Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20150511001505/@comment-24674051-20150512141603

Going back to the Apprentice. I rewatched the episodes last night. At the end, after the Apprentice informs Emma that they need to seek Merlin, the Apprentice closes his eyes. While the scene is very deathlike, the Apprentice does not HAVE to be dead. I mean, he just used his power to suck the darkness from Rumple to the Hat, fought off the Dark One, and been slammed by a shot of hot light magic. That's enough right there to kill most creatures, and he managed to survive.

However, I think he was mortally wounded, and he fully knows it. Which is why the speech seems to be so deathbed like.

My prediction is that we will see this Apprentice one last time, in the Premiere. As part of helping Emma to find Merlin and ultimately defeat the Dark One, the Apprentice is going to pass on the Mantle of HIS office before he dies, to the one person living that has the greatest understanding of the Dark One specifically, and magic in general. Rumple.

On a slightly different note, one other thing that I caught which was just mobidly humerous was when David killed Killian. As he was running him through, David commented to the effect of "I never liked Pirates". Given the current relationship of Killian and David in the real world, that switch was just ironically funny.