Season 6 premiers September 25th at 8/7c
Seasons 1-4 are currently available on Netflix and season 5 will arrive on August 26th
Brief Overview:
Main Characters
Emma Swan-Jennifer Morrison
Child of Snow White and Prince Charming, savior(formerly), and Dark One(formerly). Emma is a no-nonsense character who's gotta be getting tired of magic by now. She also happens to be dating Hook.
Regina Mills/The Evil Queen-Lana Parilla
Former main antagonist and love interest of Robin Hood. Regina recently split herself into a good and evil persona because she was unable to come to terms with the mass murder and various other evil deeds during her reign as queen. She now serves as both a protagonist and antagonist of this season
Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold-Robert Carlyle
Shady mastermind and Big Bad of the show. He is married to Belle and is expecting a child. Rumple has been torn between being good for Belle and wanting to be evil to acquire power. He seems to have given up and gone full evil.
Belle-Emilie de Ravin
Caretaker of the library and Rumple's wife. She's been attempting to fix Rumple throughout the entire series, and has by this point realized that he's probably not going to change anytime soon. She is currently in a coma because she's tired of his crap.
Prince Charming and Snow White-Ginnifer Goodwin/Josh Dallas-Prince
Parents of Emma Swan and sheriff and mayor of Storybrooke, respectively. They struggle with being good parents to Emma after feeling guilty for orphaning her for over 20 years. They do their best to serve as a moral compass but eventually accepted that Emma had grown up without them and decided to have another kid.
Zelena/Wicked Witch of the West-Rebecca Mader
Magic prodigy and sister of Regina. Zelena was jealous of Regina's life and the fact that Cora chose to keep Regina but not Zelena, completely ignoring the fact that Cora was a monster. She goes to such great lengths to upset Regina that she kills Robin Hood's ex wife and disguises herself as her just to force Robin to go back to his wife and get her pregnant. She and Regina have since forgiven each other after realizing that they used to be best friends before having their memories wiped and murdering Zelena's ex boyfriend Hades.
Hook-Colin O'Donoghue
Legendary pirate and Emma's boyfriend. He has a hatred of Rumplestiltskin for killing his girlfriend and cutting off his hand, and has spent a considerable amount of time in the underworld being tortured by Hades after being turned into the Dark One. He has since been resurrected.
Henry-Jared Gilmore
Biological son of Emma Swan and adopted son of Regina. Henry has had a difficult time accepting magic lately, but eventually came to accept that magic is pretty unavoidable in his current life. He also has the power to make anything happen using a magic pen but doesn't use it because Spider-Man responsibility quote.
Newcomers
Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde-Hank Harris/Sam Witwer
Dr. Jekyll is the timid groundsman of a large facility within the Land of Untold Stories run by his alter ego, Mr. Hyde. Jekyll has since created a potion to separate himself from his evil half and managed to escape to Storybrooke, followed by Hyde who is being assisted by Rumple.
Aladdin-Deniz Akdeniz
The apparent former savior of some other land. Aladdin has since retired and become a recluse, but appears to have been called back into action with the arrival of Jafar.
Jafar-Oded Fehr
Antagonist and arch-enemy of Aladdin (and Alice from Alice in Wonderland, but that's a story for a different time).
Jasmine-Emmanuelle Chriqui
Love interest to Aladdin and daughter of the sultan.
Story So Far....
Once Upon a Time...
Season 1-Emma came to Storybrooke and broke the curse, restoring everyone's memories. Magic is brought to the real world by Mr. Gold.
Season 2-Cora and Hook come to Storybrooke. Hook turns good and Cora is killed by Snow White. Regina also turns good to earn the respect of Henry, who is kidnapped by an anti-magic cult and taken to Neverland. Mr. Gold finds his long lost son, who is also Henry's father.
Season 3-The main characters go to Neverland to save Henry and defeat Peter Pan, who is also Mr. Gold/Rumple's dad. Rumple sacrifices himself to kill Pan. Another curse transports everyone but Emma and Henry back to the enchanted forest, and then another curse sends them back to Storybrooke after they encounter the Wicked Witch of the West/Zelena, who is Regina's sister and plans to use time travel to destroy her happiness. She also ends up causing Rumple's son to die in order to resurrect Rumple. Emma and Henry are brought back to Storybrooke by Hook and Regina defeats Zelena, who is "killed" by Rumple which triggers a time portal that sucks Hook and Emma through. They find a way back (bringing back Robin Hood's wife with them, while Robin Hood is currently dating Regina) and accidentally release Elsa from a Magic urn that was also brought back with them.
Season 4-Elsa's aunt plans to cause all of Storybrooke to kill each other so that she, Emma, and Elsa can be BFF's forever. This doesn't work out. Elsa (and Anna and Christoph because they were there too) return to their world. Robin's wife is revealed to be Zelena and she is also pregnant, and is placed in an insane asylum by Regina. Mr. Gold is revealed to have helped her in her plans and has also been absorbing wizards with a magic hat and is forced out of Storybrooke by Belle, and returns with Cruella and Ursula with plans to find a man known as the author to get him to write them new happy endings. He does just that and reverses the roles of the heroes and villains, but is stopped by Henry, who becomes the new author and turns everything back to normal. Rumple starts getting consumed by the darkness in his heart, and the darkness is removed from him completely to save his life, but as a result, it becomes uncontrollable and Emma binds herself to it to save everyone else.
Season 5- The gang travels to Camelot to find a way to cure Emma of the darkness, shenanigans ensue, Arthur turns out to be evil and wants the dagger to complete Excalibur, and Hook is turned into a dark one by Emma to save his life. Emma resolves to wipe everyone's memory (yes, again) and channel ALL the darkness into Zelena and then kill her, but the plan goes south and Hook ends up sacrificing himself to cure them both of the darkness, which actually got funneled into Rumple as part of his many Batman gambits. Everyone goes to the Underworld to save Hook and help several dead minor characters
Relationship Chart
This section has become too complex to effectively keep track of. Here's a GIF to sum it up.
OT 5
