11 Teases about 3×12

ONCE UPON A TIME: 11 Teases About ‘New York Serenade’

ONCE UPON A TIME has been off for months (and months and months), but the first episode of 2014 is just around the corner. I had the chance to view the midseason premiere, “New York Serenade,”and while there are a ton of things that can’t be talked about (yet), here are a few teases to make the wait until March 9th a little easier…

• Viewers will see what happens in the minutes leading up to (and immediately after) the former Storybrooke residents arrive in the Enchanted Forest. It doesn’t take long for them to run into familiar faces…and not everyone wants to stay with the group.
• Hook might not have gotten the response he wanted from Emma post-kiss, but that isn’t the only trick he has up his sleeve to get her to recall her true past.
•  Viewers will first meet Chris Gorham’s Walsh in the midseason premiere, but he’s already a solid presence in the lives of several characters we know.
• The Wicked Witch (whose name is Zelena, the producers shared) isn’t the focus of the hour, but she does have a pretty delicious introduction.
• Regina goes to extreme measures to deal with her grief over losing Henry.
• Belle and Neal have an important exchange about Rumple. Snow, Charming, and Neal also share a moment over losing Emma and Henry.
• Henry is a little matchmaker.
• While the flashbacks in the episode are purely about what’s going on in Fairy Tale Land, we do learn a little bit about Emma and Henry’s new life from their comments.
• Robin Hood sure knows how to make an entrance…
• ”[The] Neverland [arc], we kind of went dark on, because we felt it was heart of darkness to us,” ONCE UPON A TIME co-creator Eddy Kitsis told reporters. “This 11 is, I think, a little lighter, and more wicked. It’s more in the tone of that; it’s more deliciously fun. We’ll have the things that people love about the show, which is heavy emotion, and magic. There are definitely some dark episodes coming up.”
• Several of the things Kitsis and OUAT co-creator Adam Horowitz teased in this interview come to pass in the show’s first 2014 episode.