The story of Jack and the Beanstalk has been rendered hundreds of times. Jack trades his cow to a Mysterious Stranger for a magic bean, which grows a massive beanstalk. He climbs it, encounters a giant, steals the fairy tale-standard three items, and after the third encounter chops down the stalk.
The story as Hook tells it: “The giants grew the [portal] beans, but rather than use them for good, they used them to conquer all the lands. Jack was a man who fought a terrible war, defeating all but one of the evil giants. The beans were destroyed by the giants as they died. If they couldn’t have their magic, then nobody could. … One giant survived, the strongest and most terrible of them all.”
Anton’s version goes: “[Humans] massacred us and stole our beans”. This is later expanded on by Arlo: “Have you forgotten what the humans did? Why we no longer trade beans with them? They weren’t content merely traveling between the realms, they had to conquer and pillage. … That is why they must never know that we still exist, or that we still grow the beans.”
(The question of why grow beans at all if they are no longer used as trade goods is left up to the viewer.)
If I may digress, I suspect that Hook's version represents a conflation of two events. The war against the giants occurred in the distant past. After that, even the Blue Fairy believed both the giants to be gone, with few beans remaining, such as the one she gave to Baelfire. (Alternatively, she may have been lying.) Only a handful of giants survived that war. More recently Jack and Prince James led a raid aimed at the beans, but settled for treasure when the bean fields were razed. Only one giant survived the battle.
In the iteration of the tale used in "Tallahassee," Cora plays the role of the Mysterious Stranger, providing access to the adventure with her (conveniently portable) magic.
Anton's brother breaks a harp, which is traditionally one of the items Jack steals. There are three thefts from the giants; the long-ago war that destroyed most of their people, the raid Jack and James carried out, and the one by Emma and Hook.
Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman? These giants are vegetarians.
I assume they have some kind of gardening magic to get all of this produce from the same place, at the same time.
There's a parallel between the Jack/James and Emma/Hook exploits. Jack manipulates Anton, kills his family with poison, and is abandoned to die by her co-adventurer. James prefers to save the gold than his companion. Emma and Hook "poison" Anton, and Emma abandons Hook there, but they are both allowed to go freely (eventually, in Hook's case), having proven that they do not intend any harm.
Although as far as we know the stalk is still there, by taking Anton to Storybrooke the story is just as decisively closed. There are no more beans in the Enchanted Forest, and no giants to grow them. That route to treasure is no longer available.
That's it in terms of the story, but I also want to talk for a moment about how this adventure functions for Emma and Hook as it introduces their relationship.
First of all, it is decisively an "adventure." As I noted in the water post, the element of separation is crucial to fairy tales. The adventurer leaves home and goes Somewhere Else, whether it's through the forest, to Faerie, or just to a nearby bridge.
There is a good reason, in other words, why they find themselves "trekking through some manner of woods or forest, courting danger" again and again: that is where adventures happen. In "Tallahassee", Emma has already undergone one degree of separation, being in the Enchanted Forest and not the world she knows. Now the two of them are further separated from the group, in a place where the standard rules are suspended.
Right through S3, in the high-pressure environment of adventuring they make their connections. On the beanstalk they take each other's measure, identify each other's core qualities (lost girl, lost love), and experience a strong moment of mutual attraction. Over the course of the Neverland adventure Hook falls in love with her, and they kiss. During those treks through the woods in 3b and finally their trip to the past, Emma begins to reciprocate his feelings. In 4a their relationship is entering a new phase, no longer set apart from but integrated with the community around them.
As they were meant to, from the beginning.
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