SPOILERS: Is Hook the New Savior for Once Upon a Time?

With Emma Swan having become the Dark One, one of the biggest questions has been who will step up and save everyone and become the new savior on Once Upon a Time?

While a lot of the clues point towards Regina becoming the new Savior, and everyone is pushing her to step up. However, there is a glaring reason why it makes sense that she wouldn't be.

How do we know Regina isn't the Savior?

People tend to forget that Rumplestiltskin was omniscient, able to see many different aspects of the future. While it may seem cruel, Emma being so emphatic about the fact that she KNOWS Regina can't be the Savior points very much in the direction that she already knows what is going to happen. Which is that Regina isn't the one to save everybody.

So who could? The answer is very simple:

It very likely could be Hook.

While in the most recent episode it looks as though the couple has parted ways for the time being, we already know that on Once Upon a Time even when a couple goes through hard times and can't be together anymore they always find a way back to each other. This has happened with Every. Single. Pairing. Frankly, it was only a matter of time before this happened to Hook and Emma.

However, one thing that has been mentioned numerous times throughout the episodes is that Emma does still care for two people, her son Henry and Hook. When Jennifer Morrison was asked if this meant the end for Hook and Emma, she was very very strong in her response:

"No absolutely not, no, no. No, she... Hook was once a villain, he spent hundreds of years being villainous. So.. he's overcome it.. but .. uh.. Just because she's the Dark One doesn't mean she doesn't love him anymore."

While it is good that their relationship isn't in any real danger, it does beg the question of what role he plays in her life now that she is the Dark One. She does have an answer for this as well, however:

"We're going to start to see that some ... a LOT of her selfishness and a lot of the things she does she's actually doing BECAUSE of her love for Hook."

All that being said, it seems as though her character is leaning a lot on Hook, and on what he does for her. During the past few episodes, the point of her getting Excalibur from the stone was so that she could combine it with her dagger so she can take the light magic out of herself forever. Only a hero, however, can pull the sword away from the stone.

How Hook comes in...

Right now the cast and crew are filming one of the final episodes before the mid-season finale, this one entitled "The Broken Heart." We know that this is the episode where we finally meet Hook's father and get more of his backstory, which in Once speak usually means a coinciding story of what is going on now with his character. While shooting yesterday, it was shown that Hook and Rumplestiltskin are fighting on the Jolly Roger.

While Rumple's sword is very straight forward, if you look at the sword in Hook's hand you can see the distinct markings of the design that is on Excalibur. Since it is clearly at sword length, it gives us reason to believe that Emma was successful in matching the two halves of the sword.

While the upper half of the sword has Emma's name on it as "The Dark One" below that you can see the name "Killian Jones" written on the sword. If the dagger is supposed to represent a villain, as there has been a lot of mention of the parallels between that kind of person or magic, then the sword would represent the hero that is able to wield Excalibur. With his name written clearly on the sword, it goes without reason that Hook is the hero that the sword was meant for.

Which brings back the idea of Emma knowing what will happen and doing everything she can to help bring the man she loves up to the position that he was intended for. Jennifer goes deeper into it explaining:

"[Reasons for doing things] is not going to all start to line up and make sense right away, we'll see that slowly over time but she definitely completely is devoted to her love for him and that doesn't change because of her darkness it's just her tactics change."

That being said, while it looks like she is trying to get the sword to get rid of her light and love, she may be trying to get it so that Hook can save her and the rest of the kingdom. Only time will tell, but it definitely looks like Hook will have his work cut out for him by the end of the season.