DigificWriter

I've noted this in the past elsewhere, but even early on in a rewatch, the brilliance and creativity of OUaT's Showrunners and writing staff is honestly breathtaking to think about because they always knew in broad strokes where they were headed and what story beats they absolutely needed c
to hit in order to get there, while also being flexible enough to let other ideas organically fill in the spaces around their big-picture plans.

Season Two's second-half story arc and the story arc for the first half of Season 3 are a perfect example of this.

They knew by the time that they started writing The Outsider and the entire second half of Season 2 that they were in fact going to be able to use other Peter Pan-related characters besides Hook and that they wanted to subvert people's expectations by making their version of Peter Pan himself a bad guy, and so every narrative choice they made from that point forward, especially the prophecy about a young boy leading Rumple to Bae and yet being his (Rumple's) undoing, was deliberate setup for things to come, and once you know what's going to happen, it all comes together pretty flawlessly.