Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-11464223-20151109020125/@comment-261373-20151111062529

After a rewatch of some clips of the episode and other episodes, to follow up  what I wrote above.

1) What I said about loving the Dark One for who he or she is. We haven't seen that yet. There were people who may have love the Dark One, but wanted to change the Dark One to give up his or her power and be somebody else.  Also people seems to blame the Dark One. i.e. Rumplestilskin- Baelfire and Belle want him to give up being the Dark One and be a good guy again. Many characters blame Rumplestilskin for what's going on. Nimue- Merlin didn't accept her after she turn Dark. Emma- Hook, the Charmings, Regina, were so eager to go find Merlin to cure her of  the Darkness. And Storybrooke now it's Emma vs. everybody. Such antagonism, why not just let the Darkness live and still love them?

2) What we saw in this episode was Merlin was able to be control using Excalibur. So what I said about Merlin's voicemail in The Bear and the Bow was Nimue using Merlin to get the gang to help her may be true. She could have used the Excalibur to force him to set up that voicemail. I notice he wasn't looking directly when setting up that voicemail. He was looking down, kind of like a trance mode.