Riding the waves of fan fervor on Social Media is a full time job. Some days it’s all smiles, rainbows and Unicorn stickers, other days its time to run inside, lock the door and hide, but as we wait through the hiatus until Season 5…
Is Dark Swan the end of OUAT, or a new beginning?
Before you put flowers on the OUAT grave, let’s look at what we think the writers are doing with the Dark Swan storyline.
1. Emma needs a new, massive story arc
We’ve seen many story arcs with Emma; Will she believe that she is the savior? Will she let herself be open to love – after Graham, then after Neal? Will she forgive Regina and allow her to go on her redemption path? Will she forgive her Mother for what she did by sending Emma’s darkness to Lily? Many more for sure, but we need something bigger – and this is it.
2. The poetic irony of the savior becoming The Dark One (to me) works
It has been done before in stories (Hobbit, etc), movies and comic books, but now we will see it in our beloved OUAT universe.
What will Emma (the hero, the savior always fighting for good and against evil) do with all the dark, evil power at her disposal? There is a theory going around the the Dark One power also influences the host, so will we see a battle within Emma herself between the good part and the new darkness?
Rumpel lusted for the Dark One’s power, but Emma took it as a sacrifice. How will this effect Season 5?
3. All the other Storybrooke baddies are goodies, now
Regina is redeemed, Rumpel is frozen in magical carbonite, Ursula got her voice back, Maleficent got her daughter back, Cruella has (moment of silence please) died and Zelena is locked up.
Even the Charmings had their dark secret revealed, confessed it, and did what they could to make it right, so they are good now.
No more baddies are left – except the savior – so she’s going bad.
Adam and Eddy really had no other choice.
Actually, they have been hinting at it. Her parents had some dark dealings, and Operation Mongoose Part 1 did give us a taste of the heros but Emma going Villain, so to me it was inevitable.
4. The ex-baddies can complete their redemption arc, if they want to
Regina taught Emma magic and I would imagine she will have some cautionary words to help Emma along the way.
I’ll bet that Gold (if he turns good and gets out of the magical carbonite) will give Emma some sage advice – from one ex Dark One to the new Dark One as she walks the dark path.
Henry and the Charmings will have some input, too.
Once thing to remember is that Emma knows everything about everyone else, so she will call B.S. if she get platitudes from anyone else.
It should be very interesting.
5. Love & Family did not rescue Rumpel from the dagger, what will it take for Emma?
We know from the show that ‘Love is Strength’ and the power of ‘True Love’, etc, but I don’t know if the love of Hook, family or friends will be enough to loose Emma from the grasp of the Darkness.
It didn’t for Rumpelstiltskin. We all have walked the road of him turning away from the best in life to choose power.
How will Merlin fit in to the equation of loosing Emma? What other dealings with our characters have with Merlin previously? What difficulties will that cause?
Is Dark Swan the end of Once Upon a Time?
No
I think it will be nice to dive deeper into the characters we already know and see a dark side of Emma that we never have as a way to give her more depth.
Will Lily be the key to freeing Emma? If someone knows about Emma’s darkness, it would be Lily, right?
That’s what I think, what do you think? Leave your comments below.
I don’t think Emma being the Dark One is the end of Once, but the beginning of an exciting new chapter. There’s so many different ways this storyline can be interpreted. The only thing I’m wary about is, is being the Dark One still a curse? I’ve felt since 4B, that Adam and Eddy have ret-conned that, making it a possession thing, as opposed to it being a curse (which it is).
I feel like Adam and Eddy might need to re watch Skin Deep in order to understand my continued confusion about this.
I think it’ll be interesting to see how Emma interacts/behaves with all her loved ones. I don’t think she’ll necessarily distance herself from them, but hold on tighter. My hope is that she at least is able to air out some of her grievances that she hasn’t been able to address before.