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"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
CrownedWithLaurels wrote:Even though I still get bothered by everything, even though I still get sad… I choose to remind myself of the things I’ve seen and the things that are certain and the things that I DO know. That’s how we stay sane in the midst of this craziness.
You’re right! Having hope doesn’t mean being blind or not having any fear. It means seeing beyond our fears to believe the future could get better. Insofar as Emma’s story is one about hope, and happy endings always start with hope (especially as they relate to Neal’s survival in the context of 3×6), I have hope even in the darkest night. Emma and Neal love each other, and love casts out fear. And the antidote to fear is hope.
Also, the fact that the writers have known since at least last summer which character would die also suggests the characters’ development has been consistently built up: Hook wants to change and is trying but doesn’t really know how while Neal has been working really hard to get another go. Here is what Eddy said last summer about the “triangle of doom” in an interview:
EDDY: “Obviously, they think Neal is dead. Obviously, Hook is a man that likes ladies, and as we saw last year when they climbed the bean stalk, Emma certainly has captured his heart a little bit. But at the same respect, Neal is fighting like hell to get a second chance with her. And right now Emma is focused on getting Henry. She’s not somebody who likes to let her walls down. Her heart has been broken too many times to be worried about dating right now.”
It’s clear that at the end of S2 and going into S3, the co-creators were writing Neal’s story arc as believing in second chances. They also knew which character would be killed off. It doesn’t make sense on the one hand to build up his character arc to “believe in second chances” and then turn right around and have him die. The writers also knew that Hook’s S3 theme would be “believe a pirate can become a hero” at the same time they knew which character would die. Having Hook be the one to go out in a blaze of glory would actually fit the hows, whens, whys. He’s the one who’s been called “dead guy of the year.” Eddy has called Hook the “eye candy” of the show who’d be fun in Vegas but that Emma wouldn’t look at him as a good father figure to her son. I think A&E are going to stay consistent with the themes they’ve already laid out in S3, and that is why I think Hook is ultimately going to be the one to go while Neal will survive.
"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
CrownedWithLaurels wrote: I’m not saying Hook’s death would give people hope. I’m saying the circumstances around his death could actually speak more, mean more, and be of greater value to the lessons and story of hope they’re trying to portray than killing off Neal.
That is how I see it too. Neal dying after all that build up around his character: him surviving his near-death experience, his renewed hope to have a second chance, his quest to get back to Emma and Henry, his Papa’s sacrifice to save him and Belle, and Emma’s dream of finding home. All of those things would feel so pointless and in vain if Neal were to die for real this time.
By contrast, Hook’s end being a heroic one feels like it really could be story-driven: he’s stated wanting to change, said he’s willing to risk his life for love, shown he could step up when he needed to, but he’s still yet to really make a heroic sacrifice in the same way that Rumple and Regina finally did in 3×11. If anyone’s death seems to have been foretold, it’s Hook, whose main skill has always been at surviving, and yet which seems like an indicator to me he won’t. He was even called “dead guy of the year” by Emma a year to the day on which it was announced a main character would die. So, it seems to me like it makes the most sense, story wise, for Hook to meet his end than it would for Neal to do so. Hook meeting his end would deliver an emotional payoff without destroying ratings; heck, it might even improve ratings for all we know. The show’s ratings have been slipping steadily in S3a, around the same time the promo department decided mainly t to focus on selling Hook rather than other S1 characters.
Also I saw this on Tumblr in relationship to Neal and his survival and what that means overall given the theme of S3a
This is why i have hope for Swanfire. Neal’s poster is to believe in second chances. If he doesn’t get his chance I don’t know what I will believe.
Belief
ADAM: “I would say that belief is really kind of the theme of the season so far and we’re seeing how belief impacts on each one of our characters.”
EDDY: “For us, belief is so important in everything. You need to believe in magic. You need to believe in yourself. You need to believe in family. And Neverland runs on belief. So for us that was the uber-theme.”
ADAM: “We’ve tried to make a hopeful show about belief with all the obstacles that come from disbelievers and cynics in the world and all those things that tell you to not believe in magic and the world is a terrible, terrible place. We want to try to find a way to find that light.”
EDDY: “For us, this is a show for believers — and that is a show about hope.”Well, of all the characters, Emma and Neal have had to grow up in the “real world” which can seem to be such a “terrible, terrible place” and yet, remarkably, Neal still has hope. While Emma was a cynic after growing up alone in the world, Neal always kept that eternal optimism about him. He might’ve been scared to believe Emma could ever forgive him, but he’s never harmed anyone out of malicious intent. Neal made a self-sacrifice to get Emma home; he didn’t want to do it; he had to do it. To give him an untimely death would be to show that good doesn’t win, and that characters like Hook, who’s repeatedly harmed people, get to have it all.
Also, I was rereading a Hollywood Reporter interview with A&E from Jan. 20, 2014 from
How many different endings did you toy with before you landed on what ended up on the screen?
Kitsis: That was the only one.
Horowitz: That came very quickly as we were designing the end of the 11-episode pod. That just became this inevitable place we kept getting to. And we got so excited by it, particularly because — hopefully you’ll see in the second half — it leads very naturally to a whole new story we’re telling that hopefully as you look through the whole season, feels like they connected to each other and spoke to each other in thematic and character ways that make a lot of sense.Well, let’s look again at three of the main characters’ thematic development:
- Emma – Believe a lost girl can find her way home
- Neal – Believe in second chances
- Hook – Believe a pirate can be a hero
What, given the recent unmentionable spoiler, makes the most sense then from a story-driven perspective? Emma would not be able to find her way home if she were the one to die. Neal would not get his second chance if he were to die. Hook could be a hero by sacrificing himself. That is what makes sense purely from a narrative perspective. It doesn’t make any sense for A&E to say the characters’ themes are consistent through S3 and link the two halves together but then to kill off Neal rather than Hook.
If it’s true that Neal is the one to go, then how would his S3 motto of believing in second chances fulfilled? It’s wouldn’t be at all, because Rumple sacrificed himself to give his son another shot happiness, just not with him. To kill Neal off now would be to discount all of that S3 build up for Neal getting another go at things with his family and would also drastically alter Emma’s idea of home and belonging. Home is a huge mutual theme for both Emma and Neal, and Snow White encouraged her daughter to believe Neal could be alive because, “all happy endings start with hope.” That was in direct relationship to NEAL’S SURVIVAL. Now we have certainty that the theme for S3b is home. Sounds to me like they’re continuing to establish Emma and Neal as being one another’s idea of a happy ending.
"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
Molly wrote: On fan bases, to suggest that Hook will be saved due to fan demand is to hold the Hook fan base above all other character fan bases… Also, Hooks fans have not been able to bring in the ratings, and that means they don’t have the power to break the show if they don’t get their way. ABC is in this for money, not any kind of love of Hook. I suspect that sometime within the next few weeks, the ABC marketing team in charge of pushing Hook for OUAT will have to explain the lack of return on investment in that decision. Advertisers are likely not happy with the show as they were likely promised higher ratings. The face if OUAT’s middling ratings is Hook, not Neal.
I agree. The ratings have actually decreased over S3a, which largely tried to whitewash Hook’s character and then promote him on Twitter as the face of OUAT (at the expense of the other main characters and their dedicated online followers). The numbers just don’t add up though and the ratings hit their all-time low in 3×11, despite being called a “fan favorite” by DianeReed in her interview. For me, it was just average at best. If the promo department continue to push for Hook then they’ll be ignoring the ratings and numbers don’t lie. If something isn’t working then it doesn’t make sense to continue to push it. I hope A&E are smart enough to realize that not everyone is as “hooked” as they need to be in order to recapture viewers.
"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
I know a TV show is not like guarding state secrets, but for the co-creators to be so careless as to give away a potentially huge spoiler would be amateur. And A&E are not amateurs; they’ve been in this business for well over a decade writing for prominent shows like Lost. What they say is something they can control. This wasn’t a pap photo leak; it was an interview. If @DianeJReed did not misquote @AdamHorowitzLA then why did she retweet all of his clarifications on her Twitter page? It’s possible she did make a mistake. She is not a professional reporter; she a fan of the show who conducted an interview for a fan-made website.
"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
@Dena81 @AuridelDawne @_applebombz we haven't hinted at ANYONE. All we said is someone is dying. Haven't given clues.
— Adam Horowitz (@AdamHorowitzLA) February 9, 2014
"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
https://twitter.com/DianeJReed/status/432639248181645312
Well @DianeJReed did not refute any of Adam’s claims. So, maybe it really was just a misquote on her part.
"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
I think this could very likely be Adam playing damage control to not rule out any suspects.
@_theanny @_applebombz believe ME. It was honest mistake. It was a phone interview and I'm sure Diane transcribed what she heard…
— Adam Horowitz (@AdamHorowitzLA) February 9, 2014
It could be damage control or it might not be. Whatever the truth is will soon be revealed. For people like A&E, who’ve got over a decade of experience in the business, to let out that big a spoiler would be a terrible blunder on their part. So either they’re just really bad at not spoiling or a “reporter” (who is really a fan) misquoted them. Adam says to believe him, not the person who did the interview. I’d be curious to read what @DianeJReed has to say in reply to Adam’s assertions that he was misquoted and that it was taken out of context.
"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
Heather wrote:I hereby declare that I am marrying PoM’s awesome post and thank you for writing that all out. I agree wholeheartedly with you. I also refuse to feel hopeless and depressed about S3B before the episodes even start airing again. We really don’t know anything yet so it’s pointless to allow all this pre-season stuff make us crazy. Hang in there everyone. *HUGS*
YES! POM’s post was amazing. I’m not letting my hopes be diminished anymore nor am I going to say goodbye prematurely to a character who has become as dear to my heart as Emma. No matter what, I’ll always have the dream of Tallahassee.
Just 4 more weeks until 3×12, which means just 4 more weeks until Emma rediscovers the dreamcatcher! *Hugs back at every SF fan!*
"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
sure any preference?
Maybe something with NYC in the background with Emma on one side and Neal on the other and the phrase “Going Home” written in cursive font in middle.
"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
