Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1333438-20150514015210/@comment-24674051-20150521184718

Eskaver wrote: GL089 wrote: I got feeling the darkness suddenly being alive crap was a sad attempt of a plot device to justify Gold should get another chance and them trying to pin everything that happened this season on the darkness. I hope not because it negates a lot of what makes Gold/Rumple a great character. Most saw the Darkness as an entity. We see it entering him when he killed Zoso. (Look hard because of the lighting.) It is more like a mutual benefit. The Darkness is tethered to the dagger and grants the immense power of thr Darkness and the Immortality and invulnerabililty as well. As a result, the host's darkness is highlighted (Think of Lily.) and it doesn't make them evil, but the darkness gives them a greater potential for making bad decisions or having them turn out wrong.

I agree that if they use it to justify that it wasn't Rumple, but the curse then they did it wrong. Rumple even as a blank slate should make the same mistakes as he did before because that is just who he is and in his discussion with Emma, he does good, but then overrides it with bad. Rumple needs to learn his lesson. The Darkness makes it hard to choose right, but that isn't an excuse. It would be a bad lesson that you can fix your murderous, lying, and abusive ways via magic ex machina, when others have had to work for it. Totally agree that this should not be an instafix for Rumple.

However, as you point out, the Darkness gives greater potential for making the wrong choices. Or in other words, it increases the likelihood that the person will make the wrong choice. I think what we need to see is Rumple, now rid of the Dark One, struggling to make the right choices, and we need to see Belle and the others encouraging Rumple to choose wisely. And we need to see Rumple both succeed and fail.

And let's face it, even with the Dark One, Rumple ocassionally made good choices. Singlehandedly ending the Ogre Wars has to be considered a right and good choice. Willingness to Sacrifice himself against Pan, while selfishly motivated at certain levels, was probably the good choice. Heck, willingness to temporarily bury the hatchet between him and Killian during the Neverland arc should count for something.

Maybe as one of the first acts for Rumples redemption is returning all of the items in his shop to their rightful owners, and restoring things that need restored (Like Gepetto's parents).