Board Thread:Show-Related Questions and Answers/@comment-26967699-20180703011455/@comment-24773320-20190406164504

My personal opinion is that Wish Realm Rumplestiltskin's death was a consequence of the Darkness being destroyed (the "price" of the destruction of the Darkness, in a sense). From the events of the episode, it appears that if the power of Darkness is destroyed, anyone who is currently a Dark One will also die with the Darkness. The episode makes it quite clear that Weaver/Rumplestiltskin's sacrifice destroyed the power of Darkness, but since WR Rumplestiltskin was still a Dark One even after the original Rumple had "purified" his heart, he ended up being destroyed. Excalibur would have circumvented this issue, because tat sword has the power to draw the power of Darkness out of every Dark One (thus also negating their status as Dark Ones), but without Excalibur to perform this extraction, destroying the power of Darkness also seems to kill all active Dark Ones as well. If this is true, back in Season 5, if Emma Swan or someone else managed to destroy the Darkness before removing it from both Emma and Hook, then Emma and Hook would have died at the moment of the Darkness' destruction.