Fandom Thought of the Day(ish) #24--Once Upon A Time: Fool Me Thrice...
It's not a secret to anyone I know that the Once Upon a Time season finale disappointed me. I've ranted about it live as much as I can. But I haven't said anything here, and now that we've finished up the Week Of Bad Finales, it seems like as good a time as any to restart this blog. For my first post: Foll Me Thrice, or, Why Rumpelstiltskin Would Never Bring Back Magic.
Let's start with the obvious: Why he would. There's really only one reason Rumpelstiltskin does anything this big: To get Baelfire back. At the point where he brought magic, there's the added benefit of protecting Belle. We'll start with the more dominant reason--Bae.
Let's start with the obvious: Why he would. There's really only one reason Rumpelstiltskin does anything this big: To get Baelfire back. At the point where he brought magic, there's the added benefit of protecting Belle. We'll start with the more dominant reason--Bae.
- Bae doesn't want his Papa to have magic. He made it very clear that the person Rumpelstiltskin was with magic wasn't his father and he didn't like him. He made a deal with a fairy to go to a world without magic because "He didn't want [Rumpelstiltskin] dabbling." And speaking of...
- Rumpelstiltskin, just three episodes ago, admitted Bae was right. About everything. Including, presumably, magic being bad for him. Getting his son back through magic isn't going to get him his son back at all, and he knows it.
- The other dominant reasoning for Rumpelstiltskin's actions is Belle. He just got her back, Regina was mistreating her, he needs to protect her and he needs power to do that. Except--Belle loves him. She loves him with a True Love that is so strong her kiss will break his curse, thus taking away his power. His having a relationship with her is, like one with Bae, incompatible with his having magic.
- Besides that, Regina is nothing now. She's a mayor whose entire town hates her. She's not going to be in power after the next election. She's not going to be anything after the next election. Mr. Gold, on the other hand, will still own the town--and he will still have a favor to cash in from the sheriff who everyone now knows as their savior. He is one of the two most powerful people in the town, and the other isn't Regina, not anymore. The other is Emma, and she owes him a favor. So he didn't make his job any easier by bringing back magic--he made it impossible.
- Rumpelstiltskin is brilliant. He's clever. Very clever. He turned the tables on August Baelfire Pinocchio when Pinocchio had a knife and he had a bad leg. He tricked Regina into getting him out of assault charges in exchange for basically nothing. He knows what he's done wrong--he spelled it out in "The Return." He knows what's gone wrong and he knows he won't get a different result if he does it again. He would not do this.