True Love Potion

"If you can bottle love, you can do anything."

- Rumplestiltskin

The True Love Potion is a potion featured on ABC's Once Upon a Time. It first appears in the sixteenth episode of the first season.

Before the Curse
Rumplestiltskin obtains a hair each from Snow White and Prince Charming through deals. He takes a strand of Snow White's hair in return for crafting a potion of forgetfulness for her and later obtains hair left on Charming's cloak in return for telling him where to find Snow White.

When Rumplestiltskin places both hairs together in a potion bottle, they entwine and begin to glow. He places the bottle in a spot on the shelf of potions that had a heart symbol under it.

Prior to giving the Evil Queen the dark curse, he places a drop of the potion on the parchment of the dark curse and then stores the remaining potion in an ornate golden egg for safe-keeping. In yet another deal, he has Prince Charming hide the egg inside Maleficent while she is in her dragon form in exchange for enchanting his mother's ring to lead him to Snow White. During the negotiation of this deal, Rumplestiltskin reveals to Prince Charming that the purple colored true love potion he puts in the golden egg is "all I have left," indicating that he had already used some of it.

After the Curse
Mr. Gold tells Regina Mills and Emma Swan about the potion, revealing its location to Regina by referencing her "old friend." He also explains that, because true love is the most powerful magic, it can cross any dimension, even into a land without magic.

Emma fights the dragon to obtain the true love potion. However, when she hands the golden egg up to Mr. Gold, he takes off with it. Regina and Emma do not pursue him, because they both get a call about Henry, which allows Mr. Gold to take the golden egg back to his shop and retrieve the true love potion.

Mr. Gold, along with Belle, heads to the wishing well, where he pours in the true love potion after explaining to her that the true love potion together with the magic of the waters beneath the well can bring back what has been lost - magic. And with magic, comes power.

Trivia

 * The potion is initially shown as glowing with white-yellow light in the Enchanted Forest, but has changed color to purple by the time it shows up again when Rumplestiltskin places it in the golden egg. It retains the purple color in Storybrooke. It can be assumed that the white-yellow light is the beginning of the true love potion stages.
 * The smoke that poured out of the well and swept through Storybrooke was originally going to be green, to match the mist that consumed the Enchanted Forest in the pilot. But it was changed to purple to be “more symbolic and magical,” (as said by Lana Parrilla).
 * Mr. Gold tells Emma that she is tied to the potion because her parents were part of making it.
 * The true love potion is the ninth potion on Mr. Gold's shelf.

Appearances
Pozione del Vero Amore Poción de Amor Verdadero