Board Thread:Show-Related Questions and Answers/@comment-26116863-20151117024202/@comment-24304025-20151117140943

I still don't understand the whole Dagger + Flame + Sword thing.

1) The Holy Grail is the source of magic. Merlin decided to turn it into a sword so that it was no longer the Grail, so that he wouldn't be immortal anymore. Nimue drank from the Grail and became immortal. Merlin used the Flame to forge Excalibur from the Grail. Nimue broke Excalibur into a sword and a dagger. Merlin tethered Nimue to the Dagger, so she is immortal but kept under the dagger's control. Merlin put the sword into a stone. At this point, the sword can be used to remove someone's immortality, right? That's why Merlin created Excalibur.

2) Merlin decides to kill Nimue. Only the dagger can do that, because the dagger controls her. Merlin himself is still immortal and he realizes that by killing Nimue the darkness in her would be tethered to him via the dagger. He does not kill her and she traps him into a tree instead.

3) Someone kills Nimue with the dagger, someone kills that someone with the dagger etc.Immortality and darkness transfer from one host to another for centuries.

4) Arthur is delivered prophecies from Merlin's tree about Excalibur being able to turn him into the rightful king. I assume that is a lie because Merlin needed someone to get back Excalibur from the stone and defet the darkness (that's what the sword does, she would remove both the darkness and the immortality from the Dark One). Having enchanted the sword to only be removed by a hero, so that no Dark One can take it, Merlin manipulates Arthur to become a hero and get the sword. Legend spreads about Excalibur and Charming makes a fake sword to encourage Snow to believe she is a rightful queen.

5) Merlin foresees Emma about to take Excalibur. He somehow appears to her in the LWM and warns her not to because it would have bad consequences.

6) The "not hero" Kay tries to reclaim Excalibur but dies in the process. Arthur finds the sword and reclaims it. By seeing it is not whole, he is obsessed. His obsession corrupts him and Arthur is no longer a hero. Merlin tells Arthur a prophecy about a Savior coming to Camelot to free him from the tree.

7) Arthur learns that the strangers have the missing part of Excalibur. He wants to reunite the blades for nothing more than to believe he is the rightful king. Merlin is freed by Henry's tear and he says he can remove the Darkness and the immortality from Emma. For that he needs Excalibur whole (OK, that was the purpose of the sword from the very beginning, removing immortality). He goes back to the Flame of Prometheus with Emma and the dagger. The others go to get Excalibur, but Zelena tethers Merlin to the sword. That's where the confusion begins.

8) Merlin is tethered to Excalibur in the same way Nimue was tethered to the Dagger, so they are controled by each blade. Merlin is still immortal. Unlike Nimue, who succumbed to darkness (which caused the Grail's magic to turn her into the corrupted Dark One), Merlin resists it. He is controled but he is not a Dark One. He even manages to resist Arthur's control and stops suffocating Mary Margaret.

9) Then Hook is hurt by Excalibur, which isn't whole at this point. If the sword is meant to remove darkness and immortality, why did it have any effect on Hook, who is not immortal?

10) Then Emma needs to keep him from dying. She tethers Hook to the sword. OK, people can be tethered to it even if it's not whole. But Emma somehow removed the Darkness from Merlin (assuming he is both light and darkness, he is now pure light, just like Gold) and sent it into Hook so that he will be immortal. Hving bothe Darkness, immortality and a blade that controls him, Hook becomes a Dark One and reappears in the vault.

11) Her selfish acts (like Nimue's) make Emma succumb to Darkness. Merlin records a message explaining that only Nimue can help Emma but something happens to him (5x10 will answer that, probably). Emma uses dreamcatchers to take everyone's memories. A portal somehow brings them to Storybrooke (I assume it is a portal rather than the Dark Curse, because they all retain their Camelot outfits and even Emma has white hair - unlike Zelena, whose green skin became normal when the curse brought her to Storybrooke).

12) Emma stils possesses the Flame (apparently the blades were never reunited in Camelot. Someone puts the sword back into the stone (Merlin?) to prevent someone (Emma?) from using it. From this I assume that Excalibur can indeed destroy light magic if the user wants it to. It can destroy dark or light. It can destroy immortality and remove darkness (what Merlin would do with Emma) or it can give immortality and binding you to darkness (what Emma did to Killian).

13) Emma needs to reunite the blades to do with Killian what Merlin would do to herself. Remove immortality and remove darkness. For that, she needs a hero to remove the sword from the stone. Manipulating Merida, she gets Gold to reclaim Excalibur. She uses the flame and reunites dagger and sword.

14) For that, she needs to contain the darkness in a vessel once it leaves her body and Hook's body. She chooses Zelena. I assume the talk about the Apprentice's wand was a scene, just for Zelena to eat the enchanted onion rings.It makes me wonder. Merlin would remove the darkness from Emma. It required a vessel too. Wouldn't the Darkness possess someone else when Merlin removed it from Emma?

15) How does Emma killing Zelena would destroy darkness once and for all? It would free the darkness from the vessel that would be Zelena's body. She would use the whole Excalibur to remove darkness and immortality from her and from Hook (like Merlin would do to her). But wouldn't that transfer it to Zelena, making her immortal?