‘Once Upon a Time’ season 3 finale spoilers: Robert Carlyle’s Rumpelstiltskin has visitors

When “Once Upon a Time” season 3 reaches its end Sunday night, we are likely going to have a very different story than we had for most of the year. The real question that remains is just what sort of story that we are talking about here.

One of the biggest questions right now is just if the spell that sends Emma and Hook back in the past actually leads to them changing things. Their goal was to not doing anything drastic to disrupt the future, but they may have already failed with that based on the sneak-peek video below. They tell Rumpelstiltskin (a.k.a. Robert Carlyle with all the extra makeup on) specifically about how they may have already done something to alter Neal’s fate.

This clip for the first time caused us to ask ourselves a question that we probably should have wondered aloud long before now: Is it really possible at all that Neal makes it back onto the show alive at the end of all this? Maybe Hook and Emma rearrange things so that he no longer needs to die. Then again, there is also the issue of changing something in the past that impacts the present in more ways that they realize. That is a painful truth, and bringing Neal back could have huge ramifications. It’s just something to think about.

All we can see for now is that this two-hour finale at this very moment may be the most secretive one that the series has come up with to date. We’re intrigued to see what happens.

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Photo: ABC