The 27-year-old former football player wasn't gone forever.
Colton Underwood wasn't gone forever.
Though the 27-year-old former football player quit the show on last Monday's episode of The Bachelor, his departure wasn't permanent. As demonstrated by our upcoming two-night season finale, Underwood's story didn't end with a fence jump into nowhere -- he'll be back to figure out his mess with Cassie, Tayshia and Hannah G.
Viewers last saw Chris Harrison breaking into a run as he and the rest of production tried to track down Underwood in the Portuguese countryside. As the Bachelor host told ET, Underwood didn't exactly come back to the show on his own.
"Five minutes went by or so, and then we all came together back at this crossroads. The producers and everybody was there," Harrison shared at the "Women Tell All" taping last month. "We called back to Los Angeles... and we woke up other executive producers and executives and said, 'This is what's happening. What do we do?' and they said, 'At some point, you're gonna have to call the authorities.'"
"Luckily, as we were about [to call the cops], someone's walkie talkie clips, and I hear, 'We got him. We found him,'" Harrison said. "That's where we pick up next week with the finale. You'll see us chase him down."
Harrison said that while Underwood may have beat production to the gate, his escape skills weren't actually that great. "He didn't come back on his own, but we found him because... he gave himself up, in a way," he said. "He's not a good Liam Neeson. He's not Rambo."
Underwood, however, remembers being gone "for quite a bit" after jetting off from set with nothing but his wallet -- not even a cell phone. "Chris was chasing after me, trying to find me. I just needed to get away. I needed time and I think I realized I wanted to just be to myself," he told ET. "[I wanted to] just sit in that moment by myself and realize what's best for me as a human being, 'What do I need next?'"
"Obviously I have some very, very important conversations," Underwood said of what came next. "I think it was one of the things realizing, 'Hey, I owe this to myself. I owe this to everybody [to see it through].'"
Underwood said hearing from Cassie that she wasn't in love with him and didn't see herself getting there with him was "hard to hear."
"I think what the toughest part was [falling] back into you know what I talk about with Becca [Kufrin], and being in a relationship in which the feelings aren't reciprocated at the same level," he described. "Not being on the same page is something I was fearful [of], so that was very hard to hear. It was."
Monday's episode will see the Bachelor come to terms with that reality, as well as figure out what he needs to tell Tayshia and Hannah G.
"There's two other relationships, so I obviously have to [make] decisions moving forward -- where do I go now, what's going to happen next," he said. "You get those answers [in the finale]."
Underwood's two-night Bachelor finale airs on Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC. Join ET's Bachelor Nation Facebook group here.
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