Board Thread:Rant and Rave/@comment-25733960-20170517000657/@comment-25926288-20170517002523

Well, sort of since 3, since she was given an actual description in 3.

I feel that this will be explained by headcanon/fancanon unless the writers address it in interviews or twitter. How I see it is:

In the Dark Realm, she spends time learning dark magic and grasping her new skills. (Since we don't know if she leaves of her own free will to collect babies, I assume she can only be summoned naturally by an abandoned baby's cries. With that, I assume she's driven straight for the target and only has like a minute or two in the world.) She eventually returns to EF and can't find Rumple or Malcolm in the alloted time. Then, she takes the baby out of spite and some compassion. Eventually, she gives up caring and just steals the kids when she's drawn to them. On her spare time, she discovers dark fairy dusts, sets up the mines to be worked on, builds a palace, tries to replicate her dark curse with minions gathering materials, or whenever she has baby-snatching time. Thus, her plan is to use the curse to give her ultimate power to shape the world to her liking. She'd bring back Rumple, make him love her, etc.

Then, she learned that he was alive....

Part of the issue is the scale of plot dynamics leaves weird gaps. Like Rumple never seemed to know that Bae was in Neverland. Sure, he probably wouldn't take on Pan, but that's never addressed.

I doubt she had any real love for Rumple. She became obsessed with her power, wanted more, and then a perfect life afterwards.

But I already talked about plot drift on another thread. Sometimes the episodes don't seem to mesh with other episodes.