The interview also gives off the impression that Matt was told back in January that the permanent death was Neal.
Comment from Matt on another of his articles…
Simmer down, everyone. “Major character” was my choice of words, only because “a character played by a series regular” is clunky to say. All A+E said was that a series regular was being killed off the show, and the death was real/would stick.
Can’t link directly to his post, but it’s in the comments on this article.
His question in the interview: “And, as you told me previously, Michael could come back for a flashback down the line,” doesn’t necessarily mean that he was told back then that it was MRJ specifically leaving. One of this comments on this article is, “A&E never said the killed-off character wouldn’t possibly appear in flashbacks.”
So all things considered, my interpretation is that a couple of months ago, Matt was told that a non-specific main character would be killed and the character would be no more, Matt asked, “Not even in flashbacks?” and they told him they weren’t ruling out flashbacks for whoever it was. (Sidenote: I don’t really see how flashbacks for Neal would be possible if he’s dead in present day, because in the missing year he’s inside Rumple, and any other flashbacks in Neal’s life wouldn’t have a connection to a living character in present day, because he was out in our world alone for all that time, so said flashbacks would be completely disjointed with the present day story, and there wouldn’t be any point in filling in those years for Neal anyway if his character is in the past and the show has moved on. So why they would say the character might still be in flashbacks, if the character is Neal, that doesn’t really make sense IMO.)