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First iteration, I got Regina. Then I answered a couple of borderline questions differently and I got Charming. Gotta say, I’m surprised. I have never related much to either of them.
[adrotate group="5"]The play premiered this week, and the plot has been leaked…
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING LINK CONTAINS SPOILERS
http://moviepilot.com/posts/3963864
It’s definitely not what I expected.
On a serious note, I’d like to see some of the mains take a back seat in S6 and give new and minor characters a chance to shine. I feel like many in the core group have run out of story and spend their screen time chasing the latest macguffin instead of driving the plot forward with their character development. To review the mains:
Snow and Charming – Their story finished by the end of S3. Since then, their arcs have been OOC or plain ridiculous.
Emma – She’s learned to believe, found her family, accepted her magic and role as saviour, found a lover and dealt with the darkness. I don’t think there’s much character development left for her.
Hook – Same as Emma. Now that his arc as the DO is over, he’s practically reached his happy ending.
Regina – She does have some development left around integrating her dark and light sides. Once that’s done, she’ll be at her finish line.
Rumple and Belle – These are the only two whose endings I can’t guess, either individually or as a couple. Since I’m not sure of their endgames, I can’t be sure how much development is left. But hopefully there will be a lot of focus on them in S6.
Based on this, I’d like Snow, Charming, Emma and Hook to make way for new blood. They can still be around, just not dominating screen time. I know this won’t happen, because of contracts and because it’d be too bold a move for OUAT to make. But I do think that the best way to reinvigorate the show would be to bring new characters with fresh stories to the forefront. I’m all for the newbies to be PoCs too!
Here’s my wishlist.
Regina – Moves to New York and opens a bakery. It is a raging success, with the apple cinnamon pastries widely regarded as the best in the entire country. Buys a waterfront apartment and sees Henry on weekends.
Zelena – Goes to New York with Regina. Enrolls in law school. Graduates to become a defence attorney. Does a lot of pro-bono work and takes up wine tasting as a hobby.
Hook – Gets a haircut and some new clothes with a splash of colour. Starts speaking with an Irish accent. Receives a prosthetic hand. Is “discovered” by Jamie Oliver but the partnership soon breaks up due to creative differences. Starts his own cooking show and inspires a worldwide revolution in healthy eating. Changes his name from ‘Hook’ to ‘Cook’.
Rumple and Belle – Move to Australia and settle down in a quiet town on the central coast of NSW. Combine their skills to become a husband-wife research team on the subject of psychic phenomena. Their work is published in The Journal of Parapsychology. Rumple becomes the first person to win James Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge. He uses the money to buy Belle a Contiki Tours World Sightseer Package for her birthday.
Snow and Charming – Design their own line of greeting cards and copyright the phrase “I will always find you.” Unfortunately, their cards are used primarily by stalkers. They are a little disconcerted by this, but live happily ever after anyway.
Emma – Becomes a highly sought after motivational speaker. Gets a publishing deal with Hay House, and goes on to write a number of best selling personal development books. Some of her popular titles include: “Swan to Saviour: Learn to believe”, “Slay the dragon and end YOUR curse”, and “To Hell and Back: A literal journey”.
Philip and Aurora – Open a successful insomnia clinic.
Grumpy and Nova – Get married. Grumpy makes a fortune by becoming the new face of Advanced Hair Studio.
Archie – Gets offered a position at Harvard to teach philosophy and ethics.
Granny – Discovers a magic cooking pot which frees up a lot of her time. She spends it volunteering for PETA and teaching self-defence to Storybrooke’s most vulnerable.
Mulan – Has a personal breakthrough and starts using gender specific pronouns.
Ruby – Discovers that True Love in Oz does not mean True Love everywhere. Breaks up with Dorothy and falls for Mulan instead.
Henry – Goes to boarding school. Earns some money by creating a comic book series about Ruby and Mulan’s adventures. His interest moves from fantasy to sci-fi and he becomes an enthusiastic supporter of SETI, eventually becoming the fist person to make contact with an alien life form.
Blue Fairy – Starts a new career as a farm equipment safety inspector. On more than one occasion, falls face down into a cowpat.
But seriously if this were once upon a time, i’d be expecting Albust Potter to turn into a dark wizard because daddy wasn’t showing him enough attention.
Too right! Lol! I’m so glad it’s JKR, who will no doubt have a far more original and skilful take on things!
About the darkness…I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine one of the Potters turning dark. Perhaps Harry or Albus will start having weird dreams and worry that they’re turning dark?
One point commonly raised by Hook fans is that Hook is ‘attacked’ more than other villains on the show. I do think this is true; Hook is VERY polarising. Now, that may be because his actions are glossed over the most and the audience tries to overcompensate. But I have another theory.
Most of the other villains on the show have been magical. Their crimes, while great, often have a fantastical quality to them. Ripping out hearts, casting dark curses – these are not things we see in reality. And this distance between reality and what we’re seeing influences our perception of their seriousness.
Hook’s crimes by contrast – bullying, lewdness, sexual aggression, asssault – these are things we DO see on a day to day basis. Many have been victims of such acts. Because of this, I think people’s reaction to Hook tends to be more personal and more visceral.
Let’s compare Regina’s treatment of Graham to Hook’s assault on Belle. Regina was coercing Graham into an unwanted sexual relationship by magically controlling his heart. Many have rightly called this out as rape. However, because it’s so far removed from what we commonly construe as ‘rape’ (even though it IS rape), the outcry is far less than might be expected. Contrast that with Hook striking a chained up Belle across the face. This is something that is sadly all too relatable and many people reacted with strong disgust.
Hook’s actions resonate far more strongly with our perceptions and experiences of violence in day to day life. Therefore, we find them more disturbing and hence react more personally and more harshly towards the character.
This is the only time I’ve ever wished that I lived in London!!! Here’s the book summary:
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and the first official Harry Potter story to be presented on stage. The play will receive its world premiere in London’s West End on 30th July 2016. It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband, and father of three school-age children. While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.
It’s going to be available from 31 July 2016.
When in the end, when it matter the most, Hook made the sacrifice needed.
When it mattered most to HOOK. From Merlin’s perspective, the moment that mattered most was when Hook killed him. But evidently, the prospect of murdering a man was not enough to twig Hook’s conscience into being able to resist the darkness.
Yes, let’s agree to disagree. As for Rumple – well, to my mind, it’s not about Rumple vs Hook. They can be as bad as each other. It’s just that nobody’s calling Rumple another other than a villain at this point.
Your point about OUAT glossing over everyone’s misdeeds is bang on. We’ve been talking about ‘morally grey’ characters and there seems to be a general concensus that these are good for the show. The problem is that OUAT’s villains (Regina, Rumple, Hook, Zelena) used to be so vile – serial killers, rapists, torturers – that for me at least, it puts them firmly into the ‘black’ category. Not ‘morally grey’. So when the time comes for redemption, if their atonement isn’t proportional to the scale of their crimes (which is very, very high), it feels like glossing over. As Screwball Ninja puts it: “…OUAT pushes redemption over justice. The villains take precedence over their victims.”
http://screwballninja.tumblr.com/post/144149136276/ouat-and-redemption-im-seeing-a-lot-of-shade
As dark one Hook, he was just vile. Yet he suffers no consequences or even acknowledgement of his actions. As DO Hook, either has has to be held accountable for his actions like Rumple is, or if Hook is given a free pass because of the “darkness” then RUmple needs to be given a free pass as well otherwise it’s double standards.
I agree with @PriceOfMagic about this.
I actually completely disagree with this. Even when I liked said character, he has always wanted power. His words. He wanted to be the dark one. Even when he was free from that ‘curse’ and could have actually started over, he went out of his way to be manipulative and conniving to get that power back. Hook? Hook didn’t want it at all! Hook would have rather died than become the dark one because he knew he wouldn’t be able to remain his version of good. He was happy, he was in love, <del>and he was finally being a man he thought maybe his brother could be proud of</del>. I do think they rushed it in 5B. I wish we could have seen more of a struggle as Hook fought the darkness. Emma did, but Emma is the savior, which is why I think that she had an easier time fending off the darkness. She never really did become full on DarkSwan. But I think that was the amount of light magic in her. But no, I do not think that Hook and Rumple can be compared here. One wanted to be the dark one, the other was forced into something he didn’t want and knew he couldn’t control, something he had hated for centuries.
This would be a valid argument except for one thing – Hook’s change of heart at the end of ‘Swan Song’. Stopping Nimue and sacrificing himself shows that he did have control, that he could make good choices. And if he had contorl then he should be held accountable for his earlier vile actions.
The problem here is the double standard. Hook is given a free pass for his diabolical actions under the pretext that he “didn’t have control”. Yet he is lauded for his sacrifice at the end. Both happened when he was the DO. If he wasn’t in control of his actions then he shouldn’t get credit for stopping Nimue. And if he was in control, then he shouldn’t get a free pass for his bad behaviour. You can’t have it both ways, yet that’s what the show is doing with Hook.
I’m new to these forums, so forgive me if I’m wrong but is this discussion still “going on”? Or has it been moved elsewhere, or does no one want to actually talk about Hook anymore?
It’s great to revive old threads and I’d like to talk about Hook!
Maybe I’m out of line in my assessment and have been watching the show too quickly.
You’re not out of line. Everyone has a different interpretation of Hook. My own evolved as the show went along.
I personally believe that one of the biggest problems with Hook is that the writers want to have their cake and eat it too–they want him to be the rogue pirate who falls into all manners of cliches (the rum drinking, the womanizing, the savvy devil may care bad boy in black leather) and they also want him to be a leading heartthrob. It’s might be possible to be both but it doesn’t help when most of his misdeeds (up to and including murder) are handwaved away through a plot device, whitewashed by exposition of other characters (mostly Emma), or most egregiously, forgotten altogether (Merlin-murder, for instance).
THIS is my problem with Hook. They want to keep the bad boy alive to keep Hook interesting. Otherwise, he comes across as a lovesick puppy. But it’s very difficult to reconcile the pirate with a man worthy of dating Emma; Emma who is the main character, the embodiment of True Love and a symbol of strong, independent womanhood. Sure she’s not perfect herself, but personally, I don’t want her with a man who boasts of “soiling” women. There’s imperfect and then there’s just plain gross.
Now, I think Hook could have been a lot more likeable and his relationship with Emma far more palatable if he’d been written properly since S3. His transformation from villain to supposed good guy seemed to happen mostly offscreen. By the time he returned in 3B, it seemed like the transformation was complete, but we didn’t get to see any of it. The audience finds it far easier to accept something if they get to SEE it unfolding. But then it got worse. Hook’s actions in ‘The Apprentice’ seemed to indicate that his darkness was very much present and just waiting for an excuse to be let out. My interpretation was that he wasn’t really transformed – he’d simply repressed his villainous side. He was fooling everyone, including himself into believing that he’d changed. The only thing keeping him from being nasty was his love for Emma. Then his ‘Dark One’ story arc seemed to confirm this interpretation. He plunged head first into the darkness, really embracing it. Rumple had always been shown to be responsible for his actions, and Emma hardly did anything bad as the Dark One, so I could only assume that Hook was deliberately being horrible. Emma’s betrayal of him unleased his evil side. He did have a change of heart, but that could not erase all that he’d done. Hook himself seemed to realise this, but as always, his bad behaviour was handwaved away. On top of that, the writers seemed to indicate that far from being held accountable, Hook was to get, in fact he DESERVED all the good things in life – True Love with Emma, resurrection. With Hook, it seems like there’s a huge discrepancy between what we’re shown and what we’re being told.
Now that S5 is over, and the writers think they have addressed the darkness in him, I’m not sure how much character development is left for Hook. His happy ending is obviously supposed to be marrying Emma and it seems like he’s almost there.
Here’s an interesting essay on OUAT’s character development. It articulates what many of us have been complaining about for a while. There’s sections on Belle and Hook that are spot on.
http://www.onceuponafans.com/news/the-evolution-of-character-underdevelopment-on-once-upon-a-time
