So what will Rumple have to do to earn Belle’s forgiveness at this point? What would make this ship work again for those who have jumped ship based on Rumple’s behavior since S4 started?
I’m not sure the ship is recuperable because I’m not sure Rumple’s character is recuperable. Rumple’s original appeal as a character stemmed from the fact that he was written with enough room for interpretation, and RC’s layered acting really highlighted this. I think when people say Rumple was retconned (while other people claim that he’d always been obsessed with power), it is a testament to that original ambivalent complexity. As the show developed, the writers narrowed Rumple down, trying to “fix” the audience’s interpretation, thus recasting the entire character arc as a single dimension of that originally much more complex construct. Similarly, in the early seasons, Rumple’s relationship with Belle had a life of its own. It was underdetermined, but it was given room to breathe. By contrast, the further we go, the more the relationship is portrayed as didactic.
I think Rumbelle serves 3 purposes, none of which have to do with any sort of organic narrative development. First, it’s there to serve Rumple’s characterization. And Rumple’s characterization is itself only there to serve the purposes of PLOT — more often than not, to fill the “villain” vacuum when the show demands it. Second, it sometimes is used to nod in the general direction of the half-baked conceptual themes that OUAT attempts to raise but actually never fully explores — like the business of changing another person. And third, it serves as foil to whatever other relationships are being highlighted and peddled. Functionally, Rumbelle is the stand-in misfit relationship on the show. I suspect they’re there to enable a sense of schadenfreude — “good things it’s not me.”
In this sense, I’m afraid there is nothing to “fix.” Both Rumple and Rumbelle fulfill a specific role on the show, and it’s unlikely that this role will change.