Alright i know i'm like 10 years late to the party but i just got halfway through season 5 of once upon a time and i have some THOUGHTS
spoilers beneath the cut (mostly bc i know the one person who follows me that might care about this is also currently watching the show)
brother let my boy rumplestiltskin keep a single fucking ounce of his character development im BEGGING
he's not a good person, we've established this over and over, but you keep giving him character development and letting him move past this self-serving behavior and then running it back literally as soon as possible
first he turns over a new leaf - slowly but surely - for belle, then we discover he's been lying to her. Okay, fine, makes sense. the neverland arc shows him bettering himself for Baelfire, belle, and henry, and literally fucking sacrificing himself to stop Pan, forever differentiating himself from his father. AWESOME. HUGE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.
then the show writers recognize that regina and rumplestiltskin are the two characters that make the show entertaining, so they bring him back LITERALLY INSTANTLY (i'm not mad that he's back, but i am mad that they didn't let him be dead for more than 20 minutes our time. instantly removed any sort of tension about him being dead and what happens now. they do this a lot)
I could gripe about the way they brought him back for AGES but that's not important right now. He backslides a bit, lies to belle some more - again, considering Baelfire is dead and his murderer is RIGHT in front of him, makes sense. But him handing belle a fake dagger while invoking Baelfire's name - the two people he explicitly sacrificed himself for and became a better man in the name of - and then agonizing over it is such a contrived issue??? Like he's afraid of losing his power, and he and belle have discussed this, but he keeps saying that he wants to do things right and not actually acting on it, and his plan is exceptionally stupid because what would he have done if belle tried to use the dagger without him around? STILL, not the dumbest choice, just very frustrating because it seems like he's reverted to pre-neverland. it also ends with a fantastic scene (him being exiled), so I can't be THAT mad.
Very few specific notes on S4 arc 2 - he's very much a villain considering all of his progress in past seasons, but okay, he's lost everything AND he's dying. He's desperate, and when it comes down to it, he asks to remember doing right by Baelfire - which is a fantastic character choice, because he DID. Baelfire did look up to him and love him at the end, but he just cannot recognize that. Then in the Bizarro universe, he's a paladin - the Light One - has a happy life with Belle, and his only secret is Baelfire - which isn't a secret in the real world. This should have been a start of him realizing that he CAN be happy with Belle and CAN avoid keeping secrets, and the real world sets him up for that opportunity when the Darkness gets purged from his heart.
So he learns to be Brave (TM), draws Excalibur from the stone, faces down Captain Hook for real this time AND the representation of who he used to be as the Dark One AND BEATS HIM, and then has another conversation with Dark!Hook and just... gives up? This is partially spurred on by Belle making a decision that makes very little sense with the rest of the season and previous choices, but is a fair choice to make, but RUMPLESTILTSKIN HAS ACKNOWLEDGED MULTIPLE TIMES HOW MUCH HE HAS HURT HER AND THAT HER NEEDING TIME AND SPACE NEEDS SENSE SO HE SHOULDN'T BE LOSING HOPE OVER IT NOW?!?!?!
So NOW, he decides that fighting is useless and power is the only answer and tricks Hook and Emma into making him the Dark One AGAIN AND NOT TELLING BELLE, nullifying ALL of his character development in EVERY SEASON PRIOR SO WHAT WAS THE FUCKING POINT
It's like the writers just didn't know how to handle a redeemed/redeeming Rumplestiltskin and just forced him to revert back to neutral/lawful evil instead of letting him naturally grow like Regina into lawful neutral or neutral good, like wtf happened? They had a good plotline going!
idk man im just pissed at this 10-15 year old show and needed to get it out
