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Hook has some decidedly un-nice things to say to Emma in Storybrooke. He called her an anchor around his neck, a pretty blond distraction, and that he wanted to hurt her like she had hurt him.
Is this just the Darkness talking? How much of it is Hook and how much is “the evil?” Was there any truth to what he said? And how will Emma react toward Hook in the coming weeks/arcs?
[adrotate group="5"]"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Going by these writers, it was the Darkness talking, and Hook didn’t really mean all of that. Plus we know from spoilers that Emma still wants to rescue Hook from the Underworld after he apparently dies in 511, so despite what happened, she is not over him.
I understand that he’s angry but it seems like he was too willing to turn against her.
So I am going with both. His feelings of hurt and anger are true and genuiene but the darkness is amplifying it and he’s going along with it….with no effort to fight it….just going along with it…..
Why? Because plot needs him to? I would think Hook, if he really loved Emma and really changed would be far more against turning to darkness. It was literally a simple decision for him.
Hmmmm *sips tea* >_>
"I could have the giant duck as my steed!" --Daniel Radcliffe
Keeper Of Tamara's Taser , Jafar's Staff, Kitsis’s Glasses , Ariel’s Tail, Dopey's Hat , Peter Pan’s Shadow, Outfit, & Pied Cloak,Red Queen's Castle, White Rabbit's Power To World Hop, Zelena's BroomStick, & ALL MAGICI took it as mostly the darkness talking, but being Hook he knew exactly what to say that would hurt the absolute most.
As far as Hook turning against Emma at all, he didn’t really at first. When the darkness initially took hold, it tried using his old revenge thing to drive and control him. And it was working, but then Emma got through to him and broke that control. So of course the darkness saw Emma as a threat to its control and its plan, and very promptly started poisoning his mind against Emma.
It does seem like he should have resisted more but, here’s the thing: Emma is his anchor for good, she always has been. She was literally the only thing he could hold onto to resist the dark influence. So once the dark energy planted some doubt about Emma in his head, even the tiniest bit, it took that away from him! 😯
SFG
Keeper of Anna’s Awkward Babbling and Kristoff’s Fur-trimmed Tunic!
I understand that he’s angry but it seems like he was too willing to turn against her.
I look at it as like dreaming. It’s all really him, but working differently.
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Emma is his anchor for good, she always has been. She was literally the only thing he could hold onto to resist the dark influence.
But this is incredibly problematic. You shouldn’t need another person to be good. It’s emotional manipulation: “if you leave me, I’ll revert back to being dark/a villain so you have to stay with me because you’re my only hope of being good!” There is nothing wrong with having someone by your side to help you resist dark temptations, but they shouldn’t be your only reason for being good. People leave, people have faults, people die, people make mistakes. By placing the root of his salvation in Emma, he’s setting both of them up for failure and being incredibly unfair to Emma in the process. It’s the same with Rumple and Belle. He has to learn to be a good man on his own for the sake of being good, not because Belle is some sort of magical object that holds the universe’s secrets. When male characters treat woman thusly it’s…oh, gosh it’s problematic. But of course A and E don’t see it that way, they just see “love.”
I’m trying to figure out how much to say on this topic because everyone knows that I’m not exactly Hook’s biggest fan. So, bear with me folks. This might be a bit all over the place.
Hook lays into Emma with some cold hard truths. In many ways, the things he says aren’t actually false. Emma does does destroy her own happiness by refusing to let anyone in and by refusing to believe that she can have happiness. She did it with Henry, with her parents, with the town of Storybrooke, and even with all her various love interests from Neal to Walsh to Hook himself. The pirate calling her on those famous walls (which, honestly, should have been destroyed by now after so many people have been let into Emma’s heart) shows a level of self awareness that I didn’t know he had. Also in the self-aware department are the writers themselves. For a brief moment, during this heated argument, the writers of OUAT seem to actually get and understand that Hook is a problematic character. Let me pause here to say that there is nothing wrong with problematic characters. We need villains in storytelling or how else would we know who the heroes are. We also need anti-heroes because the world is, by and large, not divided into heroes and villains. It’s far more complicated than that; we need characters like Walter White and Don Draper and Tony Soprano to illustrate how gray our world is. Hook falling into the villain or ruthless antihero category is a comfortable place for him and a good, long standing narrative tradition.
The problem lies not in his villainy but in the fact that the writers never let him stay there and actually explore that self-same villainy and vile nature because the writers spend more time turning him into a “love sick puppy dog” (show’s quote, not mine!) This version of Hook–this man who calls Emma an anchor and nothing more than a pretty blond distraction, who declares that he’s happy so long as he gets what he wants and who point blank tells Emma that he wants to hurt her like she hurt him–is a fascinating character. If the writers stayed in this territory, highlighting Hook-is-a-monster nature and how much of a sociopath he is–and not going down the boring and troubling romantic lead route–then the writers could actually manage to say something of value about male privilege, rape culture, and the power of victims to rise above the crimes perpetrated on them by not falling into the “we’re inevitable” trap when the abuser uses love (or in the case, darkness) as an excuse.
Okay, that’s all I got. (Actually I have a lot more but….I’ll just wander away at this point)
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"In my analogy, the dark force is the one practicing abuser behavior, in order to manipulate and control Hook. The method of cutting the intended victim off from any loved ones, because they can be supportive and would help the victim stand up to or avoid the abuser. It’s always harder to stand up for oneself when you feel alone. It just happened that the darkness could do this in one step, because Emma just happens to be the only loved one Hook has.
And Hook was not the one doing the emotional manipulation (before he went fully dark anyway). He never threatened to go dark if Emma left him, and Emma didn’t leave him. The darkness drove a wedge between them, using lies and manipulation. Exactly the way abusers do.
That said, I understand why you see it the way you do, I just see it differently. So we are probably gonna have to agree to disagree. 🙂
SFG
Keeper of Anna’s Awkward Babbling and Kristoff’s Fur-trimmed Tunic!
Two episodes ago Hook was pleading with Emma to let him go since he knew how easy it would be for him to give into the darkness. He’s aware he’s morally weak. He said he wasn’t like Emma, because he wouldn’t be able to fight the darkness. Yet as selfish as it was for Emma to keep him alive against his will, that doesn’t at all excuse Hook wanting to hurt Emma like she hurt him by calling her an orphan though. Making Emma cry is about as low as its gets for Hook, but Emma never would have said those things to him, so it cannot just be the darkness talking.
Remembering what Emma did to him is giving Hook free reign to give into the darker impulses that have always existed in his characterization since season 2. The darkness seems to be like a drug; it amplifies the dark side that already exists inside of the person, and I think Hook has always had an angry temper just below the surface waiting to come out. I think Hook has demonstrated a darker side to him before becoming the dark one. For instance, in S4 as the fake cursed hand demonstrated that Hook had a lot of anger inside of him still. The hand was simply an excuse for Hook to give into his dark side.
"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy
It’s not up to Emma to keep Hook on the straight and narrow. Hook has to take responsibility for his own actions.
As I’ve said before, if Hook’s actions get excused because “the darkness made him do it” then Rumple’s DO actions should be excused as well. If Rumple is held responsible for what he did as the DO, the Hook has to be held responsible as well.
All magic comes with a price!
Keeper of FelixHonestly, a big issue with Dark Hook is that this should have been developed over the course of a lot more episodes, but it looks like it’s probably just the end of 508-511. This storyline reminds me of Angelus from Buffy Season 2.
Buffy and Angel (a vampire with a soul) were the main couple for that Season. Things go all wrong for the pairing, when Buffy and Angel make love for the first time during the middle of the Season. Because Angel found “one moment of true happiness”, he loses his soul and reverts to his evil persona Angelus. The Angelus arc lasts all the way to the Season finale, where he opens up a portal to Hell. Sound familiar? He does so in order to suck every living being on Earth into Hell, which is also eerily similar to Nimue wanting to snuff out the light. The finale ends with Buffy killing Angelus to save the world, which also sounds familiar with what we know from OUAT 511’s spoilers. The entire Angelus arc lasted about 10 episodes, compared to Dark Hook’s 3 episodes.
It’s funny how often Hook is compared to Spike, when now it seems like they’re borrowing traits from Angel/Angelus as well.
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