Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1333438-20150514015210/@comment-25926288-20150514123858

I would just attributed to poor writing and planning.

I'll explain my Regina/Hook explanation. They like Regina and Hook. They are amongst the most popular, the most marketable, and seemingly favorites of the writers. Like Rumple, the writers want their evil side, but also their redemptive qualities. However, I doubt Rumple is not a character that they see as expendable. Even Snow and David were tossed into baby-napping and that horrendous plot point.

Besides that, I jusrt think that they did it for the Frozen newbies into the show., They used Frozen to bring in the viewers, but it is hard to introduce viewers to everyone 4 seasons in. So, they had Rumple be the evilest villain I assume to let the audience knows he is evil......They also talked about in an interview what Rumple was going through, but if you have to explain in an interview than clearly you weren't clear about it. The first scene in 4a for Rumple was him literally spouting exposition. They even had Regina make evil hints even though she shouldn't have. Then they started the most odd plot ever: Find the Author.

I think they just don't know what to do with many of the characters, maybe actually all of them. Lana had to fight for Regina/Henry...imagine if we didn't have those scenes, we'd never really see Henry and he'd just pop out of nowhere for most of the story. I assume that after the Frozen backlash they decided to focus more on the core cast....in sort of shallow ways. So, Regina has redemptive qualities because of Her and Henry. That's why she rarely goes all evil. But we see even now Regina at the edge of doing evil things and Hook on the edge of evil things and Rumple since he is more expendable is made to just be flat out evil.

They want the Evil Queen and Regina. But Regina almost killing Marian, EQ out in the SofSS, Regina cutting Lily's hand, leaving Rumple to die, and almost wiping Zelena out of existence is extremely borderline, you then question how much have they really changed naturally. Hook is just their marketable ship item. Leading Once Upon a Ship is Hook/Emma. They have wooby Hook and his bad boy streak giving words of wisdom, telling Emma to forgive her parents....yadda yadda. But isn't he a villain, no he is a hero.....

Or maybe it's just that Robert Carlyle wanted a break, so they found a way....or they just don't want to let him go, so they ressurect him without pause. I don't think he'll ever die, unless the actor decides to leave.