Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5635908-20150911022247/@comment-24674051-20150918142517

Interestingly, I like that thought. And it sort of ties into a tought I had as to why Rumple was with Emma while Gold is in a Coma back in Storybrooke.

How about this one. Merlin has the darkness inside him (maybe from being a spawn of some Demon as mentioned above), and like Rumple is looking for a way to rid himself of his dark tendencies and potential. He meets Nimue, and together they work to research the Hat to strip and hold the darkness. Nimue uses the Hat and successfully strips ALL the darkness from Merlin, but they discover that the hat is not unable to contain the darkness. The Darkness escapes the hat and reforms into a Dark Merlin (The original Dark One). Light Merlin, now stripped of his Darkness, realizes that the darkness must be tethered to another person, and develops the Dagger as a means of tethering the Darkness. Someone, maybe Morgana, bent on obtaining the Darkness for their own ends, steals the Dagger and tethers the Darkness to themself. The darkness is then passed from owner to owner by killing the previous owner with the Kris Dagger.

fast forward to Present day. The apprentice, not aware of the complete story of the hat, captures the darkness from Rumple's heart. Included with the darkness is not only Merlin's Darkness, but also the darkness from each owner since, including Rumple's Darkness. Now, because Rumple had started the ritual to cleave himself from the dagger, something went a little different after Emma Tethered The Darkness. She captured and tethered all of the original darkness, but Rumple's became seperate, and reformed itself. So now there are essentially 2 dark ones. One tethered (Emma), one untethered (Rumple). Gold, when he wakes up, will be similar to Merlin, in that he has no darkness left. He has literally become 2 people.

This is all conjecture (and fanfiction), but what do you think?