Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20170320124216/@comment-26916160-20170321012326

 Yes! I am glad I am not the only one! Totally agree with you. After reading too much negative feedback on Baelfire's use of the dagger I decided to post my POV of it in 6x13 post discussion thread in another forum. Copying my reply below, your examples for Belle and Anna explain exactly what I tried to explain but struggled putting it into words :).



 About Baelfire commanding Rumple to kill the Beowulf, I honestly didn’t see it as bad as many of you did. I always thought that using the dagger somehow affected the decision making of the person unconsciously and began corrupting the person (darkened their heart) the more they used it, just like the ring did to Gollum and Frodo in LTR. Cause otherwise who pays the price for the dark magic when the dagger is used? Clearly not the dark one. In season 4 we learned that the darkness slowly consumes the host to attempt to free itself, so the more dark magic you use, the closer the darkness is from being free.

 With that being said, there was never any reference of Zoso ever being consumed by the darkness during his time as the dark one, he did try to free himself from it by using the hat though, until he got enslaved by the duke/Hordor. It’s clear that a lot of dark magic was wilded using the dagger after Hordor took control over Zoso, so if the use of dark one’s dark magic accelerates the rate at which the darkness takes over the host to free itself, shouldn’t the darkness had been free by then? My theory is that the host pays the price (heart darkens) to use dark one’s magic the same way the dark one does, except that the darkness doesn’t take over them like it does with the dark one, cause the darkness is an independent entity residing in someone else’s body after all.

 When someone controls the dark one through the dagger, the darkness (as an entity) is also controlled by association. I highly doubt that while Hordor was running around the fields of battle, Zoso was playing charades with the darkness, Gorgon and Nimue in his head. Maybe he was with Gorgon and Nimue, but my bet is that the darkness was working on it’s own in the background, perhaps influencing somehow Hordor into doing dark deeds using the dagger. After all, the darker Horder became, the more tempted and curious of dark power he would become no?. Plus at that point, the only way the darkness could have achieved it’s goal of being free would have been if Zoso regained control of the dagger and continued doing dark deeds or if someone stabbed Zoso and became the dark one himself/herself and the cycle re-started again.

 I saw somewhere a discussion on why Hordor never commanded the dark one to stop the war (like Rumple did) and part of me thinks that it was due to the darkness slowly corrupting him inside the more he used it to command Zoso to do his bidding. I think the same thing would have happened to Baelfire and Rumple realized this, hence why he decided to dope Baelfire into forgetting the kill.

 Plus everyone who has used the dagger does seem to turn a bit darker/possessed somehow.

 Belle acted a bit off/out of character (could have been bad writing though) when she commanded Rumple to take her to the ice queen. Plus the command to send him over the town line was a bit too much for Belle to have come up by her own.

 Cora, she seemed a bit too eager to kill Rumple and posses the power while she had control of the dagger.