S05.E11: Swan Song

[KingOfHearts]

Though brief, the scene where Emma was lying in her apartment after everything happened was very meaningful. There was just so much to process, not only with Hook's sacrifice, but with her experiences in Camelot and as the Dark Swan as well. We, as the audience, were sharing this moment with her. Once needs stuff like that - times the characters can silently sit and think about the emotional roller coasters they've ridden. Thoughts like where they've been, where they are and where they're going are interesting questions. You don't need dialogue to express how much crap is getting sorted out in their minds. 

 

This scene was, of course, very short and was only written in to introduce Rumple's betrayal. However it was pleasant to see "normal" Emma again, both here and in the loft scene. I actually found it to be one of my favorite sections of the episode. More PLOT PLOT PLOT hangovers please.

Edited December 20, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[MedievalGirl]

Oh, if only the ring Killian gave Emma had been a Claddagh. 

It might have looked like this:

http://s33.photobucket.com/user/BabyGirlH/media/Mobile%20Uploads/image.jpeg.html

 

[Faemonic]

I usually only tune in for Hook-centrics--my all-time favorite episodes are Good Form, The Jolly Roger, Poor Unfortunate Soul, Broken Heart--because I've learned to trust that the episode structure and thematic unity is usually serviceable to spot-on.

 

I can now say confidently that it isn't just because my favorite character is in the episode that makes it good because this one was just...so...cliche...

 

It might have looked like this:
http://s33.photobucket.com/user/BabyGirlH/media/Mobile%20Uploads/image.jpeg.html

Hee! One of the hands on the Claddagh is a hook, and it's engraved on the inside with the words I will always find you.

[GreyBunny]

I finally got around the binging the half season.

 

I hope Zelena comes back, she's such a juicy character.

 

When Hook was Normal Hook, his hair was parted on the left.  When he was Evil Hook his hair was parted on the right.  One exception, his hair didn't change sides after he was stabbed and died.

 

Belle is such a dumbass.  

[Dianthus]

It's really hard to root for Belle anymore. I loved her unlikely friendship with Hook (coulda watched the Hell outta that), but every time she goes back to Rumple, it's like a little piece of her dies.

[Rumsy4]

every time she goes back to Rumple, it's like a little piece of her dies.

 

At least she's consistent that way. :-p

[KAOS Agent]

I know it's taken me a bit to get to this, but it's finally time to get a final tally for 5A of theme words. The last couple of episodes were the jackpot for the Dark One with 13 mentions in "Swan Song" and 29 in "Broken Heart" giving it a whopping 153 uses for the half season. The Darkness was also blessed with an additional 18 mentions in the final couple of episodes giving it a total 105 for the season. For a show about hope, the darkness sure seems to be the winner for 5A.

 

The Saviour was sadly disregarded with no mentions at all since the seventh episode, not even a quick shout out for her in "Swan Song". Thus, it was roundly trounced by the Dark One(s) 153-27. 

 

On the lighter side, while I find it to be way overused (as well as misused) on this show, Hero did make a bit of a comeback in "Swan Song" with three mentions and unlike in "Broken Heart", it was used in reference to actual real heroic acts. Hero ultimately ended up being used 34 times in 5A. I'll leave it to you to decide whether or not the fact that at least one third of those mentions refer to Hero!Rumpel diminishes its meaning.

[HoodlumSheep]

^ I love your word tallies!

Even after mulling over this episode for about a month, I still think it's not too bad of an episode. It's certainly not the best either though, the Regina stuff should have been axed completely and I wish Nimue didn't turn into a hive mind character at the last minute. still better than the 4a finale (that holds the trophy for worst Once finale episode, still)

[jaytee1812]

Was Hook's fake accent more noticeable this episode against his father's genuine one?

One thing I noticed. Emma says to Hook 'I couldn't watch one more person I love die.' Who has Emma been close to that has died, except Neal? And even then she wasn't in love with him, although I assume she loved him. She still has both parents, and her son. It seemed odd, like it should've come from someone would lost her entire family, but Emma hasn't. I can't even remember her being at someone's death before Neal.

[Curio]

Who has Emma been close to that has died, except Neal?

 

1. Graham 
2. Henry (Temporarily at the end of Season 1)
3. Neal (The first time she thought he died when he fell through the portal)
4. Walsh (Monkey or not, she claimed to love him during those 8 months of dating)
5. Neal Again (The real death)
6. Snow (Thought she had died temporarily during the time travel adventure)
7. Ingrid
8. Hook (Temporarily in the alternate universe)
9. Hook Again (Temporarily in Camelot)
10. Hook Again Again (For real in Storybrooke)

 

Even though a lot of these were temporary, having to watch someone die and not knowing whether or not they can be resurrected has to be taxing.

Edited March 4, 2016 by Curio

[KingOfHearts]

Rewatching this episode on ABC... It's strange that everyone's taking probable death so seriously. They've been in imminent peril so many times before that it feels stilted in this episode. Rumple excluded.

Edited March 7, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

The problem is we've already seen several variants of this before.  Each time they do it, it becomes a more diluted version of the previous time.  The 4A one before the Shattered Curse still had some emotional impact on me, but this one just replayed the same beats.  Snow/Charming helpless, hands baby off to Emma, who has to live with being the one "left behind".  Hook is also immune.  Regina goes off to deal with her own stupid subplot.  Rumple gets Belle out of the way for safety.  But climax involved someone making the ultimate sacrifice (2B, 3A, 4A, 4B) eliminating the entire problem, but raises a new one just in time for a cliffhanger.  It didn't help that basically, they were just going to taking a slow boat ride.  Which they still ended up taking.  The whole plotline felt like checking boxes without the emotional resonance, except for fans of Hook redemptions.

[Curio]

The whole plotline felt like checking boxes without the emotional resonance, except for fans of Hook redemptions.

 

Eh, I wouldn't even go that far. As a Hook fan, I felt cheated by the last-second heel-face-turn and thought the writers could have handled that redemption so much better.

[KAOS Agent]

Wow, this episode is full of suck. Why did Regina need to be in Hook's backstory? That was so stupid and made no sense.

I forgot how hope-filled Snowing just gave up (again) and decided hanging out at Granny's was better than trying even a little bit to stop Hook and the Dark Ones.

Rumpel is trash. It's always nice to see Rumpel show us what a "good" heart he has.

[KingOfHearts]

I don't mind Regina being the one to talk Hook down because she is a bit of a third party in this situation and has interacted with him before in regard to villainy. Unlike Emma, she's gone full dive into evil. Hook is more likely to listen to someone who went further into darkness than himself and came back. My problem with it though is the giant retcon that she supposedly sent him to go murder his dad during 2x09. That's just impossible given the timeline. 

[daxx]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

My problem with it though is the giant retcon that she supposedly sent him to go murder his dad during 2x09. That's just impossible given the timeline.

And even if she had sent him how would she know exactly what went down? 

That whole scene was full of stupid from the carriage ride when they were at her castle 5 minutes ago talking about taking Claud to Wonderland. The TLK between Brennan and his nurse of all things when we know sleeping curses don’t work that way. Um did they already forget the burning room?

It would have worked much better if it was made clear this was a vision that Regina created to test Hook, then she’d have a valid way of knowing exactly what happened and what was said.

[Camera One]

It shows how uncreative the writing team was in coming up with meaningful flashback stories, and how little they cared about character-driven writing.  I suppose one could give them a pass for making up egregious retcons for Snowing because those "good" characters are boring but Captain Hook should have had a variety of exciting and interesting experiences.  This was a case where they didn't try making his father into some other fairytale/Disney character.  

Spoiler

I found the fathers of Rumple, Hook and David all pretty bland.  They were different variants of fathers who neglected their children.

These Writers certainly liked their plots where people kill their own fathers.

Edited May 11, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

One thing I noticed in the rewatch that I didn't see mentioned when I skimmed through the thread last night: When Rumple pours the convenient potion on Excalibur so he can siphon off the darkness, the plan is for Emma to take all the darkness into herself and sacrifice herself. If Rumple is planning to siphon the darkness off to himself to get his power back, Emma doesn't have to die, and unlike Hook, she's not going to die anyway without the Darkness. He could have totally changed the plan. Emma might not have been crazy about letting him get the power back, but it's essentially a return to the status quo and it means she gets to live. She's the mother of Rumple's grandson, but I guess we've already seen that doesn't matter to him. Rumple knows all of this and doesn't say anything. If he wasn't already irredeemable, this should make him so.

I guess Hook's doomed either way, though it depends on whether wounds from Excalibur are automatically fatal or whether wounds from Excalibur just don't heal, so if it's a potentially fatal wound, magical healing doesn't help. If it's the latter, they're in Storybrooke, so there might be other options -- slap a pressure bandage on it, get him to the hospital, get some blood transfusions going, then surgically repair the wound to buy time to find the potion/spell/device that can heal it (because that's how this show rolls -- I'm looking at you "this is the most deadly poison with no antidote, oh I just brewed up this handy antidote").

As for the herd of Dark Ones coming back from the Underworld .... For one thing, I counted at least 18 former Dark Ones, plus Nimue, and I think there were some off the edges of the screen. Even if Rumple's only been the Dark One for a hundred years (and that figure, as well as Hook's age/years of piracy, kept changing throughout this one episode), that means there's a pretty high churn rate for Dark Ones over about 400 years. They actually have less than the standard life expectancy. But another thing is, doesn't the Darkness go into the next Dark One when they die? So they're back to just being an ordinary person when they die. They're probably not nice people, as they all killed someone to become the Dark One, and the deeds they did as Dark Ones probably darkened their hearts, but the people in the Underworld wouldn't actually be Dark Ones and have that kind of darkness in them or any powers. All of the Darkness from all the past Dark Ones is already in Emma. The former hosts for the Darkness might have shown up to try to compete for the Darkness, but they wouldn't be Dark Ones. Dark One Nimue is part of Emma (and somehow Hook, though that doesn't make sense because his power came straight from Merlin), so the being in Storybrooke outside Emma and Hook's heads should have been ordinary Nimue, not sparkly green Nimue. And why would Nimue want to have all those other Dark Ones around? She might have wanted a ticket out of the Underworld, but would she have cared about the other former Dark Ones?

As for the whole thing to swap with some living person so they can stay in this world, they're spirits. Their bodies would have long since decomposed. Did swapping places with a living person make their spirit bodies into real bodies?

Spoiler

This doesn't fit at all with what happens later, when Emma's heart sharing idea doesn't work because Hook's been dead too long. If the swap plan would have worked for people who've been dead hundreds of years, it should have worked for someone who's been dead a few weeks.

10 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

I forgot how hope-filled Snowing just gave up (again) and decided hanging out at Granny's was better than trying even a little bit to stop Hook and the Dark Ones.

Normally they seem to alternate whether it's "hope" Snow or "despair" Snow, but they managed to have both in the same episode, acting like Snow usually has hope but this one time is giving up. That might have been more shocking if Snow hasn't generally been the one to go straight to giving up in alternate episodes, no matter how much they talk about her hope speeches.

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

My problem with it though is the giant retcon that she supposedly sent him to go murder his dad during 2x09. That's just impossible given the timeline. 

There are so many things impossible about the scenario they created here:

• Supposedly, Maleficent created the sleeping curse, yet here it was used a hundred years earlier (unless, I suppose, since Maleficent is a fairy she was around then and created it then, but wasn't it something that came up when Regina helped her get her groove back?)
• Supposedly, it was an unbreakable curse. They didn't know the TLK would break it. Regina was surprised and furious when a true love's kiss worked. Charming was saying goodbye to Snow when he kissed her, not trying to break a curse, and he was surprised when it worked. But here, a true love's kiss broke a curse probably about ten years earlier.
• There was a nurse for someone under a sleeping curse. The horror of the sleeping curse was that it made others think the person was dead while they were still alive and even somewhat conscious, in a weird way. They had put Snow in a casket. Henry was showing up as dead on the hospital monitors. Brennan would have long since been buried alive. He wouldn't still have a nurse looking after his seemingly dead body after a century. Really, why would anyone have put a thief under a sleeping curse? Wouldn't they have just killed him? That would have been easier and less expensive. Getting the sleeping curse was difficult for the queen, who had to trade the Dark Curse to get it. What could Brennan possibly have done to make him worth that rather than just killing him?
• It really cheapens the true love's kiss if it can happen between people who've never met. Maybe he could have fallen in love with someone he heard talking to him, but how could she have true love with a corpse she knew nothing about, or, if she knew something, she knew he was a thief? She'd have had no way of knowing he was changing from listening to her.
• How could Regina have even known he was Hook's father? "Jones" isn't exactly a rare family name, and Hook is from a long time ago, so finding any records on who his parents were would be difficult. There's no Ancestry.com in that world. In the zero time since she found Hook breaking into her palace and terrorizing Belle, she somehow managed to find out who he was and upon learning that he was from a century ago, she was able to track down what happened to his father and find that he just happened to be alive and running a nearby tavern.
• It's a dumb test anyway because all it shows is that Hook puts his revenge ahead of absolutely everything. Which was exactly what happened -- Cora offered him a better chance at revenge, so he flipped sides. Regina's test utterly failed.
• When Regina uses this incident to talk him down, she not only knows exactly what happened, in spite of not being there, but she knows why it matters and she knows about the "what kind of man do you want to be" thing, which is only meaningful if you know what happened in Hook's childhood. How could she possibly know that?

I'm actually not entirely keen on Regina being able to talk him down, anyway. It's not as though she ever listened to his counsel about revenge and futility. They've had no real talks on the topic after she "changed." He has zero respect for her. I guess I can sort of handwave that it wasn't so much Regina's advice that worked as it was her bringing up that memory (and, again, how could she have known?) so it was top of mind when he saw what Nimue was doing to Emma, and that memory helped him make the decision.

Odd little detail I noticed: In this episode, at least, it looks like they were covering that scar on Colin's face when Hook was in Dark One mode. I noticed it when they transitioned from the flashback, where it was there and visible, to a close-up of Dark Hook's face, where it wasn't there. That got me started watching for it, and it only kind of shows when he's straining to control the sword and his face gets scrunched up, and one of the lines falls along the scar. It's weird that Hook would have healed a small scar as Dark One but not got his hand back. I don't know that I care enough to go back to the previous episode and see if this is consistent throughout Hook's Dark one time.

[Melgaypet]

Hook's backstory in this one make me nuts. In a way, it's emblematic of the show as a whole, there's a good story in here wanting to get out, but just so much bullshit in the way.

I don't, in theory, hate the idea that Hook killed his father. It didn't end up adding much to the story, but it didn't feel terribly out of character like killing Charming's father did. The way it came about is convoluted nonsense (really, writers, Regina doesn't have to be involved in All The Things), but I can easily believe that a triggered Hook would lash out violently after hearing his father spouting the same thing to Replacement Son that he'd said to him right before selling him into slavery.

Which reminds me: Brennan? Fuck that guy. Seriously, am I supposed to be horrified that Hook killed him? I'm not. I don't approve of murder (why do I feel the need to clarify that, THIS SHOW) but the one who had my sympathy in that scenario was Hook. Brennan Jones sold his children into slavery to save his own ass. The worst thing Hook did there, in my opinion, was leave Liam the Younger behind instead of taking him with him or finding him a decent home.

[KingOfHearts]

4 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

It's a dumb test anyway because all it shows is that Hook puts his revenge ahead of absolutely everything. Which was exactly what happened -- Cora offered him a better chance at revenge, so he flipped sides. Regina's test utterly failed.

That's actually some good irony, but I doubt the writers thought of it that way.

4 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

How could Regina have even known he was Hook's father? "

Why would Regina even think Hook's father is alive? Why would should even look for him?

4 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

One thing I noticed in the rewatch that I didn't see mentioned when I skimmed through the thread last night: When Rumple pours the convenient potion on Excalibur so he can siphon off the darkness, the plan is for Emma to take all the darkness into herself and sacrifice herself.

I still have a hard time wrapping my head around what was actually happening or what Rumple did. It still makes little sense to me. Rumple pours a potion over Excalibur, and now the sword acts as a conduit for the darkness so it can funnel to him? Is that right? How is he linked to it? The random potion is so contrived and we've never seen anything like it on the show before. Now, if Rumple had this convoluted scheme since he woke up to get the power back from Emma, that would've made a lot more sense. But he comes up with this last minute. Every time I've seen it, I've gone, "Wait, what?"
 

4 hours ago, Melgaypet said:

The worst thing Hook did there, in my opinion, was leave Liam the Younger behind instead of taking him with him or finding him a decent home.

Spoiler

I completely forgot Liam 2.0 comes back, or his existence for that matter. Why did the show even bother to give Hook a half-brother?

[Shanna Marie]

59 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Why would Regina even think Hook's father is alive? Why would should even look for him?

In the split second between finding Hook in her castle attacking Belle and sending him through the hat, she must have done an extensive background check on him. Or maybe she'd heard about him before he conveniently showed up in her castle and had already done some research because she thought that the pirate singlemindedly focused on getting revenge on Rumple would make a good assassin? Maybe she asked the Mirror for information on him? How much would the Mirror be able to show? Can he see absolutely everything, everywhere?

Aside from that, it is rather ridiculous that she could have figured that Hook would have any living relatives to even look for or that she could connect him to that guy at the tavern (would he even have been using his real name? Maybe the people who put him under the sleeping curse have descendants.). Did she know about the painful past between Hook and his father or did she think that this would be a real test of loyalties because Hook would be reunited with his long-lost father only to have to kill him? If she knew about their past, then Hook killing him isn't exactly a test. It's more like an opportunity, and it doesn't tell her anything about his ability or willingness to kill her mother.

Nothing about this whole flashback makes any sense at all. And it was entirely unnecessary. Regina didn't have to know about his history to remind him about who he wanted to be. She could have said something inadvertently that brought up the old memory of what his father told him and how that affected his life. Actually, the killing his father flashback undermines the effectiveness of what she says in the present because that wouldn't have been something he wanted to live up to. They could have had the same result more effectively by maybe showing a series of flashbacks from Hook's life of his turning points when he decided who he wanted to be, sometimes choosing well, sometimes choosing badly. Maybe one is even a "present" flashback, after Hook came to Storybrooke, in which he talks about why he's not a villain anymore. Regina reminding him of that makes him really think.

Not that this actually had all that much to do with his final decision. That was about seeing Emma in jeopardy and realizing what he was doing to someone he loved.

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

I still have a hard time wrapping my head around what was actually happening or what Rumple did. It still makes little sense to me. Rumple pours a potion over Excalibur, and now the sword acts as a conduit for the darkness so it can funnel to him? Is that right? How is he linked to it?

I think they forgot that Rumple has no powers without the darkness. When they showed the power going to him, it looked like he was using his power to summon it. Maybe he poured some of the potion on the sword and some on himself, and the potions linked everything? I can kind of see him having made a potion to pull this sort of thing off, but then they presented it like a spur of the moment thing that just came to him when Emma came looking for the sword, so he wasn't planning it all along. And I guess when the sword dissolved it re-formed into the dagger. But where did the rest of Excalibur go? Is the stub of the sword still in a stone in Emma's basement?

This episode had some really good moments and good scenes, but none of it works if you think about it at all.

[daxx]

25 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

This episode had some really good moments and good scenes, but none of it works if you think about it at all.

Good footnote for the entire series frankly.

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

In the split second between finding Hook in her castle attacking Belle and sending him through the hat, she must have done an extensive background check on him. Or maybe she'd heard about him before he conveniently showed up in her castle and had already done some research because she thought that the pirate singlemindedly focused on getting revenge on Rumple would make a good assassin? Maybe she asked the Mirror for information on him? How much would the Mirror be able to show? Can he see absolutely everything, everywhere?

Maybe she watched the newsreel like Zelena did when she watched Regina's life story from the convenient venue of the Emerald City throne room?

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

And I guess when the sword dissolved it re-formed into the dagger. But where did the rest of Excalibur go?

It went back into the plot void with the other people, places and things that are never to be mentioned again like they never existed.

Edited May 12, 2019 by Camera One

[tennisgurl]

...on second thought lets not go to Camelot. Tis a silly place.

Edited May 13, 2019 by tennisgurl

[tennisgurl]

All those dark ones in their black cloaks look so freaking ridiculous, especially when they're all speed walking around the street. They look like they're about to break out into a dance routine. 

There are a lot of good scenes here, but its mostly a mess with a million plots that are never mentioned or fully dealt with, and Hooks turn to darkness and then redemption just happen so quickly both times, that it makes much less of an impact than it should. 

Of course Regina just HAS to be a part of Hooks flashback for no reason at all, just an excuse to watch her kill more random people and wear more ridiculous clothes! And while I know that its bad that Killian killed his father, leaving little Liam orphaned, fuck Jones Sr. that guy was an asshole. Like, "oh, I not only ditched my young sons in the middle of the night in the middle f the ocean, I also sold them into slavery as a goodbye present! But I fell in love with this women while I wandered into one of those billions of sleeping curses lying around, and broke all the rules of magic that we have established by falling in love with some random women while I was asleep! Forgive me now that it benefits me and my replacement kid!" Yeah yeah yeah he "changed" like every dick on this show gets to do, but he did an awful thing and apparently never even tried to find his sons again. Asshole. 

So Rumple was a bad guy all along and just wanted the power and blah blah blah what is even his point?

Edited May 17, 2019 by tennisgurl