Once Upon a Time: 12 Things to Know After the Musical Episode

Ginnifer Goodwin promises a "togethery" finale, so have no fear!

By Lauren Piester May 08, 2017 2:19 AMTags
Once Upon a Time, Jennifer Morrison, Colin O'DonoghueABC/Jack Rowand

So was that not the best dang thing you ever did see? 

Once Upon a Time just debuted its musical episode, which also doubled as a long-awaited wedding between Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) and Captain Hook (Colin O'Donoghue). 

The basic gist was that back when Snow was pregnant with Emma and Regina's curse was imminent, she made a wish that she would have everything she needed to give Emma a happy ending. That wish was answered by the Blue Fairy, who made everyone in the kingdom sing for a day, so she could then give those songs to Emma, so she'd always have the people who loved her in her heart. 

It ended up being pretty handy, because Emma was able to use that song in her heart to keep the Black Fairy away just long enough to successfully get married to Captain Hook, and everything was perfect for just long enough to sing a group number before the new curse hit and darkness fell over everybody. 

Here's everything you need to know about what comes next: 

photos
Renewed or Canceled? Find Out the Fate of All Your Favorite Shows 2016/2017
ABC

1. The curse keeps most people in Storybrooke, geographically. 

"Emotionally, they are all over the map," Ginnifer Goodwin told reporters of the finale after a screening of tonight's episode. Though EP Adam Horowitz called it "a combo platter kind of curse," meaning some people might end up somewhere totally different. 

2. And this is a new curse, unlike curses they've done in the past. t we've done a curse occasionally in the past on the show," Horowitz said. "But this time we're trying to do a little twist on it." 

"I would say that the final battle and the curse are all tied in one, and the first act of the finale will make sense of what we're doing this time," EP Eddie Kitsis added. 

read
Once Upon a Time: 6 Things You’re Going to Love About the Musical Episode
ABC

3. The process of breaking this curse is going to be extra dramatic, and "togethery," according to Goodwin.

"The breaking of the curse involves something far more dramatic than anything that's ever broken a curse before—if it were to break! I am not saying it breaks! We could all just be blown into oblivion and that's just it," she said. "What broke the very first season's curse was the kiss, a very pure unromantic true love expressed between mother and son. The love that it takes in the finale in order to do what has to be done to break the curse, I feel is categorically bigger." 

4. Kitsis and Horowitz "can't promise" that everyone will make it out alive! 

Rude!

5. Emma cannot use the power of song in the final battle. 

"Making a musical is hard," Horowitz said. "We're not doing it in the finale. That was hard work." 

6. Belle will be in the finale, despite not appearing in the musical episode. 

"Belle and Rumple are going to be tested, and everything that they ever wanted is going to be very temptingly close for Rumple," Kitsis said. "But like everything, it comes with a price." 

read
Hook's Song From the Once Upon a Time Musical Episode Is Here & It's a Swashbuckling Delight
ABC

7. If the show doesn't get picked up for a season seven, everyone should be satisfied by the finale. 

"I would say that if this was the series finale then you would have the usual opinions on a series finale, ranging from the best ever to the worst ever because that's the internet," Kitsis said. "What I would say for fans is that it will be complete, so they will not have any dangling threads where they're like, ‘I can't believe they!' We're not going for a crazy ending that everyone goes, ‘Well, what does that mean?' And ‘I feel unsatisfied' or ‘I'm not feeling like you came for the characters' or whatever. ... We feel like we've completed this story and the next chapter of Once Upon a Time will be completely different." 

"They've honored these characters and this part of the story, this part of their journeys," Josh Dallas said. "I think each character gets something that the fans should be happy with, that each character deserves." 

8. If a season seven does happen, it will be a bit of a reinvention. 

"I think the way we sort of look at it is these are stories for these characters and there are set end points to different stories but that doesn't mean that there aren't new stories for different characters," Horowitz said. "So I think that by the end of the season finale, a lot of what we've been doing for the last six years is wrapped up in a very satisfying way and then we move forward in a way that at the end of it, hopefully you'll see what we're hoping to do in season seven." 

Kitsis added: 

"I think if there's one thing this show has done, it's reinvented itself every year and so this show has the ability to be many different shows so we feel like creatively it's time to end a few stories but the new show, we feel like this is the kind of show that regenerates. And I think when you see the ending you'll go, ‘Oh yeah!'" 

read
8 TV Shows That Could Get Canceled—and the Odds They'll Survive
ABC

9. According to Goodwin, Snow was very attracted to her singing husband. 

"My first choice was that when he comes in I get a little hot under the collar from he's singing," she said. "And I feel you can see me kind of blurry in one of the angles going ‘ohhhhh…' and they didn't feel that that worked for the storyline of the actual song so I was asked to keep on the track of ‘why are we singing?'" 

ABC

10. Hook and Emma's vows were just as important to the showrunners as they were to anyone else. 

"We knew that the wedding would be a big deal, but we knew that the vows would be a big deal, and we didn't want them sung," Kitsis revealed. "We felt like, in that moment, the audience who was a fan of those two as a couple has waited since Season 2 to say that—they don't want it in a song with a hundred people. We wanted to really just slow the moment down and let it be between the two of them, and then have everyone come into it. It probably went through a lot of different iterations." 

read
How Does The Flash and Supergirl Crossover Fit in With TV's Best Musical Episodes?
ABC

11. Rumple was never going to sing. 

"I would say you saw his email," Kitsis said of Robert Carlyle, who didn't sing a note in the episode. 

12. The theme of the two hour finale is is "belief," but of course there's a twist. 

"It's kind of shocking how well they created something open-ended that could be seen as—I mean in classic Once Upon A Time style, there is a twist," Goodwin said. "The twist means that it could go either way, and it serves all of the characters very well." 

 

Once Upon a Time airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on ABC.