Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-6252544-20140905050048/@comment-24674051-20140919153639

I get the feeling we've seen all of Neal from the Missing year. Most of his time was spent as an extra voice inside Rumple's brain. (Boy, talk about kids driving their parents crazy.) And anything before that would be related to his search for a way to ressurect Rumple (which we have already seen enough of.) I really don't think there's anything left, unless it is a small scene related to Belle, but even that would be related to Rumple's ressurection.

And unless Neal took some action that set a series of events in motion (such as the memory potion bottle), there really is not a need from a storytelling standpoint to have flashbacks involving only him. And other than his interactions with Emma and August, I don't think there is anything from the LWM that would relate.

Having said all of that, he still was important to shaping the person that Emma became (as we saw in Talahassee, and TNPLH), and there are still parts of that relationship that could be explored as part of Emma's backstory, so that my guess is that is where we will see MJR going forward.