409 Sneak Peeks

I realize that S4 has only given us three scenes that weren’t cut to actually see Rumple’s softer side, so it’s easy to assume he’s lost it completely, but I still see it there. He might not put Belle ahead of his goals with the hat, but he’d definitely do anything else to protect her.

I agree. Also I think Rumple feels he has to lie to Belle about the hat because he knows she’d disapprove but after his experience with being controlled by the dagger (in which Zelena ordered him to kill Belle), he wants to rid himself of the dagger so that he can’t be controlled like that ever again. If Rumple told Belle about the hat, she asked him not to do it but he did it anyway, that would be a lot worse than him not telling her about it in the first place.

I think a lot of Rumple’s actions this season so far aren’t him being evil for the sake of it, they’re him trying to process a lot of what went down in 3B. It’s not a healthy way of doing it but people deal with bad experiences in their own way. Rumple using Hook as a puppet is what Zelena did to him last season, Rumple is offloading onto someone else which is what Rumple does, first with Milah over Bae then with Moe over Belle.