LizaD

I don't know if it was selfish so much as a Snow move, pure optimism. I think she thought she'd save him and they would beat it together like she said they would. Merlin and her came out on the other side alright fresh off their victory and she sees Hook as good as anyone. It's a problem because Hook has his own insecurities. But Emma is known to plunge head long into things without thinking, see herself as DS.

Yeah I didn't get that whole put the darkness in Zelena plan. Makes no damn sense cause Hook would be dead. Why would they be immortal without the dark part? The magic which is dark is the only thing that makes them immortal. Get rid of the magic, the immortality is gone too. That's what Merlin was saying when he created Excalibur to cut away his magic, that he would now be mortal like Nimue was. That's how much thought they put into DS's plans. Zero. They just wanted Dark Hook and DS. I think it was already lit. She didn't have to relight it in the cave.

Lazy bastards can't even come up with new dastardly deeds for DS. First she cribbed off Cora and now Rump. That's essentially what Rump did, turn people into villains so that he could be reunited with his loved one. Maybe they thought combining the 2 into one person was enough of a "shocking twist."

Half hr breakdowns: 1.7/1.6/1.5/1.6

But it was. We saw Emma sucking Merlin's black magic from him with the flame. He was the co-DO with Emma for a hot second. Probably the shortest reign on record. Yeah it was lazily and crappily done but its A&E. He started a new line of DO source magic. We didn't see him get reborn but Nimue wasn't either. They're the source so it makes sense. Isn't that why tethering Hook to Merlin's half of Excalibur made Hook the new DO? Even Hook said he wouldn't be able to overcome the DO power like Merlin and Emma did. Which you know is just a big ol anvil that he will. Now the whole put it in Zelena and kill her doesn't make a lick of sense. Why could they get rid of it in Camelot without killing anyone and why can't they do the same now? I mean killing Zelena would just put it back into whomever killed her no?

Because Nimue-DO Emma was the only that would be able to kill him, Merlin. Now that DO Hook is descended from Merlin's line, it still holds true. Except Merlin knows Emma would never kill Hook, DO or otherwise. That leaves a liberated Nimue to do it. Now why he thinks Nimue would do it? Beats me. Maybe he knows Nimue is power mad enough to not want a competitor? Or the writers are being their usual selves and don't care about making sense. I think the opposite. He was trying to get rid of the darkness and Emma wouldn't let him cause the dude would be dead and undo all she did. And yes I'm totally getting a variation of Buffy and Angel. One of them has to kill the other to get rid of the darkness and since technically Hook is dead man walking anyway....

I saw that 2 DOs thing coming in the spoiler thread. Can we get a Mr. and Mrs. Smith type throwdown? Or the Dark Ones/Wicked adventure? I think the threesome could run the town. I'm torn on those scenes. On one hand I think it was too intimate a reveal to be shared with a 3rd party and would've been more emotional with just the 2 of them. On the other hand Zelena's commentary cracks me up. I was afraid the Hook and Emma stuff was going to be too cheesy and it sort of was? But the actors made it work or something cause it didn't bother me. Best line to Whale with his Oh so Emma can get a bad dye job but I'm getting ridiculed? No. Merlin was turned into the DO line #2 when Arthur commanded him to do some dark things. He didn't kill anyone but maybe the HG magic is so pure that even attempting it corrupted his magic too. Emma untethered DO Merlin and put it in Hook. I better see some Head!Merlin stalking Hook around now. Although I guess he could be a voice of reason too. No kidding. I didn't even bother watching the 2nd episode even though I really want to see Red and Mulan. Will catch those clips on youtube later. Are there any scenes of them without the annoying brat Merida?

Well you reap what you sow. He's gotten exactly the type of fandom that they wanted. You know the section of fans that cries at a failed kidnapping, not for the kidnapped child, but for the kidnapper-murderer that got their plan foiled when the child wanted their dad instead of a kidnapper? Or you know when they practically jumped on a couch in glee and patted themselves on the back when fans got mad at the family that didn't invite separator of said family to their first family reunion dinner? They really can't complain when their whole fanfiction revolves around how Woegina is the biggest victim ever and then fans are constantly pointing out instances where Woegina is getting "victimized" again.

Yes that's generally what being the Mary Sue does. Emma has better writing by default of not being a Mary Sue. It's just easier to root for her when they let her be wrong all the time, let her fail all the time, let other people call her out and be mad, for very real or imagined misdeeds etc. In other words she's one of the underdogs and it's purely by accident because they think the biggest underdog on the show is the Mary Sue. Nobody wants to root for the "1%" and we all know who that is on this show and it's only made more offensive by trying to portray the "1%" as the biggest victim ever. However taken on it's own, it's not good writing at all. They don't bother writing for villain DS even though they spend plenty of time calling her evil and they didn't bother giving motivation to Camelot Emma. Her being "addicted" to DO power makes zero sense when she already has her own magic and she's been shown to want to get rid of it. Desperately and selfishly so as they told us with her "I love NYC" mantra for half a season. Like most everything else on the show, they really have the cast to thank. I will say however that the struggle to be good or semi-selfish, I'm refusing to call it evil, has never been done better than here. It's a very palpable thing that jumps out at you from the screen. So the reasons don't exist but the struggle is real, kudos to JM. . It's just too bad that they're refusing to write villain DS and only want to give it lip service. The Camelot side of the story is loads better. They just can't write the Storybrooke side of the story can they? In any arc, outside of S1. The real story is in Camelot, they're using the present Storybrooke side to make a 4 episode story into 11. Even DS's darkest deeds have come in Camelot.

It was relatively steady compared to the other seasons, but no noteworthy drop? Don't think so. Taking the difference between 3A premiere and finale was a drop of about 20% in viewers. That's pretty noteworthy to me. S1 premiere to finale's drop was ~25% and S2's was ~35%. It's the lowest sure, but 20% of viewers going bye bye is still significant. I didn't do S4 cause of Frozen inflation. But it would probably be the biggest.Year to year demos difference is S1-S2: -17%, S2-S3: -20%. So as much as S2 is bashed and rightfully so, since they lost a huge chunk of viewers, S3 had a bigger year-over-year decline in the key demo. You want to know Frozen's impact? S3-S4: 0% change. That's Frozen's impact. Now take out 4A's numbers from S4 of which were already low towards the latter half and S3 to 4B? -17%, right in line with the other numbers. They lose on average almost 20% every season. Frozen basically negated that avg. season loss. That's why if you look at S4 demos as a whole to current 5A avg it is a whopping -40% year to year. Source to Spotted Ratings. And yes A&E and their show were and are floundering. If they weren't, they wouldn't be peddling Disney so desperately,which was my original point. All they've got is Woegina, amnesia, Disney and Young and the Restless. They "sold their souls" cause they're creatively bankrupt, and the number of viewers reflect that.

I'm guessing Merlin cause the dude has some serious bling on his fingers too. He could've removed the memories. Also because Jacob-Merlin visited Sawyer-Hook as a kid when his parents died, err ran away and abandoned Hook. And someone said there's a flower on the ring and with all that cgi Middlemist flower stuff, seems fishy. But this sounds like something right up A&E's alley of trolling.

Maybe Herc and Megara are baby Snowflake and baby Green from the future or got hit by some of that rapid aging magic. Is Hook's daddy Charon? Maybe he's transporting the EF crew via a torched Emma's bug. I'd love to see all of them squeezed in there.

Frozen bought them an extra half season at least. The ratings they're getting right now would've been the ratings for S4 and then S5 would be subsequently lower. They were floundering at the end of S3 and Frozen gave them new life temporarily. Now they probably expect some other Disney stuff to do similar things on a much smaller scale like Merida. But I believe A&E is using Disney to prop up their show, not the other way around. It also keeps them from having to put effort into their writing. For example people responded really well to the Beauty and the Beast dance reference and if that's all they've got to do, why bother putting real effort into Rumbelle? They've got to see all the successes of the Disney live reboots. The audience is there for fairy tales, A&E just can't see why.

Ok so why does Snow constantly get bashed for not executing Woegina? She was tied up and defenseless too. And no Snow isn't only bashed for letting her free but that she didn't kill her then too. If Snow would've been justified in executing Woegina then Nimue is justified in killing Vortigan. It's this exact reason A&E use to keep the heroes under the villains' heels. Snow had Cora's heart. I repeat Snow had Cora's heart. Therefore Cora was defenseless and Snow was also looking for vengeance and used a life taking candle. Voila dark spot heart and murderer! If I didn't buy that bullshit for Snow, I'm not going to buy it for Nimue.

I thought Excalibur was only able to do is take away the Holy Grail's magic from where the sword was forged out of. So really Excalibur can only "snuff" out the DO, the source of the dark HG magic and Merlin's light HG magic. That's what Nimue and Merlin was talking about. They and only they can take the other out. I don't think Excalibur can extinguish magic that didn't come from the HG. Unless they're saying all magic came from there? It's been Merlin vs Nimue this entire time. Emma has the DO magic and either Merlin isn't dead or Hook has it since his name is on Excalibur. Or its contained in that snow globe thing. Or maybe Zelena stole Merlin's magic for her baby lol.

If Jamie or SS were in Vancouver the papz would've been all over it. Pictures of those two could probably be sold to any of the rags. They could name drop the characters, just to get the actors' name attached for some free publicity and hype though. Or maybe there's some unused footage leftover from back in the day. But that'd be a little desperate.

Yeah I was on Nimue's side, just like I was on Percival's side. Vortigan wasn't that defenseless. He had Excalibur and since Merlin, like you said, was standing there doing nothing but looking pretty.... Besides Merlin is a goodie so that automatically means he has no brain cells to speak of. Maybe Emma was projecting. Or maybe Nimue set Emma up with her own test? At the end Emma said something like, now you want me to put Excalibur together when you tried to stop me in Camelot? Nimue said it was because that back there she could've used it to destroy the darkness but not now. Is that "trying to stop me" a future event we haven't seen or was she referring to the one here with Merlin? But either way yeah it's definitely messed up. But maybe if Nimue could squeeze out a few tears with a sad puppy face, she could get true pure love stamped on it too.

If only they had more money for CGI I'd really look forward to Emma vs Merlin or Emma/Nimue vs Merlin with some real fight choreography and not just a colored smoke-string onscreen. It's one of the photos, the one where Merlin is facing Snow. We know Emma can beat Zelena as she did so back in 3B when Zelena was holding Henry hostage. But for sure Emma can't beat Merlin without the DO power. I wanted fun evil Pan back but I can do with a maybe redeemed Pan too. As long as they don't ruin him like they did with Cora back in the lame-o paternity secret story I'm good.

I think it's the other way around, that Emma uses Nimue to kill Merlin. Otherwise where's the "gut wrenching" decision? That's why she chose to go dark, because she has to fully let Nimue in for it to work. Merlin practically threw anvils at her all day long last episode. It just didn't happen the way he thought it did, like these things with prophecies usually go. I think it'd be a nice call back to Snow and her Cora's candle dilemma. Snow couldn't take a life to save her mom and I don't blame her cause she was a 10 year old kid. That's pretty rough and dark. Emma without the DO has been known to cross the lines for people she loves. This is just more dangerous and has big potential to backfire because now she's a threat to them too. But I also think the writers will write in a technicality for Merlin's death and that's why EK said Merlin's not bound to time or space like the others are. Maybe Merlin could be Hook's head voice like Nimue is to Emma. So Zelena does give birth in the next episode?

Woohoo Cruella! I want Pan and Cruella scenes. If Merlin is commanded to do something evil to corrupt his HG powers, would that start a new fresh line of DO numero 2 ? For all we know Merlin lets Hook stab him ala Rump/Zoso. And Emma's goal of reuniting Excalibur is to cure them both. Or Hook is dying so she turns him into DO 2 to make him immortal. That's the awful thing she did, making him the new DO to keep him alive. She could've stabbed Merlin herself and the leaked picture is her transferring the darkness to him cause she's got her own dose already. Yeah yeah there's the no name thing on Excalibur yet but its this show. Emma could've magic'ed it so that it doesn't appear till whenever its convenient for the twist. That's where the title of Birth comes from. It's the birth of a new line of DOs. Then EK saying Hook and Merlin are connected would fit. This all leads to Emma freeing the rest of the DOs' souls to be separated from her and Hook sacrifices himself to get rid of them. I think Nimue and the rest are marking the people in town because technically they've cheated the Underworld from their souls and the mark is so that those people would be taken to the Underworld instead of them.

Oh so maybe Hook's soul is already tethered to the sword in Camelot. We only got to see 1 side of the sword right? The names could be on the other side. Could it be like Cora's candle, a life for a life? Since Merlin is tethered to the sword, somehow she sacrifices him for Hook? Or maybe she merged them together like Rump did with Neal. Wouldn't that be a hoot? Technically Nimue is "inside" Emma and now Hook and Merlin are merged.

I liked Merlin and Emma too. It was a bit weird though how he kept saying "you're the only one that can kill me" over and over. Like show we got it the first freaking time. But it was funny how at first Emma didn't get it and then she was like "ohhh yeah that's me." It was nice that she told him Nimue still loved him. I wonder how much that's true and how much that's her projecting. Dark Nimue is pretty ruthless. I do think unDark Nimue wanted power and it wasn't solely about revenge. Even when Merlin told her about the Holy Grail her first thought was to make her immortal, not the other way around. But she could've killed him right, instead of turning him into a tree. For half an episode "development" they made out alright. I also liked Arthur and Merlin and even though EK is obviously a lot younger I could buy a fatherly vibe between them. Arthur's the trouble making no good kid and Emma is the fave over-achieving kid. I'm sure hearing Merlin saying Emma passed the test didn't help any. I'm glad Arthur got to say his piece to Merlin. There's a lot to mine there but then again there's stuff to be mined from Emma and Snowing too. Surprisingly I also liked Nimue and Emma and Nimue/DS. I think they have more chemistry than Emma and the black hole. And Dark Nimue is pretty bad ass. I wished we could've gotten her as the head voice from the beginning instead of Rump. Then they could've spent more time developing blank heart Gold.

I think Nimue DO was only Nimue but each new DO added in their own darkness to the darkness pool as it got passed along. So by the time it got to Emma, the DO is Nimue plus the 20+ others' darkness combined. Isn't that why Merlin was being all like you'll be the darkest DO ever? Cause she has their accumulated power and darkness. This show lies! See the Apprentice and his retelling of Merlin and DO. I do hope they'll be an explanation. Like maybe Nimue set up the vault so that each DO could leave behind their soul in the vault, and be "reawakened" with whole Excalibur.

I'm pretty pumped for more Merlin and Nimue no matter what they do. And them with Hook and Emma makes up a pretty interesting and good looking quad. I'd watch a show with just them with a side of Arthur and Zelena. I think he said someone might be able to hold it without it burning through their soul or something. I don't think Emma alone is it but Emma and Hook could based off of the 2 names on the sword thing. I think they become co-DOs since Hook had a wardrobe change and imp Rump was spotted in the Gold-Hook fight. I'm guessing Nimue tricked Snowing and co. to stuff the broken sword back into the stone while she gets Emma dark and the one sure way to do that is to get her to crush a heart. Emma's pissed cause she needs that sword to cure herself. Maybe after the heart crushing they don't trust her to be good anymore. Arthur wants the whole sword too so it looks like the only one who doesn't is Nimue. Emma did say to Nimue that she didn't want the sword to be reforged back in Camelot and then Nimue explained why.

I admit I was too distracted by the pretty of Merlin and Nimue to care about the timeline. Now both are guest stars I could watch unlike obnoxious Merida. I also liked their story enough if I don't think about the plot holes big enough for an 18 wheeler to drive through. But yeah this really bugged. The apprentice also said something like there was a huge epic battle and he couldn't match the power of the DO so he had to tether it to some human. Talk about false advertisement. Merlin getting tethered at the end also really really bugged. Must say I liked the end scene with the cult of DOs. But man how awkward is that meeting? Besides Emma, all of them killed someone standing next to them to gain exclusive entry to that club. It's probably too much to ask that we just get an episode of DOs anonymous hashing this out.