Once Upon A Time: 20 Things That Make No Sense About Hook

During the first season of Once Upon A Time, there was really only one male main character viewers were meant to root for – Josh Dallas’s affable David Nolan, also known as the beyond loyal Prince Charming. By the time the second season rolled around, however, the series decided to introduce Killian Jones, the pirate who would become Captain Hook.

Played by Colin O’Donoghue, Hook was perhaps one of the series’ campiest villains at first, which says something considering the rampant overacting by both Rumpelstiltskin’s and The Evil Queen’s portrayers. An utterly one note character for the entire second season, and even most of the third, Hook was rapidly given more and more importance in the narrative, no matter the fact that he never really fit in there.

For better or worse, Hook remained in a fixture in the series for the remainder of its run, even as O’Donoghue’s acting failed to feel up to par with the heavier material they tried to give Hook in later years. Hook was never made to be a sympathetic character – audiences were told he had changed, when in reality, the pirate was perhaps one of the least likely to change in the entire cast of characters.

With that said, here are the 20 Things That Make No Sense About Hook.

He was allowed to become a hero

Being a criminal who takes lives is more or less a precondition for being a villain on Once Upon A Time. It’s also, somehow, a requirement for being a character the series decides is capable of being redeemed, no matter said character’s reliance upon past toxic behaviors and inability to apologize for any of their past misdeeds. To be fair, Hook did try, on a few occasions, to change, and to make amends – certainly more than other villains such as The Evil Queen, Rumple, or Zelena ever did.

However, without fail, every attempt at bettering himself fell short, revealing the ugly truth of his nature inside and consistently disappointing everyone around him, if not outright alienating them time and again.

Yet, he was considered a hero, one who would be forgiven for everything, no matter how cruel.

His drinking problem was never seriously addressed

It’s not exactly surprising that a pirate character would be shown to drink quite often, especially when it comes to the pirate’s preferred drink of rum. Once certainly takes great pleasure in making jokes about Hook’s fondness of drinking, his willingness to use rum as a solution for everything, and his tendency to black out in the past from drinking too enthusiastically in the bars he and his fellow pirates frequented.

The jokes the show has its characters make, especially the ones made by Regina, are always incredibly tasteless. In the alternate reality, Hook is a malicious, overweight old drunk, and it’s entirely played off for laughs, even by the real Hook’s significant other, Emma. However, worst of all is the show’s casual treatment of what is clearly a very serious issue.

Why he wore eyeliner

Did you know that Captain Hook spends a lot of his time brooding and sulking over past events in his life and the countless vendettas he holds? We bet you probably never would’ve known that, had the series not gone to great lengths to encircle his eyes with the heaviest, most unnecessary display of eyeliner – or, in this case, “guyliner” – seen on television in a long time.

For some reason, guyliner has become entirely conflated with pirates. Look no further than the ridiculous example of Captain Jack Sparrow in the Disney movie franchise Pirates of the Caribbean. However, Hook really has no reason to be going so heavy handed on the makeup, especially when he’s in modern times, and no longer serving as piratesque a role.

His friendship with Belle

It’s natural for relationships to change and grow over the course of a series. What would be the point, after all, if people remained static and nothing ever developed – or, in some cases, regressed?

However, what is particularly hard to abide by in the case of Once Upon A Time is the decision to forge a friendship between Captain Hook and Belle French, Beauty and the Beast’s Beauty and the wife of his sworn nemesis Rumpelstiltskin.

It’s one thing to befriend your enemy’s wife: things happen, and there’s really no stopping friendships and affection from forming. However, it’s another thing entirely for the series to try to bill these two as a healthy friendship, considering that, in the past, Hook once knocked her out with a sucker punch, and later shot her and caused her to lose her memory.

Why he never change his clothes

Some characters on Once Upon A Time definitely got the short end of the stick in terms of what they were allowed to wear. Take, for example, the characters from Frozen, who were too recent and too popular to be allowed to change out of their signature Disneyfied outfits at any time during their half season arc.

However, for a character like Captain Hook, who is himself already so far removed from the Disney character whose inspiration he shares, it really makes no sense that, for the most part, he remained limited to one or two outfits. In the Enchanted Forest, he would occasionally switch things up with a different colored waistcoat, but in Storybrooke, he essentially wore the same all black, mostly leather outfit every single day.

The ableist handling of his disability

Just when you thought Once Upon A Time couldn’t possibly get worse than the way they handle Hook’s addiction storyline, they manage to outdo themselves in terms of offensiveness in the way they treat his disability. Captain Hook is always disabled, in every adaptation; he wouldn’t be Captain Hook if he weren’t, after all. However, few adaptations handle his disability this shamefully.

Whether it’s Regina frequently referring to him as “one-handed,” his own brief storyline of wanting to magically reattach his hand to “be enough” for Emma, or how often the series even conceals his disability as a whole by having him wear a false handed glove instead of his hook, Once fails to provide a disability-friendly portrayal in each and every aspect of his character.

His friendship with Charming

Speaking of friendships that make absolutely no sense, nothing says “we’re gonna be best bros forever!” like the man who once hit on your wife, or the man who once tried to take your life, or the man who, as it turns out, was responsible for your own father’s tragic fate. Yet time and again, no matter every possible reason for them to hate each other that the writers come up with, Hook and Charming are somehow portrayed as the best of friends, even as Hook’s relationship with Emma grows more questionable.

To be fair, Hook did also save Charming’s life in Neverland, but the duo so quickly brush past all animosity to become friends that it’s beyond unrealistic.

The fact that Charming is even okay with being in the same room as Hook, never mind seeing him marry his only daughter, after learning Hook took down his father is just unthinkable.

His rescue via Zeus ex machina

For much of its run, the rules of Once Upon A Time’s universe are pretty clear: magic is not meant to be used to bring the no longer living back to life. Characters such as Neal, Graham, Robin, and various other supporting characters met surprising, sudden ends, and were never seen or heard from again. When it comes to Hook, however, suddenly all the rules can change. Half a season is devoted to journeying to the Underworld to try and save him from his unjust end.

Except, of course, for the fact that he had embraced his villainy as fully as ever just before he met his end. However, none of that matters: the series pulls off the ultimate deus ex machina – in this case, Zeus ex machina – by having the Greek god himself return Hook to the world of the living.

He never apologized for his actions as the Dark One

Hook’s arrival in the Underworld came about just after he had fully embraced the darkness that came with being forced into the role of the Dark One. However, unlike with other characters who descended into the darkest role of all, Hook was never forced to apologize or atone for any of the evil acts he committed as Dark One – no matter how truly reprehensible they were.

While under the darkness’s sway, he was responsible for the sudden, violent demise of Merlin. He also cast a curse that affected all of Storybrooke. He demeaned and humiliated Emma when she tried to apologize for her own misgivings, and as if that weren’t already enough, he publicly tried to take down the entire Charming family.

The creepy age differences between him, Neal, and Emma

Once Upon A Time is a series that finds itself preoccupied by what happened in the past, almost to the point that the flashback sequences overweigh anything that is happening in the present. One of the icky consequences of this fact is it exposes the disturbing reality of the age differences in the series.

In the past, Captain Hook cared for and looked after a very young Baelfire, who would grow up to become Neal, a teenage Emma’s older boyfriend.

Viewers are expected to cast all of this knowledge aside when they view the relationship between the nearly 300-year-old Hook and the twenty-something Emma, as it is in turn meant to be considered one of the series’ True Love stories, somehow.