Totally agree, hjbau. No way is Rumple/Gold’s ultimate goal only to beat EQ/Regina. If that was the case – what’s been stopping him from taking a Moe French moment with his cane on her? He definately has his own agenda. And I also agree that Regina is extremely vindictive – death isn’t her agenda for people, misery and control is. When she can’t find a way to keep them controlled and miserable anymore that’s when she decides to kill someone.
I do wonder whether Regina and Gold know about Jefferson. It’s another one of those moments that keeps making me go back and forth on who I think August might be. If August is Bae and he is adding pages to the book to help Emma believe, it could be that Gold knows that August is Bae and knows that he is in town and the two of them are working together to get Emma to believe. So it’s possible August added the pages about Jefferson which would mean that Gold knows that Jefferson has been in town – but potentially Regina does not. And since it seems that August just recently showed up in town, it could be that August has knowledge of Jefferson and Regina’s relationship because he knows how to travel from one reality to the next. So potentially Gold pretended to be working with Regina in order to give Emma time with Jefferson so she could gain more knowledge that would make her start to believe.