN THE FEELS!!!

[swanning-off]

. Just imagine what was going through his head as Bae was pleading with him to go through the beanhole. Is that why he hesitated…because he knew what had happened in his own childhood? Oh, so many feels.

It really does put a whole new spin on that scene – Rumple’s cowardice is not JUST about power. It’s also about a massive sense of deja vu and trepidation. It doesn’t make the abandonment less, but it does make it more explicable and understandable.

[RumplesGirl]

Well…. hello! Letting a shadow take your child so you can be a boy again just so you can fly is a pretty epic level of abandonment!!

I know!!! Malcolm is a real piece of work. He wants to be young forever and fly and never leave NL and so he has a shadow cart off his son to a life of loneliness and shame! UGH. Malcolm just took the top spot of “most hated” on this show for me.

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[RumplesGirl]

Josephine wrote: . Just imagine what was going through his head as Bae was pleading with him to go through the beanhole. Is that why he hesitated…because he knew what had happened in his own childhood? Oh, so many feels.

It really does put a whole new spin on that scene – Rumple’s cowardice is not JUST about power. It’s also about a massive sense of deja vu and trepidation. It doesn’t make the abandonment less, but it does make it more explicable and understandable.

This.

It totally makes me want to go rewatch The Return again.

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[swanning-off]

He wants to be young forever and fly and never leave NL and so he has a shadow cart off his son to a life of loneliness and shame!  

Exactly. We’ve seen some b****rds on this show before but Malcom is taking the cake. Horrible man. Feckless is too nice a word for him. He’s just so thoroughly irresponsible and selfish….

and yet that is precisely why DaddyPan works so well. What is the essence of Pan – the Boy Who Never Grew Up. Who never wanted to grow up. Why do we want to avoid growing up? Because we want to avoid responsibility and putting others first. Children are allowed to be self centred, selfish and irresponsible. Malcolm’s rejection of fatherhood to satisfy his own desires (not needs, just desires. It’s not like the option was starve to death or lose your son – the option was LEARN TO FLY or lose your son!! Not a need for survival)

Anyway. His rejection of his fatherhood and responsibility is epic, and totally in keeping with the character of Peter Pan. I was so hardcore into Team Brothers but am actually really pleased to be wrong. This plot line has so much more OOMPH.

Doesn’t do much for the Sneaky Fairy is Sneaky theory… or does it? How did Pan/Malcolm come to pick out his great grandson for his immortality and why? Hmm???

Also just realised: how epic is the man’s selfishness that he not only abandoned his son to be young again but he will kill his great grandson to be immortal?????!!!!!!!!

[lunatiger]

 

 

[lunatiger]

Malcolm = Worse father in all the realms

I admit I was on the fence with this as soon as people started predicting Pan was Rumple’s dad. It did play out well…but I’m still kinda disappointed. I don’t know why it just feels like it lessens Peter Pan as a character when he was so epic in the previous episodes. Am I the only one that feels this way?

 

[RumplesGirl]

Malcolm = Worse father in all the realms I admit I was on the fence with this as soon as people started predicting Pan was Rumple’s dad. It did play out well…but I’m still kinda disappointed. I don’t know why it just feels like it lessens Peter Pan as a character when he was so epic in the previous episodes. Am I the only one that feels this way?

I still think TeamBrothers makes more sense with the original work but I do want to go back and rewatch all of Peter’s and Rumple’s interactions now to see if it was there all along. I know many people predicted it but I was against it until I saw it play out.

But man, for someone who claims that he was giving his son a better life, Malcolm is really horrible. Truly horrible. Trying to take Baelfire, kidnapping Henry, all the taunts to Rumple. Sending him the doll. UGH.

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[MatthewPaul]

The twist was interesting, and they did a great job pulling it off. I am intrigued when Adam and Eddy changed their plans for Malcolm, as they had written an alternate story showing Malcolm abandoning Rumple and getting killed that was cut from “Manhattan.” That also means they might have had different plans for Pan initially, but then decided add the twist. Maybe the original plan for Malcolm just wasn’t dramatic enough for them, so they changed it up. I did love all of the parallels between Malcolm/Rumple’s story to Rumple/Bae’s. You had the bean portal, both dads being frowned upon by society, both dads chosing something selfish over their own son, and both dads saying “I will find a way.” No wonder Rumple was so scared to go with Bae into the portal, as the last time resulted in losing his father. I will say Rumple was still overall a better dad to Bae, as he regretted letting go of him the second he left and he made it his mission in life to seek him out. Malcolm on the other hand intentionally let Rumple go because he viewed him as nothing but an anchor to his selfish dreams. Knowing this backstory really makes Rumple much more of a sympathetic character, and this episode really showed him being noble for the sake of saving his grandson.

[swanning-off]

But man, for someone who claims that he was giving his son a better life, Malcolm is really horrible. Truly horrible. Trying to take Baelfire, kidnapping Henry, all the taunts to Rumple. Sending him the doll. UGH.

I know. D-bag. An epic one at that.

Malcolm never matured, never took responsibility. And after several hundred years as Peter Pan, he hasn’t had to either. Now he’s just a horrible little boy – mean, petty, manipulative.

Ugh indeed.

[Author]

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