Note: This article contains spoilers for the most recent episode of Once Upon a Time.
Once Upon a Time is a couple of episodes into the back half of Season 4, and the Queens of Darkness are causing trouble. Maleficent (Kristin Bauer van Straten), Ursula (Merrin Dungey), and Cruella De Vil (Victoria Smurfit) have joined forces with Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle) and they're determined to find their happy endings even if they don't deserve them. Their arrival has also stirred up the past. We've learned that back in the Enchanted Forest days, Mary Margaret/Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Charming/David (Josh Dallas) had an encounter with the villainous trio and it did not end well. Specifically where Maleficent is concerned.
At the end of "Unforgiven," Snow told Regina (Lana Parrilla) that in order to ensure Emma (Jennifer Morrison) became a hero instead of a villain, she and Charming took extreme measures. Whatever they did led to Maleficent losing her child. Once co-creator Adam Horowitz said it wasn't the simplest thing to insert this new twist into the existing mythology. "It’s a tricky needle to thread sometimes. Hopefully when you see -- that’s kind of the tip of the iceberg of the secret that you saw in the second episode. Our hope is that by the time everything is revealed, you’ll see it really informs who they [Snow and Charming] were in Season 1 when you met them."
Fellow series co-creator Edward Kitsis added, "That is the idea. When we go back to Season 1, I mean obviously we know the curse was cast and we know a lot of the origins, but for us it’s a lot of the character motivations. We hope that in the second half of the season, you’ll go back and look at the series in a different way. Just like in the end of the second episode, you realize Maleficent isn’t just a villain, she was trying to protect her kid. Now if you go back and rewatch everything she’s doing, hopefully it gives more depth to it."
Now though, Maleficent is angry. She seems set on revenge and making Snow and Charming suffer. One way she could accomplish that is by tapping into Emma's potential to go to the dark side. Snow and Charming certainly aren't helping by keeping Emma in the dark. Kitsis said Emma definitely has challenges ahead, "I think for Emma right now the two people she trusts most in her life are lying to her and she’s suppressing that. So finding that out will be kind of a bummer. I think Emma is going to have to confront her past in a lot of different ways. She’s done a lot of growing over three and a half seasons. And what happens when you find out the person who was helping you grow might actually be just as bad as the people you were trying to get away from?"
Horowitz said whether Emma will turn to evil or not is part of a theme they'll be exploring through the rest of Season 4: "One of the big themes for the second half of the season, that we want to deal with is what makes someone a hero and what makes someone a villain and what the differences are and what the common ground is. Emma has spent a long time in the series being told she’s the savior and being told she’s a hero. Now she’s going to have to face that it’s not as black and white as that. I think, going into the second half of the season, all of our characters are going to be wrestling with this idea of good and evil, not just in terms of what they’re facing as an external threat but internally within themselves."
As Horowitz pointed out, we've watched villains like Regina and Rumple walk the line and head towards redemption. They haven't always been successful, but we've seen that both of those characters are capable of using their powers to positive ends. It's time to see if the heroes wrestle with going in the other direction. Horowitz explained, "What we wanted to do is to start exploring those ideas with our heroes as well. We've seen a lot of things throughout the show that is clearly not just black and white and I think we'll start to see that's obviously happening with Snow and Charming and it's going to start to affect Emma as well."
If Emma does go bad, her powers won't necessarily change. Horowitz said, "It's less about what those powers are and more about how those powers are used."
Once Upon a Time airs on Sundays at 8:00pm ET/PT on ABC.
Amy Ratcliffe is a writer for IGN TV. You can follow her on on Twitter at and IGN at .