Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20160328005933/@comment-27257290-20160331123639

Farerb wrote: The darkness can't affect or not affect Hook whenever it's convenient. It either affected him, which doesn't make sense since he was all normal pre 508 or it didn't affect him, which means he's responsible for everything that he's done.

In addition, we can't apply one thing on Hook and not apply it on Rumple and vise versa. If the darkness had affected Hook and he is absolved from everything bad that he has done then so does Rumple, but people don't do that because we didn't see all the crazy people on Rumple's head. "The darkness affected him" is just an excuse to whitewash Hook, moreover, if it is so easy for the darkness to affect Hook and not Rumple or Emma, then it speaks volumes on the kind of weak man Hook really is. I never said that the Darkness only affects Hook at certain times. Of course it affects him all the time, as it does with other Dark Ones. When I talk about the Darkness here, I refer to the Dark magic possessed by the Dark Ones that bound itself to Emma and Hook, not the generic darkness that affected Regina or Cora or any other characters. Emma just had the strength of will to resist, but she, Hook and Rumple all had Nimue and the other ex-Dark Ones chatting in their ear. Merlin didn't stop talking about the seductive temptation of the Darkness in 5A, and that's what I'm basing my opinion on. And the thing is I do apply this perspective to Rumple, I think that as the Dark One he finds it even harder to make the right decision than any normal person would because of the way the Darkness gets into his head. And as soon as Rumple stopped being the Dark One he turned back into the limping coward we all know and love. Still a coward, but a different kind. One that is less concerned with getting more power and more concerned with just saving his own skin.

As for Hook, I agree it speaks volumes for how weak he is, and that's the point he made in The Brothers Jones. I'm still coming to terms with his lack of willpower myself, but that doesn't mean we should just completely blame him for killing Merlin. Yes he personally found it more difficult to resist, but he still faced what few others have faced. I'm guessing the reason Emma did so well was because she's the product of true love and Snow and David took all her potential for darkness out of her. She had a headstart to becoming the theoretical person she and Merlin discussed, who would have so much Dark magic and could just use it for good.