This is most likely a stupid question, considering the promotion leading up to the Neverland kiss (and how popular our ship is) but do you really think that they would advertise Captain Swan's first time, instead of us seeing it when we least suspect it in a random episode?
It’s not a stupid question.
You have to understand that my perspective is that of a big business lawyer. In my world, money runs everything. Money and egos, usually privileged white male egos. So I see everything that way.
I see Disney, which owns ABC, as a public corporation that owes a fiduciary duty to its shareholders to maximize profits while acting within its sound business judgment. I see Disney as run by executives who almost certainly all have bonus structures tied to stock performance, so they are personally incentivized to maximize Disney profit, without taking risks that could cause failures that get them fired.
They ALL see that OUAT is inches from the magical 100 episode mark, at which point a show has enough episodes to be saleable into syndication, which is really a gift that keeps on giving - money year after year for something they already bought and paid for (with minor amounts of money going to the actors etc which is how the Friends actors are all rich as f). And the more episodes in the bag after 100, the better.
They all see that CS drives audience and social media buzz, and they all see that Colin O’Donoghue is increasingly becoming a cash cow in terms of publicity. Disney/ABC care about audience because audience means eyeballs which means advertising dollars which is how this whole network goes round.
Disney/ABC saw all the buzz from the CS kiss. Epic. More publicity than they’d seen from a show in a long time, especially a non-Shonda show, and that’s especially appealing because Shonda is so hot that she has them by the balls, which no privileged white male likes, particularly when the holder is a black woman.
It’s been two years since the CS kiss. The audience has stayed with CS, maybe even grown (I don’t know the OUAT figures off hand). The audience has been clamoring for CS sex for literally years at this point. So ABC is sitting on a very, very valuable asset (CS sex). It has both a fiduciary obligation to maximize profit for Disney’s shareholders as well as self interest in ensuring that it gets the maximum return on its valuable asset.
Sweeps months are called that because that’s when the networks get to set their advertising rates for the next six months. So that’s why the networks pull out their most compelling plotlines - driving audience to drive up advertising rates. I cannot believe that ABC/Disney would not insist that any sex would be only during sweeps.
And the other way to ensure audience is to publicize the hell out of the episode. So yes, I am certain that ABC will insist that A&E/OUAT publicize the hell out of the CS sex, or at least hint the hell out of it - maybe a sneak peek or “next week on OUAT” that has a shot of a topless Emma from the back, or a shirtless Killian. Something new and sugestive that will make the internet go batshit and drive massive amounts of audience traffic to the next show, ideally the next several episodes during the entire sweeps month as we build towards CS sex.
From a storytelling perspective, A&E might prefer it to be a surprise. But they don’t pay for their show. Disney and ABC do. So regardless of whether it’s a better story for CS sex to be a surprise, ain’t no way that Disney/ABC isn’t going to maximize their return on investment when they finally cash in their biggest chip still in their box - CS sex.
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