Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4519633-20141022032431/@comment-25926288-20161206014155

ΚΟΜΙΞ wrote: But Merlin's power was converted to Dark One power... And Rumple has the power of every Dark One including Nimue who was Merlin's equal...

Tcweh wrote: I've figured out a possible theory for Zelena vs EQ and this would be acceptable for the writers to incorporate in the show (but they never will lol)

Regina has simply trained and gotten stronger since S3. And by extension, so did the EQ. Zelena on the other hand has mainly been paying attention to her baby. Zelena didn't bother to attack the Queen because she knows that she can not kill her. And she has grown soft and has an inner conflict... Zelena is stronger than her sister EQ or not. Nimue was never stated to be Merlin's equal. Plus all the Dark Ones shred the same dark power source. Nimue has less experience. Dark Swan had the DO power plus her light magic and was defeated easily by Merlin.

Merlin's house in the UW still had his magic around it. His wand still has "all the light magic" that he possessed. Tell me why would Dark Swan keep talking about the Merlin wand and Regina and Zelena creating portals with it if the condition changed. Even Rumple used the wand!

That is why I theroize that there's two parts to the HG magic: one part dark, one part light. While Merlin could use both, Rumple just has access to two dark halves which in essence puts them as equals and Rumple has less experience with all that power.

For Zelena and Regina, I agree. We'll have to wait for more to see if they fight again. In my list, they are roughly the same so it should go either way. Zelena just needs to get in a fight that's actually a fight and not meant to be one-sided. (Even Zelena tossing Emma back was one-sided as Emma was blasting the protection spell for minutes and Zelena just tked her to the ground.)