Michael Raymond-James recently spoke about his brief appearance in the midseason premiere of ABC's Once Upon a Time.

Neal appeared to Emma (Jennifer Morrison) in a dream during the midseason premiere, giving her advice on going through the Underworld. While he is unable to convince Emma to stay out of the Underworld (considering how hard it is to get out of it) they do end things on good terms.

While Neal was ultimately unable to find love and happiness with Emma in real life, he is genuinely happy for her in finding love with Hook (Colin O'Donoghue). Raymond-James explained this in a new TVLine report:

"I think Neal has unconditional love and affection for Emma. She's the mother of his child and his true love, regardless of whether he was for her or not," he said. "I feel it's a completely unconditional love, and he just wants to be supportive of her. He genuinely wants her to be happy. And if that means being with someone else, then that's what he wants."

Raymond-James' big return to Once Upon a Time was kept secret for a little while before the producers let the cat out of the bag shortly before the premiere. The actor spoke on the logistics of his return:

"[The idea of returning] had been broached before, but with everyone's schedules it's hard to find windows," he explained. "I've been working pretty consistently the last couple of years, so I didn't have a lot of time. But when their 100th episode came up, I was finishing up Game of Silence and I did have a window that they were able to work around. I missed the shooting of the actual episode, but they made accommodations to have me shoot the scene with Jen [Morrison] after they had moved on to a few episodes beyond that at that point. It worked out, and I'm glad it did. It was fun to do and it felt like a nice little bookend to the character."

Once Upon a Time airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.

Tags: Once Upon A Time television ABC