Neal Cassidy/Baelfire: He Catches Shadows with Coconuts? - Page 2 - Once Upon A Time

It looks like in the actor's headcanon, he had to tell himself that seeing Emma go to jail was painful for Neal.  Even though they didn't show it at all in-show.

He was just a coward who didn't want to face his father. He didn't jump on a grenade. He pushed Emma onto a landmine and took off. However, MRJ's headcanon does seem to have painted Neal's motives in a sacrificial light.

My feeling was that MRJ's take is isn't purely headcanon - it was the in-show narrative from "Tallahassee" on - so I dipped into the transcripts. 

Neal's conversations with August in "Tallahassee" actually does square with A&E's discussions with MRJ that leaving Emma in a catastrophic way was to break her so that she could later be rebuilt as a True Believer in Magic and break the Curse. It has nothing to do with wanting to avoid Rumpel, it's not something he does as a callous act to avoid his own discomfort, and it revolves around letting Emma go meet her destiny and find her family.

Neal: That’s all I’m trying to do.

August: Then leave her.

Neal: Never.

August: She has a destiny. And you? This life? You’re going to keep her from it. Okay? You believe in magic?

Neal: I take it you do.

August: So will you. Trust me. I’m going to show you something… Something that’s going to make you look at everything differently. And, when you see what I have in here, you’re going to listen. You’re going to believe every word I say.

A HUGE flaw is that A&E never bother to write that scene - a full scene where August makes an argument that convinces Neal (and the audience) that this is what Neal has to do to get Emma to meet her destiny. I think this, more than anything, is what MRJ is talking about when he's mentioned these discussions with The Brothers Dimm...that they never bothered to square the circle and explain what August's compelling argument was.  

In any case, in Offscreen-Portland, Neal does as August demands. He guilty about it, he's struggling with it, but August has him convinced it's for the greater good:

August: Been a while. Where’d you go?

Neal: Tried to lose myself. It didn’t work. I want to talk to you about Emma.

August: I hope you’re not trying to reach out.

Neal: I just… I feel like… If… If I knew that she was okay, then I could move on. Is she?

August: She will be. She got eleven months.

Neal: That should be me! I should be doing that time.

August: No. We went over this. It’s good.

Neal: How’s it good?

August: It’s a minimum security place in Phoenix. And no, I am not going to tell you which one. She’ll get out of there, and she’ll be fine. You keep your promise and steer clear, and she can have a good life. She can do what she’s supposed to do.

Neal: And if I can’t be there for her, man, you got to promise me that you will be.

August: I promise.

Neal: Then you should do something for me. I was able to fence the watches. Don’t judge me. I’m giving it all to her. And the car – I got a clean VIN number for it, so it’s legit. I just… It’ll feel like I’m there with her, you know?

August: Money is not what she needs. Not for what’s ahead.

Neal: Can you just see that she gets it?

August: Sure.

Neal: And one more thing – if anything changes, and she does her job, this insanity ends, and she’s free…

August: I’ll send you a postcard.

They reinforce this premise in "Manhattan"

Neal: Emma…

Emma: I loved you.

Neal: I… I was, um… I was… I was trying to help you.

Emma: By letting me go to jail?

Neal: By getting you home.

Emma: Are you telling me, that us meeting was a coincidence? Because how the hell did that happen? If it wasn’t in your plan, or your father’s?

Neal: Think about it. He wanted you to break the curse. Us meeting – that could have stopped it. Maybe it was fate.

Emma: You believe in that?

Neal: You know, there’s not a ton about my father that I remember that doesn’t suck. But he used to tell me that there are no coincidences. Everything that happens, happens by design, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Forces greater than us conspire to make it happen. Fate, destiny, whatever you want to call it. The point is… Maybe we met for a reason. Maybe something good came from us being together.

And they deal (again) with Neal's ongoing guilt in "Second Star to the Right" - he wasn't trying to avoid Rumpel by not coming to find her when he knew the Curse was broken, he was fearful of her anger and his own guilt.

Emma: Neal.

Neal: It kills me I let August talk me in letting you go.

Emma: I don't want to hear it.

Neal: Yeah, but I have to say it. I wanted to look for you. I just—I, I was too afraid.

Emma: Of what?

Neal: That you would never forgive me. 'Cause I never forgave myself. There hasn't been a day that's gone by that I don't regret having left you. I'm sorry, Emma, for everything.

Emma: Me too.

The ONLY time they deviate from this theme is in "Manhattan" when Neal's suddenly all: "We’re out in the open. I… I spent a lifetime running from that man. I’m not going to let him catch me." It's a plot point strictly for that episode: they need Neal to run for SHOCKING! REVEAL!! of Emma tackling him and making the Neal-Bae connection, they need Neal to come charging in to confront Rumpel later in the episode, But, as we can see in the bar scene from that episode quoted above, if Neal wanted to avoid his father forever, by the show's logic, he just would have stayed with Emma and kept her from Storybrooke.  Neal is understandably hurt and angry at Rumpel, but not fearful, and what little we learn about his life in the period between falling through the EF portal and finding him in NY, they never show that Bae/Neal was worried that his father would find him, and even imply that while he was in Neverland, he was hoping Rumpel would find him and bring him home. In any case, I don't think Neal trying to avoid Rumpel ever comes up again.

(They use this One Time Only tactic in 4b when Belle and "Hook" go to get the Dagger and Belle is suddenly all a-scared of Rumpel...but then, for the rest of the season, never mentions being afraid of him and never shows any hint of fear or attempt to avoid him when she's actually around him. It was purely meant to highlight the drama of her not realizing "Hook" was Rumpel and was never mentioned again.)

You know if the writers gave MRJ an idea of who Bae was as a child, I can see where the disconnect comes from, because Bae would have absolutely taken the fall for Emma. Bae is the same kid who sacrificed himself to the shadow so that Michael and John would remain safe.

Exactly. Bae is the kid who sacrifices to save someone else's' family. In "Second Star," he finds a family, stability, home. He gives himself to the Shadow so the Darlings won't lose their family. In "Tallahassee" he the chance of family, stability, home, with Emma. He gives that up so Emma can find her family and (not inconsequentially) free not the just the Charmings, but everyone in Storybrooke, from the Curse. Emma is hurt, but in the end, she ends up finding love and family with her son and her parents and a new community that values her. Neal remains mostly alone and dies (twice) after about 20 minutes of happiness. I think the hyper-focus on Emma's pain in the period after he leaves her blots out the fact that he accomplished a goal that was always central to Baefire as character: restoring families ripped apart by magic.

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