ust to play devil’s advocate here, what else was Belle supposed to do to stop Neal? She tried reasoning with him. She tried to verbally dissuade Neal from using dark magic. Yet, he was intent on doing it anyway. Belle doesn’t have magic to stop him with, and she couldn’t very well physically restrain him. Belle is a 5’2″ tall and probably weighs 115 lbs. compared to Neal being 5’9″ and weighing about 180 lbs, so she couldn’t easily tackle him to the ground. My point is there was no real way for Belle to prevent Neal from using the key to bring back Rumple.
Belle was also totally OOC in that episode. Belle spent the entire present day researching but for some reason neglected to do that in the past????? BELLE?! Didn’t research?! WHAT