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Yeah…CS will get their TLK to break Emma’s DO Curse….I’m still in utter shock/disgust/horror that this is the direction they’re more than likely going, like @JO said…they’re basically stealing Beauty and the Beast ending and giving it to CS……seriously!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So I think it’s safe to say they won’t do BB, and they won’t do TL as familial love either. But there’s the third option — there’s something to be said about Emma’s own capacity to overcome the curse. So maybe rather than TL swooping down in the form of Hook, there’s something to be said for a narrative of Emma’s own potential for loving others as a way for her to reclaim her self from the darkness.
But sadly, I think you all are right — they won’t do that either, and we’ll have CS as the love to end all loves. But I’m not quite sure why, honestly, other than some kind of retrograde necessity to have the distressed damsel at the center of the plot, and being enamored with Hook’s character.
So, basically Emma will probably be super duper dark, Hook decides he doesn’t care, if she’s going to destroy the world or whatever he’ll die alongside her (cause Jane Espenson is still on the writing staff and “yellow crayon”–)
Aww, I remember that! But wait, this is a totally different deal. It’s been a while, but isn’t this Dark!Willow/Xander, who essentially go way back to kindergarden? This is really not the kind of “tall/dark/handsome” walking cliche romance that CS tends towards. I mean, do Hook and Emma even have anything in common, besides a love of leather jackets?
On a different note, Hook produces so much cognitive dissonance! He’s a bit of a bully (as @PriceofMagic mentioned.) Except when it suits him, he dons his little nimbus, and it’s all rainbows an unicorns. Maybe there are different writers with different levels of affection towards the character, and you have a couple who sort of try to bring him down a notch whenever they have a go at it?
I agree that he’s supposed to be the handsome rogue, but wouldn’t that still require some kind of character motivation apart from being Emma’s main love interest? Instead, when he’s not antagonizing Rumple or Will, he just seems to hang around creepily in the background. Right not, Hook’s a bit of a cypher, and I wonder if that’s intentional or just shoddy writing.
[adrotate group="5"]what is his importance and what does he bring to the show besides being Emma’s lover boy?
Occasionally reminds us how much Rumple sucks by bullying him whenever the opportunity presents itself? Oh, and looks pretty.
Although it feels like a cheat if they go this route. Rump never changed, he just got his heart vaccummed and now he is all good. To me, that’s no different than having the author write him as a hero.
Well, I suppose we don’t actually know that. If he wakes up “redeemed,” all problems solved, then that will feel like just lazy writing. But the other extreme (Rumple is back to his old tricks, I needs moar powerz!!!) would be totally unsatisfying, and also unconvincing. Essentially, unless they show some kind of internal struggle, it’s just going to fall flat.
Anyway, we actually don’t know if he wakes up at all. It’s quite possible the white glowing heart is simply needed for yet another one of A&E bizarre alchemical experiments. It might turn out that saving Emma will require a “heart that has been vacuumed of dark magic and has been returned to the chest of a largely lifeless man artificially preserved through a magic spell.” Maybe they’re setting up Rumple’s redemption through organ donation. 😛
It’s that A and E’s expression of Rumple’s addiction (and only Rumple’s addiction) is that it makes him a very bad man who does very bad things and because he’s addict he’s also a bad person (and the devil himself as Eddy said once) but other people who are likewise addicted to magic (Regina, Cora, Zelena) aren’t the devil and aren’t likewise as heavily vilified. In fact in some cases they’ve been redeemed and can use light magic or general magic for whatever means but not have to suffer any consequences.
That is exactly it. I guess there seems to be a bit of a double standard for Rumple vs. other villains, in terms of how we, the audience, perceive them, and how much leeway we’re willing to give them. So I am curious about where that line gets drawn. Now let me be straight — RC is an awesome, hugely talented actor, and makes pretty gnarly characters likable, but I’m not a fan of S4 Rumple by any stretch, although I did love the character pretty much up until Neal’s death. But I think there’s a broader representational issue that goes beyond personal likes and dislikes of specific characters. Either Rumple is an “addict” i.e. someone struggling with a powerful psychosocial issue, or he is “the devil himself”. Conflating the two is problematic, not because we can’t think of the “devil” as representative of addiction or dependence (we can — that’s actually the primary symbolism of the devil in the Tarot, for example), but I don’t think the reverse move, that is demonizing addiction is going to do anyone any good. And this is precisely what’s happening with Rumple. He starts off as very human, with all the weaknesses and problems this entails (from psychological ones like cowardice, to social ones like poverty, to interpersonal ones like complicated relationships with his son and father), and then, suddenly, he’s the devil himself. By extension, this move potentially demonizes all the traits that Rumple came with in the first place, and I just don’t think that this is a good message — much in the same way that consent issues on OUAT should legitimately raise some eyebrows.
Yes! to lack of support system. I think, by default, it’s one’s loved ones, and Rumple has been fairly isolated from the get go. Which begs the question of whether putting the care of the addict onto the family is a legitimate move, but that’s an entirely separate conversation.
But being labelled an addict, absolutely should not excuse his behavior. He’s driven by his magic but he still has free will over what he does too. At the end of the day, everyone needs to be held accountable for their actions. Even Rumple.
I remember reading that same interview with RC 🙂 I think you’re spot on, Rumple shouldn’t be excused. My arguments are less about Rumple the character — I suppose I hope they manage to redeem him, but I think the writers are in such a deep deep hole with his characterization that I won’t be holding my breath anytime soon. My main problem is with the kind of message OUAT sends about addiction via Rumple the character, (see my rant above).
I think Rumple loathes his cowardly, weak self. He needs power to pretend that he’s not that person. He feels naked and vulnerable without it.
I think there’s a good deal of self-loathing with Rumple, to be sure, but up until a certain point, as a character, he was written in a way that was consistent, organic, and believable. Then there was the S4 arc with what @RG called out earlier in the thread — “I can haz all the powerz” — for absolutely no good reason that we can discern. This throws Rumple’s previous character development into the bin and makes for a deeply unlovable cardboard villain. I mean, someone give the guy a pitchfork already, and lets call it a day. I understand why people strongly dislike that aspect of Rumple, I do too. If that’s what the show wants to do with him,then I think they have lost the ability to write him in a compelling, interesting way. In that case, I’d rather they not bring him back from his stasis except for flashbacks.
HOWEVER. And here I am probably going to step in it, and then maybe go hide in the bushes (sorry @RG, feel free to [mod] at me if you feel it’s appropriate). But I am pretty disturbed and frustrated by the way people have been throwing around the “addict” label, both on this forum, and especially by the show creators and the general fandom. Yes, Rumple is portrayed as an addict. However, addiction is not a simple matter, and it isn’t just a matter of personal willpower — as many many sociological studies can attest (happy to cite if needed).
So the vilification of the figure of the addict, while perhaps psychologically pleasurable for all kinds of fraught reasons I’m not going to go into here, is something we maybe ought to be careful about. In other words, I am very very uncomfortable with the whole “Rumple=addict=devil=hate you=die already” narrative.
Will TLK work on Emma though? They’ve kind of played fast and loose with that. It started to work in 1×12, but ever since Belle and Rumple were reunited in 1×22 their kisses have not broken the curse. I suppose one could argue Rumple hasn’t fully loved her since then, but still, having Henry or Hook kiss Emma to break the Dark One Curse is way too easy.
I have this ridiculous theory that because Emma is both Light and Dark magic now, she is going to eventually figure out that the difference between the two magics is more symbolic/nominal than categorical, which will enable her to bring the two into balance.
Unlike Rumple, who was an arguably good, but weak man who had no magic at all, Emma is a magical being. In this sense, Emma might overcome the darkness on her own, but not by eliminating it altogether, but by re-mooring it with the light part of her being (the whole logic that light causes objects to cast shadows, you can’t have one without the other etc). The Apprentice’s explanation about Merlin trying to fight the darkness, then containing it by tethering it to a living soul, makes me think that this is a “world out of balance” paradigm, and that the darkness had ‘come loose’ and must be returned to its proper place. That being said, I don’t think Emma will achieve this alone, I’m sure her loved ones, whoever they are in S5, will help.
On the other hand, it might be nice to see a philosophical answer to the nature of TLK, or why it works, or what counts as True Love for that matter. Otherwise it’s not much more than a plot device.
Even as the Dark One, Rumple could still choose to do good, heroic things. My theory is that his original human weakness caused his evil, not any external dark force. I think Emma will be a different “Dark One” than Rumple. Don’t get me wrong. I still think she will be more quick to act on her dark impulses. She will probably kill. But being heroic to start with, I think she will be more likely to choose the heroic path.
Rumple did try to do heroic things, it’s just that the dark curse also gave him a bit of a personality make-over, and from there he struggled between these two sides, until the darker side almost completely won. For Rumple, this was a long game, and it sounds like the DO curse eats away at the person little by little.
I think one fundamental difference between Rumple and Emma is that Rumple had very little by way of a support network whereas Emma is surrounded by people who love her and are rooting for her. Loner Emma from S1 was a very very different person. How this will play out for her in relation to the DO thing remains to be seen, but I think it’s more than personal “willpower” to be heroic, and more than “TLK.” It takes a village, as they say.
Instead they turned to this hat and had it suck Rumple’s darkness out (which begs the question why didn’t Rumple try to suck the darkness out of himself in S4A…?)
Yes! Although I chuck that off to A&E’s general opportunism insofar as writing is concerned — I think they weren’t entirely sure what they’d do with the hat originally. It’s another example of OUAT’s Chekhov’s gun problem. I mean, Rumple’s all over the place with that damn hat – first he seems in shock about what the hat means in terms of it’s owner (rather than the hat itself), then he’s trying to use it to separate himself from the dagger in some roundabout way, and then he just entirely moves on from it and the hat appears to be forgotten in favor of some new harebrained plan to turn Emma dark. Which is then also more or less abandoned in favor of Isaac’s fanfic AU. Doesn’t sound like the carefully planning Rumple we all know and … well, not love exactly, but whatever it is.
What bothers me is that if they chose to go this deux ex machina route, then why not use the duex ex machina that was already apart of not only the show’s mythos but of Disney mythos? True Love’s Kiss. Is there a reason why Belle didn’t at least try to kiss him? She knows it almost worked once before back in the EF. And even if there is a slim to none chance that it would work, there was no attempt or even the thought of an attempt.
I totally agree. Actually, the logic of the TLK seems to go with a kind of “letting go” of the other person (or rather letting go of one’s own egoistic desires and hopes for that person in relation to one’s self) — at least, this is how I interpreted the TLKs in S1 (Charming and Emma were both saying goodbye at that moment). This is the generous (to the writers) reading of the lack of TLK here — that ultimately Belle isn’t quite yet ready to really let go of her own projections on Rumple (I won’t even go into Rumple’s non-readiness). Although that conversation at the end of the episode seems like it would have been perfect for the TLK deus ex machina. So… I’ve no clue. Maybe the writers are themselves feeling a bit iffy about where Rumbelle is at.
But ultimately, I think the main reason is that they needed the darkness cast out, not annulled (which TLK would do, according to their own rules of magic), so that they could then have Dark!Emma in S5. And insofar as that was the endgame, the hat gave a seemingly logical way to get there. Plus, it could malfunction, and voilà, you have darkness on the loose in Storybooke.
I liked some aspects of this, and was not particularly impressed with many others.
Liked:
1) Part I. Author and Henry meta. Isaac’s quip about “40 years life expectancy and no sanitation.” The Regina pin.
That whole first part was clever, reflexive, both tongue and cheek and dramatic, in the finest tradition of what made me like this show in the early seasons.
2) Rumple as “the Light One,” especially in the ironic moments — while RC seemed to be using one of the iterations of the Dark One’s EF voice and persona (“Good deeds are their own rewards!”)
3) Dark!Snow was amazing, as was Outlaw!Regina, it was fun to watch the team take on each other’s characters.
4) I sort of appreciate that Rumple lives in what looks like a fairly modest home. Does the ostentatious castle appeal more to the DO persona?
Mixed
1) Part II. That very promising part turned into something…actually, I’m not sure what that Part II was. The first half of the second part (yeah, that sounds funny) felt like a historical adventure/romance done in a post-modern series of disjointed vignettes, which may or may not have had much to do with each other, and in retrospect might have been some weird experiment in gestalt psychology designed to test the audience’s ability to make order out of narrative chaos. Which is to say, the romantic subplot(s) powering the action demanded a whole lot of suspension of disbelief because they were done too fast.
The second half of Part II was at least conceptually interesting, in that it dealt with the nature of what the Author does, his/her power, and the Dark Curse.
Disliked:
Isaac being simply interested in “fortune and glory” and bitter at the Charmings because, what, David reminded him of a former boss?
The town going back to normal and partying at Granny’s — apparently, no lessons were drawn from the AU. The conversation between Emma and the Charmings just felt completely flat. “Wow, you guys weren’t very nice!” “Yeah, sorry ’bout that!” “Well, whew! Glad it wasn’t real!” And, what, that’s it?
Nitpicking:
In the AU, Belle and Rumple have a small infant, who is probably breastfeeding, it being the EF after all. A&E, with this in mind, did you absolutely have to but Belle into a tightly corseted dress? Unless this was deliberate and it was meant to be Isaac’s “oversight.” Yes, I know, it’s the iconic yellow dress, but if Isaac wanted to make his AU realistic, the devil is, as they say, in the details…No wonder everyone seemed to take the whole “you’re part of a book I’ve written” in stride so easily.
Honestly, I’m not sure what to think about the great DO Vacuum debacle. On the one hand, I’m glad RC will be staying on the show, at least in some capacity – he’s one of the reasons I’ve stuck with OUAT for so long, and early Rumple was exactly the kind of morally gray character RC is so good at. On the other hand, I think the writers painted themselves into a corner with Rumple, essentially bending the character too far in one direction until the characterization kind of snapped (or maybe sprung back and hit them in the face, depending on one’s perspective). By the end of S4, the only way to “rescue” Rumple from the hole they’d dug him, short of killing him off and calling it a day, was a typical deus ex machina plot device. And so, behold, the Hat.
On the other hand, like some others here, I’d be intrigued by the possibility of Rumple’s final arc dealing with his humanity and lost immortality. From within that frame, I think redemption — or at least atonement — would be possible for the character. But that’s complicated to write, and requires character work rather than Shiny Shiny Plot, so I personally am not holding my breath that OUAT’ll go there. Rather, I suspect Rumple will be put on “ice” until further notice, when he will either be brought back briefly, or used as a plot device. Based on the fact that his heart now seems to be glowing white, A&E obviously have something in mind. Whether that’ll be an organic part of the character’s future development, or some kind of “magical ingredient” (à la Heart of the Truest Believer etc), I guess we’ll see.
Seems like Isaac & Rumple did finish the book, Isaac returns to 1961 as a successful author with his new bestseller, but gets sucked back into the EF for the last chapter, via something Henry does. Interesting that the book doesn’t become canon until the last chapter physically plays out.
Yes, that’s exactly what it looks like. Shady Author, though. There are two things he says that seem interesting. First, I wonder what he means when he says that the book “worked out quite nicely” for him. Is this just about getting on the New York Times Bestseller list or signing a book deal? Or is something more profound involved? And then, if giving a hero a HE destroys the book (i.e. the book has to remain “exactly how he wrote it” or not at all) then why wasn’t the original story destroyed as soon as Isaac started tweaking? I wonder what makes this one different.
The business with the bells is a common fairytale trope — X must happen before the bell tolls, or else. Or, if by the time the bell tolls, X doesn’t happen, things remain as they are forever (usually cursed).
