So if Belle were to have a place in the wish realm in 6×11, what are everyone’s theories on how she’d fit in? Would she be the same age she currently is in Storybrooke, or 30 years older? Where has she been and what’s she been doing, all those years while Rumple was in a prison cell and the Charmings were ruling? I’ve tried to come up with a theory that fits the available evidence on the wish realm that was provided by canon, but…that just made my head hurt.
So what are everyone’s theories, logical or not?
*rubs hands together*
I love theory crafting. I don’t expect to ever see anything like this on the show, or for there to be any ‘reason’ to the wish realm. It was created by a wish and doesn’t have to stack up and make sense. However, I really enjoy speculation and coming up with in-universe explanations, even if it’s just headcanon nonsense 🙂 Anyway, with that being said I have a number of theories. These all presuppose that Belle is alive, as otherwise it’s no fun.
Under the cut for length.
1) Rumple was just pretending
This is my favorite theory to be honest. There’s no reason for Rumple to be locked up in Regina’s dungeons because it’s just not practical. From what I can remember from his canon imprisonment with the Charming’s, they still fed him. Regina’s castle is kinda inconvenient for that, and it was deserted in the wish realm. The Charming’s hadn’t taken it back for their own.
So imagine, wish!Rumple feeling the disturbance in the force of Regina arriving. How better to play apart in the proceedings than make Regina think that she has the upper hand? The history would run like this. Regina disappointed him by not casting the curse, and then getting banished. He goes to her castle to get the curse back, and finds Belle locked up in the tower. That mitigates some of his outright despair at having this path to Bae blocked. He takes Belle back to the dark castle, and then at some point he tells Belle about Bae, and Belle asks him if there’s anyway to see if Bae is ok.
He says about the crystal ball but he’s never dared use it because whatever he sees, he can’t do anything about until he finds a way to Bae. Anyway, he uses the crystal ball and sees that Bae is on Neverland. He goes and rescues him and all is happy. Bae at some point crosses paths with Princess Emma, they fall in love, and have Henry but then one day Bae dies. Rumple is devastated, especially because I don’t imagine he would be allowed to see his grandson. However, he still has Belle, and they probably have kids of their own, so he still has a family and Bae died a hero and lived a life, and none of that makes it ok because Bae was his son, and Rumple would have protected him with all he had, but dead is dead and there’s nothing he can do but try and be the better man that Bae always wanted him to be.
So TLDR: Rumple and Belle have been married for thirty years, and have a family of their own. Rumple got the magic bean in a deal at some point, and kept it around to laugh at the irony of finally having something he’d wanted for 200 years but now no longer needed.
2) Belle is under a sleeping curse
After Regina failed in casting the curse and was banished. The Charming’s didn’t want any reminders of the war – “this family has done enough fighting.” and Rumple was the “scourge of the realms” and far too dangerous to let go free. So they transferred him to Regina’s dungeons, so they wouldn’t have to think about him, and basically left him there to die. How little did they know that his curse would sustain him.
Belle was one of the prisoners freed after Regina was banished, and she resumed her journey to the Dark Castle, only to find it empty as Rumple is in prison. She calls his name three times and he doesn’t appear, and so she goes looking for him. Eventually she learns that he’s imprisoned and she makes an impassioned plea for his release but the Charming’s are intransigent. Belle is known to be reckless and impulsive, especially when she believes that she is doing the right thing.
She decides to force the issue, and make the Charming’s release him by placing herself under a sleeping curse. They would have to let her reunite with Rumple so that he could free her. However, the Charming’s don’t. Either because they don’t believe that they could possibly be true love, or because the Blue Fairy stuck her oar in and perhaps they never knew what Belle had done. Basically, Belle was laying in one of Regina’s castles rooms under a curse, while Rumple was imprisoned in the basement.
Bae made it back to the Enchanted Forest via Pan’s shadow. In canon it took him back to the land without magic, perhaps because by that point the dark curse was in effect and the Enchanted Forest was inaccessible. Without the dark curse that wouldn’t be true. Anyway, he lands and makes a life for himself, meets Emma and they fall in love, have Henry and he dies, all without knowing about his dad. Maybe he asked after the dark one at some point, without letting on about their relation, but the Charming’s said “scourge of the realms” and he decides that the father he knew was long gone and he’s glad that he never runs into him.
After Rumple was freed, he finds Belle. Perhaps this was why he said goodbye to Regina so abruptly after they made their deal, and he arranged to meet her at the lakeside – he’d sensed Belle and there was somewhere else he needed to be. So he went and kissed her awake. He’d known what had happened to Bae for a long time because of his seer ability, it’s the same way he knew about Storybrooke/the wish realm/where to get a magic bean etc.
3) Belle married someone else
Maybe she returned to Avonlea after being freed from Regina’s imprisonment. Maybe she settled somewhere else. Either way, she gave up on Rumple, despite her brave words of how she would “always fight for him”. Maybe she was told that he was dead, as if the Charming’s had imprisoned and left him for dead (see above) then as far as they were concerned, he was dead or soon would be. She had a life, and was content, but something was always missing.
Then when Rumple said he was off to “raze some fake villages” he really went to find her. Belle’s husband had died, and even though thirty years separated them, the moment they see one another – true love wins out. Rumple has the ability to turn back the clock (he offered it to Smee and to Bae) so he winds it back thirty years. She’d had a life without him, now she can have a life with him.
4) Anything else?
I’m not sure. There’s variations obviously. Like Belle might not have married anyone else, but she’d still had the thirty years making a life for herself somewhere. Obviously, this ignores the theory that Belle is dead because that’s no fun, I don’t like that theory, it doesn’t have a possibility of a happy ending and I’m all about the happy endings.
Basically no matter what. My headcanon is that Rumple and Belle have a happy ending in the wish realm, whether they have been apart for the thirty years or not. I don’t expect the show will even have Belle in the wish realm, but this is why we have fanfic 🙂