The season finale of Once Upon a Time showed the heroes of Storybrooke escaping from Mr. Hyde (Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). The fantasy series also brought back the Evil Queen after Regina uses Jekyll’s serum to get rid of her evil side. When she drinks the serum, the Evil Queen tells Regina that she’s too much of a coward to kill her but Regina ends up ripping out the evil queen’s heart and crushing it. But just when it seems like that’s the last of the Evil Queen, her sandy remains end up reconstructing back to the Evil Queen’s body as she sneers and vows to start a war against the fairytale residents of Storybrooke.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Edward Kitsis, the executive producer of Once Upon a Time stated “The two roles [Regina & the Evil Queen) are obviously going to be very separate in the sense that we saw a snippet of an Evil Queen who looked at what Regina has become and is very disappointed. If she’s unleashed, she would show Regina what ripping away everyone’s happy ending truly looks like.”
Adam Horowitz, who also executive produces the series said “There’s a lot of questions to be asked about what it means when you separate parts of yourself and can you really separate these parts of yourself? That’s why we did the Jekyll and Hyde [Sam Witwer] story, which was, can you really eliminate the darkness inside you?” Kitsis added “Is that really the best way? Those are the things we’re really looking forward to exploring this season.”
As previously reported on mxdwn television, the new season of Once Upon a Time will return to its original format of sticking to one storyline for the entire season vs. splitting the action into two half-seasons. But the creators are confident fans of the show won’t know what to expect.
“It’s not like this evil queen arc will be all done by December. It might be done by week 2, or by week 22,” Horowitz says. Kitsis adds, “As always with this show, once the audience gets onto what we’re doing, we have to change it.”
Once Upon a Time stars Ginnifer Goodwin, Jennifer Morrison, Lana Parrilla, Josh Dallas, Robert Carlyle, and Colin O’Donoghue.
ABC’s Once Upon a Time will return this fall.