I kind of lost track of all the spoilers to even make a guess now when he’d get to NL and who he might meet first. I kind of want it to take long enough that his arrival has real impact in terms of turning the tide of hope for the characters, perhaps being able to offer insight into Pan’s tactics from having been a lost boy himself, possibly having escaped. I hope he escaped rather than being strategically released, so that he turns out to be this wild card that Pan didn’t expect.
I don’t know what the writers have in mind. Sometimes we expect something warm and fluffy and what we get is a fiance, a prophecy of doom, and a gunshot + portal drop. On the other hand, the fiance was faking it, the prophecy is something Rumple wants to change, and Neal miraculously survived.
So I expect much more dark and twisty bleakness before the writers are ready to offer the ray of hope, before then introducing a whole new world of problems. (Hm that’s not really an Aladdin reference but I’m excited for OUAT:WL so maybe it is….JAFAR…. :P).
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass