Tiara_Rose: You assume that due to the curse and losing his magic,his leg would go back to his old limping state. But he is Rupalstiltskin, he made the curse. He plans things out to a ridiculous degree, why would he do anything that reverts him back to a criple? To have a weakness that would leave him vulnerable? Sorry I don’t buy that. Plus why would the curse be designed to undo magic? It just cuts it off from the moment they land in our world, not the period before. All Rumpel/Gold’s contracts are still in place… just have gotten an ‘earthly’ sauce poured over them. Which is just another reason to believe mr. Gold still has (weak) magic in season one.
Yes, he has a cane, but I watched closely and he hardly leans on it. He doesn’t need the cane. He can pretend well enough though, he had years of experience.
The assumption he gets his magic back when he hears Emma’s name is just that. He doesn’t know what she looks like after all, of course he will be surprised to see her. And I think he knew perfectly well Henry was Emma’s and what that meant, when he chose Henry as Regina’s foster child, a decade earlier.