Another piece of maybe silly speculation about 5b/Underworld (first part). As @anothershadeofgreen pointed out (if you are SQ shippers or sympathizers and you still haven’t read her metas, you don’t know how much genius you are missing), Regina and Hook sorta dying and going to the Underworld parallels what happened in the s4 finale AU, that would be foreshadowing of all season 5. I see another blatant parallel in Rumple’s new role as hero, and maybe we’ll have another one when we’ll see how Snowing failed Emma in Camelot (if, for example, they will try to restrain her physically from using dark magic).
So what else did we have? Among other things, we had two exchanges, one between the Author and Rumple, the other one between the Apprentice and Henry, about Neal not coming back from the dead. Now, these scenes kinda pissed me off. Why do you have to talk about Neal just to make sure we know we are not going to see him again? Cruel much!
Then we come to 5x05, with so many references to Neal that our fandom, used to suffer and cry, almost exploded with joy. But they were so many that, after the first bloom of happiness, they made me suspicious.
I’ll go to my point. They will probably parallel Hercules in 5b, but there’s no enough underworld stuff in that movie to fill an entire half season. They will take something from Dante’s Divina Commedia, I suppose, first of all Hook and Regina meeting people from their past (Cora is confirmed to return in 5b premiere). What if they are also taking from Dante the idea of a guide through hell? A wise and good dead man? Like Neal? That would explain why they made sure to tell us that Neal is very much dead but also to bring back his memory now. It would lead to some interesting interactions between him and Hook. And we have all three Emma’s love interests (canon or not) hanging out together without her. That would be so entertaining to watch.
And we’ll have our precious hero back.
