When I see Hook in the show, he seems to have two different personas – Killian Jones and Captain Hook - which blend together to create a character which can actually be very difficult to get straight in my head. Killian Jones is arrogant, rude and sharp-tongued to the point of cruelty. He’s also hopelessly in love, prepared to die for his crew if need be and brave and proud in the face of death. Captain Hook is all this and yet completely different. He still has a razor-sharp tongue but his words are edged with not just cruelty but malice. He’s Killian with a whole lot more darkness at his core. Devastated by the loss of his beloved he closed off his heart completely and makes avenging her his reason for living. Faced with death Hook would act according to the situation – if he had killed Rumplestiltskin then he would face death with open arms, having completed his life’s work he feels he now deserves a life with the women he failed to protect all those years ago. On the other hand, if he is facing death without getting his revenge he’s panicked because everything he’s done in the past three centuries has been a waste but more so because he is not yet worthy of joining Milah. Failing her once nearly killed him, failing her twice would be intolerable.
In the episode “Tallahassee” he’s all Killian Jones on the surface. He wants to switch allegiances from the unstable Cora to the four women who, while without magic, are just as fearsome in their own way. True to J M Barrie’s Hook, Killian is extremely intuitive - to an almost feminine degree. He picks up on Emma’s insecurities and hurts the way no-one in the show has done before, including Emma’s own mother. However, underneath the veneer of Killian is Captain Hook. He has not forgotten why he’s doing any of this he’s just using who he used to be to soften the edge of who he is now so his new allies don’t run a mile. Just as Jones was able to get under Emma’s skin she was able to see through him about Milah. She manages to pierce through three hundred years’ worth of bitterness and darkness to the man he really is underneath. On top of the beanstalk for the very first time we are able to see right to his core. We see how real and raw his loss still is, even after three hundred years. Becoming Captain Hook and allowing revenge to dictate his life and actions he stopped himself being able to grieve and heal from her loss and, like wounds of the body, the wound of the heart festered until it was near incurable.
Even during his quest for revenge, though, he keeps to his code. There are lines he won’t cross and although desperation may make him bend them a little, he tries to keep what little shreds of honour he has allowed himself. He has a thing with hearts. After Rumplestiltskin tore out Milah’s heart and turned it to ash, Killian got a tattoo with her name on a heart and Rumplestiltskin’s dagger. He didn’t shoot Belle, he shot Rumlestiltskin’s heart. He took Aurora’s heart in desperation, knowing that time to leave for Storybrooke was coming fast and he had no allies to get him there. But he would not allow her to lose it forever. He leans over the portal, compass-less and holding onto Emma’s leg to balance himself, to catch it and give it to Mulan to bring back to Aurora.
There are people who hate his innuendoes and those who love them. (I’m in the latter group, sort of ashamed to admit.) Even though they can get a little over the top I find them amusing but what I find really interesting is that you can tell a lot about his mood and state of mind from them. At the start they were harmless and light-hearted, designed to needle the girls more than anything else. After Emma left him at the top of the beanstalk they became darker, cruder, and maybe even slightly threatening (Lake Nostros, for example). They darkened with his personality and the shift in his personas. After he was abandoned, he had no need to keep up the charade of Killian Jones so he let himself be who he had been for the past three hundred years: Hook.
In the last episode we saw a shift in him again, something that hasn’t happened in three hundred years. He thought he had gotten his revenge and he was ready to accept his death because he believed it was coming at the hands of Greg and Tamara. But for the first time he didn’t want to die, not because he hadn’t already gotten his revenge for Milah but because he wanted to live, for himself. He thought he had gotten revenge but it didn’t give his life any more meaning and it certainly didn’t fill the hole Milah left behind, he was just left empty. So he picked up another quest – saving Milah’s grandson like he had tried to take care of her son three centuries ago.
There was a time, fairly soon after Milah's death that Hook put aside his quest for revenge in order to take care of Milah's son. I believe he was genuine when he offered Bae a place on the Jolly Roger and told him that he wanted to be a family. He wanted to honour Milah's memory by doing right by her son instead of avenging her death. But Bae, who had already been poisoned against the idea of pirates because of what Rumple told him, spurned Hook's offer and Hook, all the while fighting grief and loss and the darkness caused by the death of the woman he loved, reverted to his original plans. For all intents and purposes, at this moment in time Bae was the only salvation Hook could see for himself, and when Bae refused him it was as though Hook was being refused a way to cherish Milah's memory without going down a path of darkness he knew it would be difficult to come back from.
There you have it, it’s all fairly obvious looking back on it but I wanted to get it out of my system.
In the episode “Tallahassee” he’s all Killian Jones on the surface. He wants to switch allegiances from the unstable Cora to the four women who, while without magic, are just as fearsome in their own way. True to J M Barrie’s Hook, Killian is extremely intuitive - to an almost feminine degree. He picks up on Emma’s insecurities and hurts the way no-one in the show has done before, including Emma’s own mother. However, underneath the veneer of Killian is Captain Hook. He has not forgotten why he’s doing any of this he’s just using who he used to be to soften the edge of who he is now so his new allies don’t run a mile. Just as Jones was able to get under Emma’s skin she was able to see through him about Milah. She manages to pierce through three hundred years’ worth of bitterness and darkness to the man he really is underneath. On top of the beanstalk for the very first time we are able to see right to his core. We see how real and raw his loss still is, even after three hundred years. Becoming Captain Hook and allowing revenge to dictate his life and actions he stopped himself being able to grieve and heal from her loss and, like wounds of the body, the wound of the heart festered until it was near incurable.
Even during his quest for revenge, though, he keeps to his code. There are lines he won’t cross and although desperation may make him bend them a little, he tries to keep what little shreds of honour he has allowed himself. He has a thing with hearts. After Rumplestiltskin tore out Milah’s heart and turned it to ash, Killian got a tattoo with her name on a heart and Rumplestiltskin’s dagger. He didn’t shoot Belle, he shot Rumlestiltskin’s heart. He took Aurora’s heart in desperation, knowing that time to leave for Storybrooke was coming fast and he had no allies to get him there. But he would not allow her to lose it forever. He leans over the portal, compass-less and holding onto Emma’s leg to balance himself, to catch it and give it to Mulan to bring back to Aurora.
There are people who hate his innuendoes and those who love them. (I’m in the latter group, sort of ashamed to admit.) Even though they can get a little over the top I find them amusing but what I find really interesting is that you can tell a lot about his mood and state of mind from them. At the start they were harmless and light-hearted, designed to needle the girls more than anything else. After Emma left him at the top of the beanstalk they became darker, cruder, and maybe even slightly threatening (Lake Nostros, for example). They darkened with his personality and the shift in his personas. After he was abandoned, he had no need to keep up the charade of Killian Jones so he let himself be who he had been for the past three hundred years: Hook.
In the last episode we saw a shift in him again, something that hasn’t happened in three hundred years. He thought he had gotten his revenge and he was ready to accept his death because he believed it was coming at the hands of Greg and Tamara. But for the first time he didn’t want to die, not because he hadn’t already gotten his revenge for Milah but because he wanted to live, for himself. He thought he had gotten revenge but it didn’t give his life any more meaning and it certainly didn’t fill the hole Milah left behind, he was just left empty. So he picked up another quest – saving Milah’s grandson like he had tried to take care of her son three centuries ago.
There was a time, fairly soon after Milah's death that Hook put aside his quest for revenge in order to take care of Milah's son. I believe he was genuine when he offered Bae a place on the Jolly Roger and told him that he wanted to be a family. He wanted to honour Milah's memory by doing right by her son instead of avenging her death. But Bae, who had already been poisoned against the idea of pirates because of what Rumple told him, spurned Hook's offer and Hook, all the while fighting grief and loss and the darkness caused by the death of the woman he loved, reverted to his original plans. For all intents and purposes, at this moment in time Bae was the only salvation Hook could see for himself, and when Bae refused him it was as though Hook was being refused a way to cherish Milah's memory without going down a path of darkness he knew it would be difficult to come back from.
There you have it, it’s all fairly obvious looking back on it but I wanted to get it out of my system.
