Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26385535-20150617021148/@comment-24304025-20150617110509

Utter solitude wrote: It's not a plot hole, you're just suggesting a different course of action. (These kinds of "what if" or "why didn't they...." questions can get messy!)

Even pre-Dark One, Rumplestiltskin is a man who feels powerless. He feels weak. Zoso lured him with the power of the dagger, manipulated him with the promise of it, and Rumple fell right into it. The question was not why Rumplestiltskin didn't order Zoso to kill the ogres.

It's why the Duke's soldiers used the Dark One to get people to fight instead of using him to defeat the monsters himself.