I agree; this was a fantastic episode!
Personally, I don’t belive in such notions as Good and Evil. I think there are many levels of Self-Less and Selfish. The more Selfish one is, the more “evil” they can be said to be. To that end, Rumplestiltskin (from here on out I’ll just refer to as Rumps; although I love Rumplebeast 😀 ) is shown to be very selfish.
He’s a man who deeply resented not having power to protect his family from being pressed into war. And he selfishly protects his dark power in his contests with the evil queen, even at the cost of lossing a woman who loved him. Anyone ever see the 2008 movie Hancock? The movie where we learn the two immortals are “weak” when they’re together and in love, but “strong” when apart? This episode reminded me of that movie.