It kills me that you can see the emotion deaden. The love he just displayed to Emma melts from his features in favor of sadness, fear and a sense of foreboding. He knows how this story ends. He knows Gold always gets what he wants eventually and that means, Emma in the hat, and him dead with a crushed heart. He knows that Gold is going to make this particularly painful for him, possibly even force him to be the one to put Emma in the hat. This face, this sad resignation beneath directly parallels the end of Kansas when Emma tells him she’s going back to NYC. Yet there’s no smile, no new charming to greet. No happiness to even attempt to illuminate his features. His hope is gone for now and he doesn’t know how he’s going to get it back and he fears that no amount of bravery and cleverness is going to save him now.
