The season premiere of "Once Upon a Time" saw the characters traveling to the land where you never grow up: Neverland.
Executive producers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the opening episode called "Heart of the Truest Believer," and about what's in store for the characters while in the land of the nefarious Peter Pan.
Kitsis said that Neverland will be used as a tool through which the characters connect with their past selves. "Our inspiration was the idea that these characters would have to return to who they were before the curse in order to [get Henry back] and we wanted to have them dig deeper into what everything means," Kitsis said. Horowitz added, "as the season progresses, we wanted to use [Neverland] as a prism to see these characters more clearly and more deeply."
On the journey to Neverland, tensions came to a head between Snow (Ginnifer Goodwin), Regina (Lana Parrilla) and Hook (Colin O'Donoghue). At first, everyone was gung-ho about rescuing Henry, but things eventually turned ugly.
"We knew we just wanted them to be like, 'We getting on this road trip together because we're all united under Henry,'" Kitsis explained. "And it's like any road trip, the first hour is like, 'Yeah!' Second hour is like, 'Why would you buy Cool Ranch Doritos? This car f-king smells. Are you kidding me? We have three hours!' And we wanted to build that up and have them go at it and have Emma basically step up and say, 'I'm the coach and we're getting our son. Boom."
Although Kitsis said that Peter Pan (Robbie Kay) is certainly a "sick, twisted kid," he said that he wasn't always that way. Future episodes will explore how and why Pan went to the dark side.
The opener also featured some flirty exchanges between Hook and Emma (Jennifer Morrison). Kitsis and Horowtiz teased that there could be more flirtation in upcoming episodes. Yet, Kitisis said that the jilted Emma will be more focused on retrieving her son. "Her heart's been broken too many times for her to kind of be worried about dating right now. We'll see. She's got two handsome guys," Kitsis said.
The first episode also introduced Robin Hood, played by Sean Maguire. Robin Hood's story will be unraveled in the upcoming episodes. "I think you're going to get a little more into him in the beginning of this year, and we're definitely going to get a lot more of him in the second half," Kitsis said. "Sean brings a great...sense of honor [to the role] but also a sense of playfulness, which we think Robin Hood needs."
The premiere also revealed that mermaids aren't always sweet and demure like the ones in Disney films. The finned females almost sunk The Jolly Roger. Yet, Horowitz said that Ariel will be very different from her mermaid peers. Horowitz said, "she's going to be different than the mermaids you saw in the premiere."
"I think the spirit of Ariel you're going to see - which JoAnna Garcia [Swisher] plays very well - is the spirit of somebody who wants to see the world and experience things outside of what they know," Kitsis said. "And so we have our own little take on it, but I think the thing that make Ariel such a great character is the spirit within her definitely is within our Ariel."
The upcoming episodes will also feature the story behind Henry's adoption in episode nine, as well as the introduction of Tinkerbell and the Darlings and the sea-witch Ursula.
Episode three will delve "a little more into Regina and what it's like for her to be on this trip with people she detests," Horowitz said. The third episode will also show more of Neal's journey with Robin Hood and Mulan (Jamie Chung), and Horowitz hinted that we'll witness "a wrinkle to their story" occur.
"Once Upon a Time" airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on ABC.
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