'Once Upon a Time' Season 6 Premiere: Why New Episodes Will Feel Like 'Coming Home' [VIDEO]
The new season of ABC's Once Upon a Time will feel a lot like "coming home", according to the show's creators.
Once Upon a Time is abandoning its half-season arcs, at least for season 6. As such, the new season won't feature our heroes going off on an adventure and defeating a villain after 11 episodes, like they have mostly done in seasons 3, 4 and 5 (Peter Pan, Hades, Cruella de Vil, Zelena, etc.). Instead, the series will focus on long-term arcs mainly set in Storybrooke, much like seasons 1 and 2.
Once showrunners Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz spoke about this recently with The Hollywood Reporter, explaining what it feels like to return to that early season feeling.
"I think it's much more like we did in season one and season two where there are mini-arcs throughout the season but longer character arcs," Kitsis said. "The audience got used to us going to a new land, spending 10 episodes there, defeating the villain and coming home. I think the audience will see that the Hyde-Jekyll [Sam Witwer], the Land of Untold Stories, doesn't overwhelm the show. The show is back in Storybrooke, and it is fairytale characters in the modern world who need help."
This back-to-basics approach may be just what the show needs, as Kitsis explained.
"We broke the curse in season one, but I think we can all agree that if Emma [Jennifer Morrison] was still denying that there was something to this town, we would have been long canceled," he noted. "It's been a really great journey but, for us, season six, five years later, we're really happy to come home and be able to tell stories the way we did in seasons one and two."
Once Upon a Time season 6 premieres Sunday, Sept. 25 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.
Check out a teaser of the first episode of season 6 below:
