On the other hand, B&B is a really popular Disney cartoon, and A&E might not want to disappoint fan-girls of the Rumple and Belle pairing. So maybe the writers could find a way to wrap up Rumple’s story without necessarily killing him off, and instead write him as having his curse undone by TLK and then packing him off to A Land Without Magic so as to avoid the temptation that magic in SB has to offer. Maybe Rumple’s happy ending could simply be starting over again away from all the crazy once his dark one curse is broken.
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Regarding Rumple and the TLK route — I wonder if it’s even an option for him at this stage (even when his relationship with Belle hadn’t yet gone down the way of the dinosaur, I think it might have not been an option). I am reminded of Cora’s final line, upon seeing Regina after her heart had been reinserted, to the effect that “(Regina) would have been enough.” The impression I got was that without her heart, Cora still loved Regina, just in a way that was fundamentally selfish, or rather non-transformative of her as a character. Case in point, she was making choices for Regina according to what Cora herself would have wanted for herself (climbing the social ladder). And we’re given the impression that this is actually a kind of physical condition. So if Rumple’s heart has been progressively shriveling/getting darker, then what he’s probably losing is the capacity to feel anything beyond these ultimately selfish, myopic emotions. So no TLK for him even if he were willing: in a sense, when it had been possible, he was unwilling, and now it’s far too late. At least that’s my impression. It would explain why he’s saying to Belle “While it still matters…” — perhaps, as the darkness takes over,he’s actually going to lose all his capacity for any kind of positive human emotion. This, too, is in line with the whole didactic “Rumple as addict” metaphor that the show seems to have going. (*annoyed eyeroll*)
About ratings — I wouldn’t be surprised if they let Robert Carlyle go, even if it’s perhaps not what E&A intended originally, but I can see how RC might have been frustrated with what the writers did with his character. I’d personally would have preferred if they had kept him in the ambiguous “trickster” Loki-esque (in the Norse mythology sense, not Thor) role. He does those so well, and manages to make rather objectionable dirtbags actually likeable or rootable for — say, Dr Rush out of SGU (which was, otherwise, an mindbogglingly awful show). But, c’est la vie…