Spoiler Alert! ONCE UPON A TIME Co-Creators Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz Tackle Your Burning Questions

Move over Wisteria Lane, forget you Sunnydale, America has a new address for maddeningly addictive small screen entertainment and its name is Storybrooke. A quirky little town whose denizens — including but not limited to a malevolent mayor, a smarter than your average sheriff and wise beyond her years school teacher — may not be exactly whom they appear to be. Which is precisely why theTVaddict.com was thrilled to be among a select handful of TV types invited to chat with the architects of this little town… little quiet village if you will… to get to the bottom of things. What follows, are 10 answers to burning questions from creator and executive producers Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz.

First of all, can you talk about the whole Kathryn missing thing?  Might she be in a cell next to Belle in Storybrooke?
EDDY:  Kathryn?  We can talk about it:  it’s “the mystery.”
ADAM:  It is the mystery and it is one that is resolved this season. 
EDDY:  It is the arc that we’re kind of going into that’s going to sort of take us into the end-run of the season. 
ADAM:  Yeah, towards the mid-end season. But it’s one of those things, David and Mary-Margaret are really fighting the curse to be together and this is just another element in that.
EDDY:  I think this will definitely test them.

You keep having Mary-Margaret and David get together only to break up.  I know that you need to sustain a series, but do you have a plan for them?
ADAM:  We do have a plan for them.  We are building to something this season that we are excited to share with you, just not today.  But there is a plan and we have a build up that we’re trying to do and we hope people enjoy where we take them.
EDDY:  The thing is, the whole story of the show is that Storybrooke is cursed and therefore what we love is that their love is so strong it keeps pulling them together no matter how hard we try to keep them apart.  But, of course, the curse has to keep them apart.  One of our favorite things is the fact that the audience is mad that David cheated.  But he’s married to Snow White, and in Storybrooke he has all this guilt about cheating on Kathryn, but the truth is that’s the curse. 
ADAM:  Right, and is he cheating on Snow White by being with Kathryn.  So to us there is a level of complexity that we’re trying to build with — with these relationship and making it so that nothing’s easy for our characters, so that when they do achieve what we want them to achieve, it’s all the more satisfying.  Hopefully.

Now that Henry’s book is back, will there be changes because the book is back and pages have been returned?  And how is that going to change things moving forward?
EDDY:  I think when we reveal that episode, which will be later in the season, it will shine and inform who the Stranger is.  So those pages are sort of his story, you’d say.
ADAM:  I’d say what we saw August doing in that episode with putting the pages in the book is the first step in kind of pulling back the onion on who this guy is and what his agenda in Storybrooke is.  That’s coming over the next run of episodes.

Is the relationship between Regina and Mr. Gold going to change now that she knows that he knows?
EDDY:  I’d say that their relationship is definitely going to change.  You’ve got two very untrustworthy people.  I think the thing that will be interesting over the next arc of the episodes is “what the hell are they both up to?”  And really, what’s Mr. Gold up to?
ADAM:  And for us, there’s now the fun of playing them off as people who know each other and know their long history together.
EDDY: The question that I think people forget is in Episode 2, is when the Evil Queen was having trouble enacting the curse, she went to the person who made it, which was Mr. Gold.  So the question that I would ask is:  why would somebody create a curse that they themselves did not employ and for what reason?  And that is a question that we are going to answer this year.

What can you say about the return of Belle?
ADAM:  It’s awesome!  We’re excited for it.  We love, love Emilie so much.  We love what she’s done with the character and we’re excited to show you so more with her and there’s more this season.
EDDY:  Yeah, she’s got a nice little scene in Episode 14. She’s sitting up there with the person that loves her not realizing it and that would not be someone I’d want to piss off. 

In the episode coming up, it seemed like August woke something up in Ruby, if not memories of the past but all she’s ever known is to work at this shop. Might that be August’s doing in Storybrooke? To help people wake up?
ADAM:  August’s goal in Storybrooke is one that is going to be revealed very clearly, very shortly.  It’s a very specific goal.
EDDY:  But I think the question is — it’s kind of like what Henry said in Episode 2:  “it’s magic, people don’t remember.”  So when you say to Ruby, “How long have you worked at Granny’s?” She’s like, “Forever.”  It is because she has no conception of time. But once someone puts it in her head that, “So why do you?”  She’s like, “Why do I?”
ADAM:  It’s a snowball-effect.  Which is to say that Emma arrived in the pilot, the clock started ticking and things started to change.  One of the changes was August arriving.  There’s a lot of things that have changed in Storybrooke and they have kind of mushroomed-out to what you saw with Ruby at the start of Episode 15, and those effects will continue.

Is Regina now seeing the backlash, like when she enacted the curse she never thought it would actually be her worst nightmare and she hasn’t quite woken up to that fact yet?
EDDY:  I think when she enacted it, she enacted it from such an emotional place that she wasn’t thinking clearly, and then she came here and she probably got a little bit bored — and now that Emma’s here, it’s kind of reawakened her passion of revenge and anger.  But she’s protecting her son and I think she doesn’t fully understand what she did and I don’t think she understands the repercussions, and I think she’s beginning to lose sight to even why she did it.

About Emma, when we first meet her in the pilot, we see her in the real world doing her job.  But now she’s gotten very entrenched in Storybrooke and there doesn’t seem to be any repercussions that she left that life, but does that ever come back into play where she thinks about her life outside of Storybrooke?
ADAM: She definitely thinks about her life outside of Storybrooke, but one of the things about Emma is that a lot of the show for her is about the fact that this is a character who has never had a home, and never really stayed in one place.  So that’s something she’s struggling with.
EDDY:  What we designed her as is a character looking for home, but since she’s never had one, she doesn’t know what it is when she finds it.  So every 2 years she kind of moves and she doesn’t get attached to anything, and she doesn’t get attached to anything because then she can’t be hurt.  I think what happens this year is people start to attack that:  first, Henry; then Mary-Margaret becomes her first real friend, even though it’s her mom.  So I think that she is going to find herself emotionally attached to people and that’s going to freak her out.

Will Henry’s father ever come into play?  Is that something you want to do now or somewhere down the line?
ADAM:  Further down the line definitely.
EDDY:  We could tell you we know who he is.
ADAM:  We have a very specific plan for that character.

What can you tell us about where this season is sort of charging towards?  Will it be a big cliff-hanger?
ADAM:  What we can say without giving away stuff we don’t want to give away is that a lot of the things that we set up in the pilot and the early episodes are things that kind of come to a boil at the end of this season.

ONCE UPON A TIME airs Sundays at 8PM on ABC (7PM on CTV in Canada) Catch up on past episodes you may have missed for free online at clicktowatch.tv

Tiffany Vogt is the Senior West Coast Editor, contributing as a columnist and entertainment reporter to TheTVaddict.com. She has a great love for television and firmly believes that entertainment is a world of wondrous adventures that deserves to be shared and explored – she invites you to join her. Please feel free to contact Tiffany at Tiffany_Vogt_2000@yahoo.com or follow her at on Twitter (@TVWatchtower).