ONCE UPON A TIME: Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis Tease Season 3.5

ONCE UPON A TIME has been off our televisions for all of 2014 so far — part of ABC’s plan to split seasons and cut back on reruns — but season 3.5 kicks off this Sunday with a strong return hour that explains a bit of what went down in the year that we missed, while simultaneously setting up the journey for the second half of the season.

So what can you expect in the second half of the season? ONCE UPON A TIME showrunners Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis dished…

We will be learning more about Oz and the Wicked Witch, but don’t look towards the Neverland arc as a guide for how it will go down:

“It’s very different in its conception,” Horowitz told reporters last month. “The Wicked Witch is a big part of the second half, and a driving force as an antagonist, but the world of Oz — it’s a place we will see, and we’ll spend a little bit of time there, but it’s not a ‘everybody gets on a ship and goes there and then we’re there’ kind of thing.”

“We’re going to get Zelena’s — the Wicked Witch — origin story,” Kitsis added.

But that won’t be the only person who we get more of an origin story on: “We are going to get a Cora [as played by] Rose McGowan backstory at some point,” Kitsis said.

“We’re going to see some of the Snow White family, the early years,” Horowitz explained. “And we’ll see a little bit of King Leopold when he was younger, and how there were some interactions between him and the other characters that you may or may not have expect.”

“The fun of these stories is now we’ve had two-and-a-half years, so you have a taste of all of these characters, and what we can do is dig a little deeper,” Kitsis added. “And we’re going to understand a little more about King Leopold when he was a prince, and his side of the family, and Snow’s side of the family, a little more.”

And, “I think we can also say we will learn little more about Snow’s mother,” Horowitz added.

Glinda, the Good Witch: 

What fun is meeting Wicked without meeting her good counterpart, Glinda?

“We will meet [Glinda] in this half of the season,” Horowitz said. “I would say in the latter half of this run of episodes…we cast Sunny Mabrey as Glinda, and we’re very excited to have her in our world.”

“She’s still Glinda the Good Witch, in the sense that she’s positive, and she has a lot of spirit to her,” Kitsis acknowledged. “But the mythology of the four witches, we kind of created our own….You might see some iconic friends from Oz. Their relationship is going to be explored in a couple of episodes.”

“And unlike the Glinda of the movie who appears in a bubble and is pure goodness, our Glinda is pure goodness, but she’s a character, I think you’ll see, has gone through a lot,” Horowitz added. “A lot of the big touchstones from Baum’s books are hit [on in ONCE UPON A TIME], and we try and do our own spin on it. And I think, hopefully, for us, there are some fun surprises and some interesting takes on that world.”

True love for Regina?

ONCE viewers know that Robin Hood is, potentially, destined to be Regina’s true love, but the two have yet to really have significant interactions…as of yet.

“[We’re] going to see them meet very shortly,” Horowitz teased. “Whether true love happens, or works out, or not, it’s at least going to hopefully be a very interesting road they travel together.”

“But she will see that tattoo [that she knows belongs to the man who could bring her the best shot at happiness],” Kitsis previewed. “And it will definitely have an effect on her.”

A new pirate in town?

In the year that passed between Emma’s goodbye to her family and friends and Hook showing up at her doorstep, Hook will have made the acquaintance of a new pirate, Blackbeard (played by former V star Charles Mesure)…but the two aren’t exactly buddies.

“I can say that [Blackbeard] does not shower very much,” Kitsis joked. “He is a pirate, through and through. And he can Captain Hook do not have a lot of love for each other. The only thing two pirates would fight over — even more than a woman — would be a ship.”

Will Neal become his father?

With Neal losing both the woman he loves and their son — in order to keep them safe — he’s handling things “not well,” Kitsis conceded.

“In a lot of ways, he finds himself in a similar position his father did, which is: I’m stuck in a land, and I need to get back to the people I love,” Kitsis explained. “The question is, will he follow the same path? Rumple was willing to curse everybody to get what he wanted, and Neal, has up until this point, been a really moral center for his dad. We’ll see what path he goes down.”

Belle starts to come into her own:

Belle has been on the outskirts of much of the story — one of the downsides of being one of the few regular characters left behind in Storybrooke as the rest traveled to Neverland — but she’ll have a lot to do in the second half of the season.

“I think it is safe to say there is a significant story that is being launched by [Belle and Neal]’s scenes in the first episode [back],” Horowitz previewed. “And on the flip side, [where she is in the present] will reflect what you’re going to see us explore in the past. And we’re going to be seeing more Belle iconography in the form of Lumière, the candle, who will be showing up soon.”

“The other thing about Belle that’s interesting is what we loved about the character was she was a bookworm, who wanted to actually experience adventure,” Kitsis added. “And I think this year, we’re going to start to see her come into her own by using her brain. She’s going to be a hero that will reach for a book or use her intelligence more than a sword.”

“And that’s the thing we love about Belle: she’s smart, she can take care of herself, and she’s resourceful,” Horowitz finished. “And all of those qualities come into play as the story unfolds.”

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ONCE UPON A TIME airs Sundays at 8 PM on ABC. Make sure to come back to Give Me My Remote after the midseason premiere for more scoop on what’s to come…

Related:

ONCE UPON A TIME Midseason Premiere: ‘New York Serenade’ Photo Preview
ONCE UPON A TIME: 11 Teases About ‘New York Serenade’
ONCE UPON A TIME: Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis Tease the Wicked Witch Versus the Evil Queen, Going to Oz, and More

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