Rumple and Mila

[RumplesGirl]

I think Rumple really loved her, but obviously Milah isn’t his true love. When it comes to Milah…I go back and forth. Maybe she only thought she loved him and when Rumple came home it really opened her eyes to the fact that she really didn’t. In the words of one of my favorite authors: “True love is keeping the promise anyway.” The fact that she left Bae with Rumple, a man she wished dead because he ran home for his wife and his son, to be a with Hook. I think her actions scream that she never really loved him (like she said) and possibly that while she did love her son, he wasn’t enough to keep her around. I like what Slurpeez said about Bae being the reason she was stuck in a loveless marriage. So, really, she had no problem abandoning Bae.

[spinninggold]

Ehm, I’m just gonna throw itout there, because it is the only thing that would make sense… Post-natal depression?

I mean the difference between “don’t go” and “you should have died” is pretty big

BTW, in 9 months you can’t get a note to battle that say? “Hi luv, Guess what, I’m pregnant.” Or do FTL pregnancies only take a week. Hmm, in that case I wanna get pregnant in FTL… although it probably will leave some nasty stretch marks 😆

[PriceofMagic]

How could Rumple have not known Milah was pregnant until the seer told him so? Unless there is a time jump between the flashbacks we saw. Allowing a few days/weeks for Rumple to return home after injuring himself, there has to be at least 8-9 months between Rumple leaving for war and the seer telling him about Milah being pregnant. Maybe less if Milah was already pregnant before Rumple left for war but hadn’t started to show yet.

Did anyone else think that when the seer said Rumple’s actions on the battlefield would leave Bae fatherless, she was perhaps implying that Bae wasn’t Rumple’s biological son and that Bae’s biological father would die? Also to which battlefield was the seer referring? When Rumple was the dark one, he went out on the battlefield, stopped the war and brought the children home.

All magic comes with a price!

Keeper of Felix

[PanTheMan]

I think things would have been different if Milah wasn’t so sure that Rumple injured himself. She believed so much that Rumple wasn’t like his own cowardly father, but then she had to face the shame of being wrong.

While Rumple had his own reasons we sympathize with, Milah couldn’t believe the story about the seer just because of how everything had ruined her family’s social status. I’m sure she resented Baelfire just because he’s Rumple’s son.

She was probably convinced that being a coward is something inherited from the parents.

[karinca]

I hate to ask, but is he really Rumple’s son. The way she looked at Rumple when he walked in the door? Please tell me I’m wrong!

[RumplesGirl]

@KarinCA wrote:

I hate to ask, but is he really Rumple’s son. The way she looked at Rumple when he walked in the door? Please tell me I’m wrong!

I think so. I think the whole possibility of Bae not being Rumple’s was a read herring. I think Milah got pregnant like the night before Rumple left, he spent about 8 months or so at the front, and then injured himself and had to hobble home. Bae only looked about a month old when Rumple got home. So he was gone less than a year. There is very little doubt in my mind that Bae isn’t Rumple’s.

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

[Gaultheria]

@Elle wrote:

But leaving her son was horrible of her–especially without at least a goodbye. Or letting Rumpelstiltskin think she was kidnapped when she could have just told him or at least left a note.

I agree that it’s horrible, but I think it’s in character for her. For years, she’d been telling Rumpel — and probably the rest of the town, given that they all picked on him — that it’s better to die than to run away. Then she had a chance to run away, and she needed a cover story.

Gaultheria's fanvids: http://youtube.com/sagethrasher

[jessista]

Post-natal depression is an interesting theory, but I seem to think that those feelings tend to be directed at oneself or at the baby, not at the father. I also think it was a bit sudden that she went from “don’t go, you have nothing to prove” to “you should have died.” One of the spoilers said that we’d find out that Milah lied about not loving Rumple, but I disagree–telling someone they should have died is really harsh, and not something you tell someone you love.

And the betrayal of being a coward, if you even consider it that (Milah probably does), does not fly as a reason.In the teaser, Rumple seems to get stabbed by Hook, and you can hear Bae saying “Is there anything we can do to save him.” Rumple's greatest betrayal was done to his son, and even Bae doesn't want him dead (we also saw that Henry doesn't want Regina dead, etc). I don’t know if Milah was a gold/status-digger or just a B-word. It doesn’t justify killing her, of course, but she’s much less sympathetic now. I wonder if Nealfire finds out about Rumple killing Milah from Hook, and how he'll react. (Not like she was much of a mother to him, it seems, but still.)

[Marty McFly]

@PriceofMagic wrote:

Also to which battlefield was the seer referring? When Rumple was the dark one, he went out on the battlefield, stopped the war and brought the children home.

VERY good point!!! I never thought of that

[kfchimera]

In the official podcast, A&E talked about Milah, and said something that I think informs how they meant her character to be. They said Milah knew that all Rumpel’s life he had been living in the shadow of having a coward father. This was a great source of unhappiness for Rumpel. So then he comes home, having just trapped his family in that same fate. So while on the one hand, Rumpel hobbled himself out of love (so his son wouldn’t grow up without him) on the other, from Milah’s point of view, it was also a short-sighted and cowardly act.

Given fan reactions to Neal, she did have a point–I’ve seen a few people who say “he’s a coward just like Rumpel” regardless of the scenes that highlight Baelfire’s bravery and courage. There is a bias that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Yet her main concern was not the effect on Bae, but on herself since she runs off for her true love/adventure/new life without Bae.

I’ve also thought about post-natal depression for her early actions, but I don’t think the writers really intended to write her that way. They could pretty easily make her a lot more sympathetic by showing that Milah had a very rough time giving birth/caring for a newborn without much support from a village full of people angry that Rumpel deserted their army, while their sons/husbands/fathers died. They could show her struggling, and coming to the conclusion that Bae is better off without her because she is to damaged to be a good mother–but I doubt they’ll spend the time to do that, since she’s really more a plot device than character they want to develop in her own right.

What’s interesting though is that Rumpel doesn’t seem heart broken over her loss so much as just angry at her for saying she never loved him. I didn’t get the impression he mourned her loss.

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

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