Why Baelfire isn’t dead (or really really old)

First, let’s establish a time line. Now from canon we can go with the fact that Granny says in Red Handed:

Nearly threescore years ago, I was a child with six older brothers. Big as oak trees, all of them veterans of the Second Ogres War.

So sixty years before the curse the second Ogre War was over. And Rum ended the first Ogre War, with some peace time. We don’t know how long, canonically, that peace was. Unless we use some secondary canon.

Jane Espenson, writer/producer for the show:

So shortcut. Rumpelstiltskin is centuries old. Which means if you’re stuck in linear thinking you’ve got 14 year old boy + centuries = dead

Fortunately for us, time is not lineal between worlds. Let’s consider, first of all, the following statements from Gold:

Archie: A son? Wow, I-I didn’t know you had a son. How… How old is he? Mr. Gold: Let’s start with something easier.





Mr. Gold: I know it’s little consolation, but… I just want you to know, that ever since you left, ever since you crossed the barriers of time and space, in every waking moment… I’ve been looking for you.

So first of all, explaining how old his son is is a complicated thing. Secondly, Baelfire traveled like the TARDIS through time and space. Not just from one world to another, but through time.

To make things simpler to understand, an illustration. Here is Snow White, just after eating the apple:

And here is the apple, after rolling out of her hand, vanishing into a portal made by the hat:

And here is Regina making the apple into a turnover, despite the fact that Snow White, after eating that apple was woken by the prince, got engaged, took back the kingdom, got married, got pregnant, had a baby and lived almost 29 years in a curse. That apple looks pretty tasty for being more than three decades old, right?

So that apple from an event decades ago is actually only freshly picked. In that same way Baelfire, though he left Fairy Tale World centuries ago could have landed in our world at any time. And Rumpelstiltskin, working on a curse for centuries, is pretty much going to do everything in his power to make sure that they land as closely to the right time as possible.

Blue Fairy: So, you’d be willing to sacrifice this world for the next? Because that’s how great the price is. Rumpelstiltskin: Well, what do you think? Blue Fairy: Well, then I’ll comfort myself knowing that such a curse is beyond your abilities. Rumpelstiltskin: Oh, for now. But I’ve got all the time in the world. I will do nothing else, I will love nothing else. I will find a way. You took my son, but I will get him back. Blue Fairy: I didn’t take your son. Rumpelstiltskin: You took my son, but I will get him back!

He arranged to have the whole world ripped away and moved though time and space to the same world where his son is. Maybe he managed to make them arrive 28 years before Bae did, and we’ll find him a 14 year old boy still. Maybe they arrived at the same time, and Bae is in his early forties. Gold certainly though it was possible that August, at 35 was a possibility.

Only time will tell, but the upshot it that anything from 14 to adult is possible. And linear logic can’t be applied to a place canon where portals, time turners, magic and fairy dust exist.