I agree, MysteryKat, this year we are learning nifty shadow tricks. I am reluctantly warming to the Rumple and Pan as brothers. Perhaps though they are spiritual brothers of a curse that does not belong to the realm they are in. I would like it if this storyline is setting up the back half of the season. So we end NL finding out that Pan is to NL as Rumple is to the EF. In both cases they are strong, powerful, evenly matched in some ways but opposite. What if Pan searched for his father just as Rumple searched for his son? Like Rumple thinks, he found him too late and it marked a shift to a loss of belief that began to eat away at magic, because hope is the strongest magic, and both lose hope.
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass