'Once Upon a Time' Season 2, Episode 4: 'The Crocodile' Recap

In a loving moment, Mr. Gold presents Belle with a beautiful necklace. As he puts it around her neck, they decide they want to go out and explore Storybrooke, see it all together. Belle thanks him for what he is doing, for how he is changing.

Grumpy storms in, ruining the tender mood. He demands his axe, which he claims Mr. Gold has. He says everything in the shop belongs to someone else, and asks Belle, “How can you be with such a monster? Or maybe you’re just a possession too.”

Rumplestiltskin loses his temper and he and Grumpy fight. As Belle tries to break it up, she wakes—it was a dream. She sneaks out of the house and goes outside, peeking into the basement window. Mr. Gold is there, spinning wool into gold, and arranging some kind of potion.

Flashback to Rumplestiltskin’s day, when he was just the town coward. He comes home to find his son, Baelfire, but no wife. He goes to find her, and sees her drinking and rollicking at the local tavern, surrounded by unsavory men. He asks her to come home but she insults him, until Baelfire comes in behind. Chagrined, she follows them out.

At their home, she urges him to leave. He doesn’t have to be the town coward anymore, they could go somewhere else. They could see the world. He tells her he knows this isn’t the life she wanted, but to try, if not for him, then for Baelfire.

Back at Storybrooke, Mr. Gold comes in to make Belle breakfast, but she confronts him about practicing magic.

Poor Rumplestiltskin’s wife, Mila, has been kidnapped by the pirates in the bar. Rumplestiltskin goes to the ship where she has gone and meets the sultry-eyed Killian Joes. Jones tells him if he wants his wife, to take her back, and gives him a sword.

 “It’s quite simple really: the pointy end goes in the other guy.”

A coward as always, Rumplestiltskin refuses to fight, and begs instead.

“A man unwilling to fight for what he wants deserves what he gets.”

In Storybrooke, James leaves the mines, as he is taking over temporarily as sheriff. Mr. Gold goes to see Belle’s father, but he says he doesn’t know where she is. He calls Mr. Gold a monster.

Back to the old land, but now Rumplestiltskin has become the Dark One. He meets with a man in a red hat, who trades in hard-to-find objects. He has a magic bean which can transport between worlds, which he offers in exchange for eternal life. Rumplestiltskin tells him on only the Dark One has eternal life, but he can turn the clock back. However if he doesn’t bring him the bean, he’ll turn the clock forward and turn him to dust. Killian Jones enters the tavern, and Rumplestiltskin suddenly has bigger fish to fry.

Belle is at Granny’s, enjoying iced tea for the first time. Ruby, unfamiliar with her, comes to chat, and Belle mentions she is looking for a place to stay, and needs a job. Ruby tells her she can stay at the hotel, and asks what she is interested in. Belle says books, so Ruby suggests that the closed-up library might be a good place to look into.

Belle goes to look, peeking in the windows. The guy with the red hat comes up, and asks for spare change. Belle says she has none, and he asks if she’s waiting for someone who might. She says no, she's not waiting on anyone, so he kidnaps her.

Rumplestiltskin has left the tavern, his cloak kept over his head. He bumps into Jones outside. Jones tells him that gutter rats have better manners, but when he sees his glittering face, says he is more like a crocodile. He knocks him down before he realizes who he is.

Rumplestiltskin asks how Mila is, and Jones says she is dead. They plan a duel, the next day at dawn, so Jones can get his affairs in order and realize that this night is his last.

Mr. Gold goes to see James, as the new sheriff, for help finding Belle.

“How can you be sure she’s gone missing and not run away?” James asks.

“I can’t,” Gold admits. James helps him, but no one around the town is very willing to assist Mr. Gold.

Rumplestiltskin and Jones duel, but it’s hardly a fair fight. Rumplestiltskin gets Jones on his knees, and asks if he knows what it was like to lose his wife—like getting his heart ripped out of his chest. He proceeds to do the same, literally, to Jones, but Mila shows up and screams for him to stop.

She explains that she fell in love with Jones and ran off with him. She offers him the magic bean in exchange for their lives.

Belle confronts her kidnapper, who says he finds hard-to-find objects: like her. Her father shows up, and they are reunited. He says that he couldn’t find her after the curse lifted because Gold was keeping her captive, but she says no, she chose to be with him. He wants her to promise she no longer loves him but she tells him it’s her life, and she’s not a child. Saying he has no choice, he has the red-hatted man drag her away.

James and Mr. Gold go to Granny’s, but Ruby says hasn’t seen Belle. When James presses her, she confesses that she was there, and that she sent her to library. Ruby says her sense of smell has been coming back, and she follows the trail, but loses her at the flower shop—Belle’s father’s shop.

They confront him, and he says he has to make Belle forget about Gold no matter the cost. They realize that he is going to send her over the town line. James notices dust from the mines on his hands, and they understand that they’re putting her in the tunnel that leads out of the town.

Back at Jones’ ship, Mila shows Rumplestiltskin the bean. He asks her one question; how could she leave her son? Ropes begin to break on the ship as he gets angry. He lashes Jones magically to a pole. He asks why Mila was so miserable, and she says it’s because she never loved him. He grabs her heart from her chest. Jones breaks free in time to hold her, as she whispers that she loves him, and dies.

“You may be more powerful now, demon, but you’re no less a coward.”

Rumplestiltskin chops off his hand holding the bean and takes it—he wants him alive, to suffer as he did. Jones hits him with a hook, but Rumple laughs it off. Jones declares he will find a way to kill him.

The man in the red hat, meanwhile, has handcuffed Belle into a mining cart. He tells her the key is in the bottom, and pushes her off. Frantically, she tries to dig it out of the bottom, but it falls through onto the rails, as she careens down the mine. Magic stops her, and begins pulling her backward, to where James, her father, and Gold wait. She didn’t pass the line; she didn’t lose her memories, but she tells Gold that he’s too cowardly to be honest, and her father has betrayed her. She won’t go with either.

“If either of you cared about me, you would have listened.”

Belle goes to see Ruby, who wants her to stay with them until she’s on her feet. Someone dropped off a box for her as well—it is a key to the library. Belle goes to see it, impressed.

Mr. Gold is there, the one who left the key. He tells her there’s an apartment for the caretaker. He insists it’s not to win her back. He says she was right about him, that he’s been a coward his whole life, and he used power as a crutch. He needs to break the curse so he can leave Storybrooke and find his son; that’s why he was using magic.

 “Have you ever had a hamburger?” she asks. She hasn’t, and she’s like to try it with him sometime. Mr. Gold says he would like that.

Flashback again—Rumplestiltskin has opened the severed hand of Killian Jones, only to realize he was tricked and it held no bean. Jones, on the ship, explains to the man in the red hat that they are going to set sail to a land where no one grows old. The man introduces himself as William Smee, and Jones tosses the bean into the ocean where it makes a portal to Neverland.

In present time, Mr. Gold finds Smee, and asks him where the captain is. Smee says he hasn’t seen him in Storybrooke, the curse didn’t seem to bring him.

Cut to the captain and Cora on the beach. Cora shows him the potion she has, the remnants of the portal wardrobe, and explains that’s where her daughter and his crocodile are.