Perhaps Neverland and Peter’s evil are all part of a bargain gone wrong? I’m wondering if there isn’t a scenario where Rumple made a bargain to have Peter’s shadow seek out Bae (since it could travel to our world) but perhaps Peter twisted that bargain around, thereby creating some of the animosity between them. After all if Peter was the one that caused a deal to go sour, it would explain why he was friendly and cordial and Rumple was furious. Peter lost nothing and has no reason to be mad as he “won” in a bargain against the Dark One.
I do think it’s a distinct possibility that Rumple went looking for Pan’s help in finding a boy in another land. (If Rumple had been taken to NL himself a child, that could explain how Rumple would have known to ask that of Pan.) I also like the idea that Pan agreed to help, then screwed Rumple over, though I don’t think that’d be necessary in order to establish Pan as the dominant one in the relationship. (For me, that’s taken care of if the brothers theory proves true, because Rumple is the younger, resented, bullied brother.) I could also see it that Rumple asked Pan for help, and he refused, which is why Rumple kept pursuing the Curse instead.
Perhaps the young and not-evil Peter was befriended or quasi-adopted by Rumple, or at least trusted. Perhaps this is just after losing Bae, when Rumple wasn’t the hilariously evil baddie we love and know- his trickster persona having not been fully developed yet. If the two met, and Rumple trusted him, it’s possible he may have shared the story of his own upbringing with a still-human-not-yet-immortal-and-evil Peter.
That wouldn’t allow much time for Pan to have been ruling NL though, because it was only about 7 months FTL/OurWorld time between Rumple losing Bae, and Bae ending up in NL, and I got the sense that Pan was WELL established in NL by the time Bae got there.
So I think that Pan also has at least a magical item which he used to cut off his own shadow. It might be another magical dagger with the origin like the dark one’s.
Pan does have a dagger. I was messing around with a screencap of it in Photoshop, but you still can’t really see it that well because the original screencap was so dark. It looks like a straight edged blade, unlike Rumple’s, but it also looks like it might have a pattern etched on the blade, similar to Rumple’s. The lightened up screencap is far from conclusive, but FWIW…
