Reply To: Confirmed: MRJ/Neal Cassidy In 512 (EW and TVLine)

This isn’t Game of Thrones, though. We were told and promised that this was a story about hope and family, and for a lot of us, Neal was the lynchpin that helped make this show about family.

This is the real crux of the matter. The show had an MO for the first 2.5 seasons of family reconciliation and hope. Neal’s season 3 promotional poster had the message “believe in second chances.” Well, where was Neal’s second chance? Neal told Mulan and Robin Hood that his son and Emma were his second chance. On a show that was originally about hope of second chances and family finding each other (e.g. Henry finding Emma, Charming finding Snow, Emma finding her parents, Rumple and Emma finding Baelfire) finding Neal again and his integrating back into the town of SB with his family was where things were clearly headed before the reset button was hit.

What @Keb said. Isn’t the argument that a character no longer does something for the plot and hence must be eliminated a bit spurious? I think it has more to do with worldbuilding and fresh ideas than it does with any given character.

Yes, exactly. While the writers claimed they had told everything there was to tell about Neal, I think it’s more that they were forced to wrap up his arc in a rushed way and to compromise their original plan to hit the reset button. (All one needs to do is look at the dynamic between Will and Anastasia on OUAT in WL  to see what the writers probably intended for Emma and Neal).