Once Upon a Time: Emma's New Life, Regina's New Love and a Wicked New Villain

Once Upon A Time

There are still seven weeks until Once Upon a Time returns! That's the bad news. The good news is TVGuide.com caught up with executive producers Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis to get the scoop on what's ahead.

The last we left our favorite fairy tale characters, Peter Pan's (Robbie Kay) attempt to reuse Regina's (Lana Parrilla) curse forced everyone back to the Enchanted Forest, effectively destroying Storybrooke. But Emma (Jennifer Morrison) and Henry (Jared Gilmore), who were not part of the original curse, could not come along. Instead, their memories were wiped and they were living happily, one year later, in New York City until Hook (Colin O'Donoghue) showed up with news that her parents were in trouble. Find out what (and who) is coming next:
 
Why was it Hook that came to Emma and Henry's home in New York City?
Adam Horowitz: That is an excellent question. Why and how?
Edward Kitsis: What's he doing back? What the hell is going on?
Horowitz: We're answering your question with more questions. It's not why Hook, but how Hook and when Hook? What does it mean? That's something that we get to, again, pretty quickly.

The true love's kiss did not work. What lengths will Hook have to go to get Emma to actually believe?
Kitsis: Assuming that he does, it will not be easy, as it never is with Emma.

Emma finally joins the club of having two sets of memories. Will that be explored?
Kitsis: Yes.
Horowitz: The ramifications of this new life of Emma's that we glimpsed at the end of the winter finale and what would happen if she did regain her memories play a huge part in the second half of the season.

How different is this Emma from the one we've known?
Kitsis: It was an important thing. Emma, as a character, we love her. She has some new memories, but that didn't ruin her upbringing. She still grew up tough, she still grew up with a wall. It was her against the world and what we'll see is with these new memories it's now her and Henry against the world. She still is the same person, but we're going to really explore what her life is like in Episode 12 called "New York City Serenade."

Christopher Gorham appears in that episode. What's his connection to Emma?
Horowitz: Chris is an old friend. We worked with him onPopular a million years ago. We love him and we're so excited that he agreed to come aboard.
Kitsis: We called him and said, "You need to do this for us." He was great.
Horowitz: We love his character.
Kitsis: He's an integral part of two characters' lives.

Emma might not have memories, but she still has magic. Could she stumble upon that?
Kitsis: We did see her drive out of town, so there's no magic on that side. She is strong, but if we remember in Season 1, you have to believe in magic to see it.

Do the fairy tale characters sent back to the Enchanted Forest still have their memories of Storybrooke?
Kitsis: Yes. They know and that gets explored.
Horowitz: As we laid out in the winter finale, Emma was the one who being back there was going to lose those memories and have this new life. The fairy tale characters get left with the pain and knowledge of what happened over the years that the show has been on and what they've been through. None of that is erased.


Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Charming (Josh Dallas) are in danger. Does this have to do with the Wicked Witch (Rebecca Mader)?
Horowitz: That's an excellent guess. The Wicked Witch plays a huge part in the season half of Season 3.
Kitsis: She's the big bad. She's a bada-- witch who knows how to get hers. She does have a name.
Horowitz: You will learn it pretty quickly. It's not a name you've heard in Wicked Witch lore before.
Kitsis: Like in Once fashion, we're doing our own name, our own thing with its own meaning.
Horowitz: It's not like the play Wicked or the MGM movie. We're using the books as a jumping-off point to do our Once twist on the classic characters of Oz.

It looks like she's taken up residence in Regina's castle.
Horowitz: It does look that way!
Kitsis: You know Regina. How do you think Regina will handle someone sitting in her chair looking through her stuff?
Horowitz: And eating her porridge?

What can you tell us about the Evil Queen's relationship with Robin Hood (Sean Maguire)?
Horowitz: They have a connection that we hinted at and talked about earlier this season. Their stories are going to intersect.
Kitsis: We set something up for a reason. We're really going to explore what that meant and what happens when these two people meet. We're going to see what happens when Regina has a second chance at love.

Tell us about some of the new characters coming in.
Horowitz: We have a whole bunch of fun people popping up, but it's in service of focusing on the core group of characters and the problem that you saw outlined in the winter finale.
Kitsis: We're still going to get to see Tink (Rose McIver) again and Ariel (JoAnna Garcia Swisher) and some of the people we met in the first half of the season as well. Lumiere (Henri Lubatti) is one of our favorite characters. He's really fun and interesting.
Horowitz: It's a slightly different take than what you might expect from the movie. Alas, Jerry Orbach is not with us so we couldn't bring him aboard to do it, but we have a take on the character that we think is fun. It's fun to see him interact with Belle (Emilie de Ravin).
Kitsis: With Rapunzel (Alexandra Metz), it's princes and damsels in towers.


There's a possibility for a Snow and Charming baby. So Goodwin's pregnancy is being written in?
Kitsis: We definitely hinted that she wanted to have another child. They're certainly going to try.
Horowitz: We'll deal with the realities of her pregnancy, but how we do it, we're not ready to share. When you saw Snow saw her secret about that, it was well before we knew Ginny was pregnant. We're telling the story that we've been setting up since the beginning of the season.
Kitsis: But you know, every time Snow White gets pregnant, hell gets unleashed.
Horowitz: Pregnancies tend to attract some chaos.

What can you tease about the wedding?
Kitsis: Yes, there may be a wedding, a birth and a lot of things.
Horowitz: We're not ready to send the save the dates out yet, but we can possibly expect some nuptials.

Regina still wants a child. Will that be explored?
Horowitz: The hole of Henry in her heart, that we're going to explore and how that affects her and what it makes her do.
Kitsis: She definitely wants to have another child, but for right now, she's not thinking about that. She just lost one. For Regina, it's what is going to make her heal again and where is she going to go. We know she filled the hole in her heart by doing the most selfless thing we've ever seen. She did what's best for Henry and gave him up to Emma, her sworn enemy, so they can have a better life. What happens when she returns to the Enchanted Forest? She needs to fall in love first. Right now, she's not open to anything.
Horowitz: She's not looking to replace Henry. As far as she is concerned, Henry is irreplaceable.
Once Upon a Time returns Sunday, March 9 at 8/7c on ABC. Hit the comments with your excitement! Stay tuned for more scoop in this week's Mega Buzz!

'Once Upon a Time' EPs on Emma's Brief Bliss, Looming Danger and 'Wicked' Villain (Q&A)

It's not long" before Emma realizes she's been living a lie, executive producer Edward Kitsis tells THR of the March 9 return.
 
 The countdown to Once Upon a Time's return has begun.
After the events of the game-changing Dec. 15 finale saw Emma and Henry's memories wiped away and replaced with new ones (and Storybrooke gone), mother and son set off on a brand new life trajectory. In their new reality, the two acted every part the happy family, but it wasn't long before Captain Hook barged into their Manhattan abode, breaking the news to Emma -- who failed to recognize him -- that her family was in grave danger. Even a "true love's" kiss failed to snap Emma out of her seemingly perfect life.

The Hollywood Reporter caught up with executive producers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz to break down the winter finale cliffhanger, preview the "wicked" new villain and discuss what's in store for the rest of the season.

You flipped the show on its head with the winter finale, wiping away Emma's memories and inserting new ones. How much discussion was there about the cliffhanger that you left viewers with, showing Emma a year later not recognizing Captain Hook?
Edward Kitsis: We knew we were going to do that. Every year, usually you start getting ideas for one season, you kind of have things in your  head. But by the end of season two, we started to see three. And then what we do is called a mini-camp in between seasons where the writers come for three weeks and we just plot it out. So for us, we wanted episode 11 to feel like a series finale, so people would say, what are they going to do next?
Adam Horowitz: That's the question we want people to be asking -- how are they going to get out of this one? What's it going to be? And then we're really excited for the audience to see a new paradigm for the show that will hopefully feel familiar in a nice way, but new in an exciting and intriguing way.

How many different endings did you toy with before you landed on what ended up on the screen?
Kitsis: That was the only one.
Horowitz: That came very quickly as we were designing the end of the 11-episode pod. That just became this inevitable place we kept getting to. And we got so excited by it, particularly because -- hopefully you'll see in the second half -- it leads very naturally to a whole new story we're telling that hopefully as you look through the whole season, feels like they connected to each other and spoke to each other in thematic and character ways that make a lot of sense.

The first half of the season had the characters spending a lot of time in Neverland, with hints of Storybrooke sprinkled throughout. Is there some relief on your part to bring the story elsewhere?
Kitsis: It's really funny because we wanted to tell one story this year, and really tell it. And the patience level of the Internet is every three episodes, it needs to be a new show and then if you do that, they tell you you're doing it too fast. So we decided that what we wanted to do was go up river and meet Peter Pan and tell the hell out of that story and end it in episode 11. Were we there an episode longer than people would have liked? It's a matter of opinion. For me personally, I loved Neverland. I think it was some of our best stuff. It was magical, it was character and that payoff just worked. That for us was fun. You'll see that both sides of the season feel like two different seasons.
Horowitz: Yeah, Neverland, we were very excited to tell the story. We loved the story we were able to tell there. We loved how we were able to come back to Storybrooke and throw all the pieces up in the air, and now we're excited to show you where they land. Now for the second half of the season, we've got Rebecca Mader as the Wicked Witch, who is a completely different kind of villain and the kind of character were excited to unfurl on the audience.

Is this the last we've seen of Neverland or Storybrooke?
Kitsis: Neverland, absolutely. We will definitely glimpse Storybrooke.

In the winter finale, we saw Emma and Henry in their Manhattan apartment. Is that a new setting that we'll see them in?
Kitsis: The most fun is to deepen the characters and keep telling their story. So to see Emma and Henry in the real world is really interesting. The premiere is a lot about that.

How soon before Emma and Henry realize that the life they've been living for a year isn't the life they had?
Horowitz: What we can tell you is it's not easy ...
Kitsis: But it's not long.

Will there be more "Captain Swan" moments in the second half of the season?
Kitsis: I certainly hope so. She's got many suitors and I want to know if any of them have a shot.
Horowitz: The thing about Emma is she's a tough cookie and for anyone to crack her, whether it's Captain Hook or Neal or someone to be determined, it's not going to be an easy road of it.

So the love triangle is still alive and well?
Kitsis: Well, it's hard because they're on one side and she's in New York.
Horowitz: We don't think of it as a triangle as it's Emma's story, and her journey -- which involves Henry, which involves so many things -- has these men in it, and as they profess their love for her, how she deals with that becomes a part of what she's trying to do on a larger level, which is her journey as a person and a woman to get her life in order and to discover who she is and where she belongs. And Emma is not a person who defines that by any single relationship.

With Ginnifer Goodwin's pregnancy, how has that affected the show?
Kitsis: You'll see in the second half. It's pretty obvious how we get around that. We did see in Neverland that her secret was that she wanted another child, so we'll see if [Snow and Charming] had any alone time in the Enchanted Forest.

Hook warns Emma that her family is in danger in the winter finale. What can you tease to about what that danger is?
Kitsis: That danger comes in the shade of green.

Is it fair to say that the second half is lighter in tone?
Horowitz: It has a mixture of tones that we do on the show: darkness and lightness and adventure and all that. But I would say there is a sense of delicious fun that the Wicked Witch brings. It is a different tone than the fall. We felt Peter Pan was a very psychological villain and very Machiavellian. The Wicked Witch operates from a place of delicious wickedness.
Kitsis: It's Wicked versus Evil, that's what the second half's about. We'll see what wins. Always bet on crazy.

Once Upon a Time Spring Preview: Addled Emma, MIA Neal and 6 Other Burning Qs Answered

The spring premiere of ABC’s Once Upon a Time is still seven weeks away, but at long last we have some fresh intel on the ramifications and aftermath of the game-changing midseason finale.

When last we tuned in: To save Storybrooke from being enslaved by Peter Pan and the Dark Curse Redux, Rumple used the Dark One’s dagger to do in his mortal enemy, while Regina worked her hocus pocus to ward off the curse. That crafty countermeasure, however, came with a steep cost: As Storybrooke vanished as if it never existed, everyone — save for Henry and Emma, who went on to live in New York City with tweaked memories — was transported back to from whence they came.

Series creators Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis broke their Lost-like “radio silence” to share with TVLine on Friday night an overview of the second half of the season. Here, for starters, are some quick answers to some burning questions — but rest assured, much more is to come.

1 of 8

WILL HOOK BE ABLE TO JOG EMMA'S MEMORY?

The midseason finale closed with Emma and Henry -- one year after being sapped of their Storybrooke memories -- being visited in New York City by a strange man wearing guyliner and way too much leather. And when he went in for True Love's Kiss, Emma was having none of it. "Emma's not easily charmed by him in the real world," Kitsis reports. "I'll just say that!"

2 of 8

WHY DID HOOK, AND NOT NEAL, COME FOR EMMA IN NEW YORK CITY?

"There's a very good reason why Neal didn't come," Kitsis assures. (Perhaps Henry's pop is counted among the "family" Hook arrived to report was "in trouble"?)

3 of 8

IS NEAL STILL HENRY'S FATHER?

Though Regina gifted Emma and Henry with new, "good" memories in which the incarcerated beauty had never given her boy up for adoption, Henry's paternity remains intact. That said, any eventual reunion won't necessarily be a joyful one. "In Emma's current mind. the last time she saw Neal, that guy f---ing let her go to jail," Kitsis points out. "She doesn't have the benefit of re-meeting him in New York."

4 of 8

WHY IS THE WITCH WICKED?

With the introduction of Lost alum Rebecca Mader's emerald enchantress, expect "lots of backstory" on the spring season's Big Bad. "Whether that unfolds in Storybrooke, the Enchanted Forest or Oz -- or all three -- remains to be seen," Horowitz teases. (And no, this Wicked Witch is not also known as Miss Gulch, Elphaba or any other familiar name, but one of Once's own creation a la the Evil Queen's mum Cora.)

5 of 8

IS THERE A REGINA/WICKED WITCH RIVALRY?

Does a dwarf carry a pick axe? Kitsis trumpets the showdown between sorceresses thusly:
"Wicked Versus Evil! That's the second half of our season."

6 of 8

WILL REGINA COME FACE TO FACE WITH HER TRUE LOVE ROBIN HOOD?

That awaited encounter takes place in the second episode back, airing March 16. But since Regina once already forsook the chance to meet him (in flashback), Kitsis asks: "What does it look like for her to be given a second chance? How does she react to it?" -- especially when she's a bit preoccupied with "huge, more important things," Horowitz notes, "like the loss of her son, and trying to destroy that Wicked Witch!"

7 of 8

HAS BELLE LOST RUMPLE FOREVER?

This is where the producers will only offer up a pat, "Keep watching.... The fate of Rumple and Belle is something that's going to be explored." Since the Dark One seemingly did himself in, in the course of vanquishing Peter Pan/his father Malcolm, "There's plenty of story we have in mind for Belle, that we hope the audience likes," says Horowitz. "Emilie [de Ravin] is fantastic, doing some of her best work that we've ever seen."

8 of 8

WILL WE SEE STORYBROOKE AGAIN?

In a word, yes -- even though the Maine burg blinked out of existence in the midseason finale. "But how and why [we see Storybrooke again] and what happens there is something we don't want to spoil," says Horowitz.

'Once Upon a Time' spoilers on new villian and Rumplestiltskin's possible return

Keck's TV Guide exclusives published yesterday, January 12th, 2014, "Once Upon a Time" spoilers for the second half of Season Three. Regina (Lana Parrilla) will clash with Wicked Witch Rebecca Mader in Oz, Belle (Emilie de Ravin) will find Lumiere, and hints of a possible wedding finale for Season Three.
The winter finale of "Once Upon a Time", airing last month, saw what viewers are believed to be the end of Rumplestiltskin,(Robert Carlyle) as he disappeared in a cloud of magic after defeating his father, Peter Pan with the Dark One's dagger. There was little time for grieving as Pan's curse crept toward Storybrooke and Regina had to make the tough decision to end the curse once and for all, the consequence being her son Henry wouldn't remember her.

The finale left fans with crushed hearts and feelings everywhere, but William Keck's exclusive interviews with Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz give us a light at the end.
The March 9th episode of "Once Upon a Time" will reveal the Wicked Witch of the West and how she became green. She'll have ties to two familiar characters, one possibly being the Evil Queen. Viewers will also be treated to a baby storyline with Snow White and Prince Charming, as the writers work Ginnifer Goodwin's real-life pregnancy into the plot.

As the season progresses, fans will see Belle meeting the much-anticipated Lumiere at the castle, portrayed by Henri Lubatti. Lumiere has been renamed "Lawrence" and will be shown in flashback episodes in the Enchanted Forest with Belle. This would give Robert Carlyle fans a chance to see their favorite magical imp again, possibly even a resurrection, as the Keck article had Rumple and Belle listed as one of the possibilities as bride and groom?

"Once Upon a Time" resumes on ABC March 9th, 2014 at 8 pm.

3x16 Episode Title

Keck's Exclusives First Look: Once Upon a Time Takes on Oz, Rapunzel, Babies and a Wedding!

Rebecca Mader

Get ready for some big reveals when ABC's Once Upon a Time returns on March 9. Executive producers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz preview what's brewing in Fairy Tale Land, Storybrooke and Oz.

- The Wicked Witch of the West (Lost's Rebecca Mader) lands in Storybrooke on the March 9 episode. She shares ties to two familiar characters. Viewers will learn what turned her green and will eventually meet the Wizard. "There might be some other surprises along the yellow brick road," Kitsis says. "We're setting up the fight of all fights: Evil Queen versus Wicked Witch!"

- The March 9 episode will also incorporate the fact that real-life couple Ginnifer Goodwin and Josh Dallas (Snow and Charming) are expecting a child. The baby will have a connection to the impending progeny of Sleeping Beauty (Sarah Bolger) and Prince Phillip (Julian Morris), though producers promise there won't be a soap opera-like baby switch.

- Emma (Jennifer Morrison) will encounter a mysterious stranger in New York City (Covert Affairs' Christopher Gorham); Charming will come to the rescue of Rapunzel (Alexandra Metz) atop a tower; and Belle (Emilie de Ravin) will meet her French candlestick pal, Lumiere (True Blood's Henri Lubatti). 

- Now that Meghan Ory has wrapped the first season of CBS's Intelligence, she may be back as Little Red this spring.

- Expect a splashy season-finale wedding. Will the bride and groom be Belle and Rumple? Emma and Hook? Regina and Robin Hood?

- Cruella de Vil and the princesses from the box-office hit Frozen top the producers' character wish list for Season 4.

Spoilers!!!