Rumpelstiltskin is still The Dark One and Storybrooke should stop forgetting it 

\'Once Upon a Time\': Rumpelstiltskin is still The Dark One and Storybrooke should stop forgetting it

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Rumpelstiltskin is proving once again that he\'s the baddest villain on "Once Upon a Time," sorry Snow Queen. 

For everyone wondering what the deal is with the Sorcerer\'s Apprentice hat that Rumpel discovered in the Season 4 premiere, they got the entire backstory on the Oct. 19 episode, complete with walking broom! 

Unfortunately, it was Killian that gave Rumpel the leverage he needed to put his newest sinister plot into action. Hook is just trying to have a normal, pleasant date with Emma and goes to Mr. Gold to get his original hand back. Gold tries to warn him that the hand belonged to the man he

used to be, but Killian is sure that he can handle it. 

Yeah. He was thinking way too much about Emma in that peach dress than he was about common sense because Gold has never given a warning that didn\'t need to be headed. Needless to say, Killian starts experiencing some violent urges (at the expense of the Knave\'s face) and goes back to Gold for help. 

Really? Even knowing that Killian isn\'t up on modern day phrases like "Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me," -- shouldn\'t he get that making deals with Gold isn\'t beneficial and threatening him with the same thing over and over isn\'t going to do anything? 

As Robert Carlyle (Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold) eloquently puts it to a group of reporters including  Zap2it on a recent "Once Upon a Time" set visit, "He doesn\'t care about Hook. Hook came to him, so he started it. To Rumple, he deserves to die, but he deserved to die a long time ago because he tried to kill him, remember. So this is just sort of what goes around comes around."

Hook gets manipulated into helping Gold trap the Sorcerer\'s Apprentice in the hat he had been protecting for centuries. Through flashbacks the audience learns that Rumpel has been after the hat for a long time, knowing that if it collects enough power he can use it to free himself from the control of the dagger. Back in the Enchanted Forest, it\'s precious Anna he manipulates into helping him take down the apprentice. 

"He forces her to make a decision by manipulating her into truly hating him, basically," actress Elizabeth Lail says during the same visit. "So that darkness is like a pure hate that is capable of doing what all humans are capable of doing, which is hurting someone else -- which is not true to Anna\'s spine, but he brings that out of her."

Carlyle urges that it\'s not personal, "It\'s not necessarily Anna, it\'s just someone of pure innocence. She happens to come along and he says \'You\'ll do. And he needs this person to face their darkest fears, their darkest thoughts, so he gets her to do that." 

Anna isn\'t as easily fooled as he thinks though, as she gets control of the dagger in a struggle and forces Rumpel to send her back to Arendelle -- with the hat. Finally, someone who learns to stop taking Rumpelstiltskin at face value. 

Upcoming episodes will have to bridge the gap of how the hat made it from Arendelle back to Storybrooke, but in the meantime Mr. Gold has got Hook in his clutches and Hook will be The Dark One\'s puppet in an effort to stop Emma from finding out his brief dalliance with the dark side. 

Meanwhile, audiences now know that Rumpelstiltskin is on the hunt for power and with Elsa, the Snow Queen, Emma and Regina all in Storybrooke ripe for the picking, only bad things lay ahead -- proving yet again that when it comes to playing dark, Rumpelstiltskin is still the master. 

The question still remains why does everyone in this town keep forgetting what he\'s capable of doing? 

"Once Upon a Time" Season 4 continues on Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC. 

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