Hmm, well I don’t know if I think they think he’s changed, but I think he has – and we saw that through S2 and NL until that culmination in Going Home. I will conceded that Eddy is explained how haunted Gold was, but I didn’t see any props for his sacrifice, just that he did the only thing available to him.
Rumple may have tried every avenue available to him to avoid death like trying to murder Henry in 2×21 (it’s his “nasty habit of self-preservation”), but by 3×4, Rumple was truly ready to face his fears. By 3×8 he walked into Skull Rock to face his dear old dad, thinking he’d found a way to defeat PP with Pandora’s Box, only to be ticked and trapped himself. But by 3×11 when PP locked him in the anti-magic cuff, Rumple realized he had but two options: cut of his hand to get back his magic or face his destiny like a man without any magic by stabbing PP and himself with his dagger. The old Rumple turned to self-mutilation to get out of the Ogres War and relied on magic to save Baelfire. The new Rumple forwent self-mutilation and magic to finally face that prophesy that “the boy” (aka Peter Pan) would be his undoing.
"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy