No, Bolaire does not want to wear Hal.
I have seen this take a lot, and I want to explain why it is wrong, because the truth is much, much more interesting than that.
The main argument I've seen as to why people think Bolaire wants to wear Hal is that right before the body swap, Bolaire doesn't warn Hal about the rune on his back side. The problem with this argument is that Bolaire has already told Hal about how his body snatching works.
I understand why people forgot this; for us it's been 18 episodes, but for Hal and Bolaire, it has been two days. Let's rewind the tape to episode 4:
And earlier tonight to revisit the time in Speak No Evil, that den of fiendish magic down in The Fray when our dear friend Aubrus Drime cast Sleep on Bolaire. Bolaire, you remember the unconsciousness and waking up as Aubrus Drime looked at the rune in the center of the mask, became enchanted and charmed, put the mask on. And there was Bolaire looking at his old body before the glass cleaver came into his hand.
I pulled my own clothes off of my old body, chopped my old body up, threw most of it in the fire. I have a few things just to make sure. Cleaned up, put my clothes back on, and came here for a nice shower.
The way that Taliesin picks up where Brennan left off here, and he is speaking in Bolaire voice in this bit, it's quite clear that Bolaire said aloud all of the things that Brennan just narrated, and continued it up to the present moment. (Re-listen to this bit if you like.) Hal heard the story of how Bolaire body-snatched Aubrus, including the enchanting rune, just two days before this night in the sewer. Hal knew about the rune already, so Bolaire didn't need to warn him.
Moving past the obvious practical considerations, it simply does not make sense for Bolaire as a character to want to wear Hal.
First of all, it's pretty clear that Bolaire loves Hal, loves his kids, and loves his art. (Please don't quibble with me about what type of love it is; I'm aro-spec and I don't care.) If Bolaire wore Hal, his kids would be very distressed, and Hal presumably wouldn't be able to make his art anymore. Bolaire does not want that.
Bolaire has a very particular attitude toward his own hosts and his body-snatching. Bolaire has intense body dysmorphia about wearing people. He does not find the body-snatching enjoyable. He tells Hal that this is the worst part of himself. I think there's a lot of indirect evidence that Bolaire feels some measure of guilt about the murder that sustains his existence. In the episode 13 cold open, he apologized to Castep for taking him over, and went on to fight for the rest of the Falconer's Rebellion as a kind of "repayment" to Castep for the use of his body. I think his use of Castep as a disguise in the present may also point toward some guilt about him. Furthermore, Bolaire's moral dilemma to King Gus in ep 21 about the innocent getting punished vs the guilty going free indicates that he targets criminals as his victims, seeing them as guilty people going free and himself as the punishment that society has failed to mete out. This is his way of compartmentalizing and justifying his own horrific actions to himself. Aubrus Drime was a brute, a fence, and a narc (as per this episode), and the Crow Keeper he just took over beat up a poor grad student to get ready to sell him to a mold monster, so Bolaire tells himself they deserve this fate.
Wearing Hal would completely shatter this compartmentalization and self-justification. If Bolaire took over someone he loved, he would have to directly face down the horror of what he is and what he does to survive. Bolaire does not want that.
What I find honestly sad about the take that Bolaire is a heartless manipulator who wants to wear Hal, and Hal a mere hapless victim of his depredations, is that it completely removes Hal's agency. As I said above, Hal knew that Bolaire has a rune that enchants people, and he chose to look at it anyway. Hal is a smart, grown-ass man fully capable of making dipshit terrible fucked up choices, and as a point of fact, there are several reasons why it would make sense for Hal to make this dipshit terrible fucked up choice with his eyes wide open.
First of all, much like Bolaire, Hal has a fixation on truth. He clearly wants to understand the truth of Bolaire on every level; that's why he went to the library, that's why he chose to see Bolaire at his worst, that's why he chose to stab him through the chest.
Second of all, Hal was clearly deeply intrigued by the Ultimate Cosmic Applause that he heard when he brought the mask close. That's got to be quite something for a curious bard to hear. Just as Hal represents the pinnacle of theater to Bolaire, I think Bolaire now represents a kind of cosmic pinnacle of theater to Hal.
Third, Hal has been dissociating like crazy this arc and has generally been going through a very bad time, and I can honestly see why the thought of surrendering himself over so that someone else can run his life for him would actually be appealing.
The truth of what happened in episode 22 was that Hal on some level wanted to give himself over to Bolaire, even though Bolaire himself does not want that, which I find so, so much more fucked up and fascinating than the simplistic "Nasty Bolaire manipulated poor baby Hal into putting him on."
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