When Once Upon a Time returns from its winter hiatus, Emma and friends will make the trip to the Underworld to save Hook. Executive producers talk Season 5B and what we can expect from their journey into the Underworld. Read the TVLine Q&A below:
TVLINE | What you’re doing there with Storybrooke-as-the Underworld is obviously practical on a cost basis. But did you at any point consider building sets, doing something with creepy caves and stalagtites and stuff?
EDDY KITSIS | We may have done both…. Stalagtites and stuff would not appear on the location [shoots in Steveston]. There’s more to our Underworld than may be apparent in photos.TVLINE | So it’s not just “Steveston through a filter.”
ADAM HOROWITZ |It’s not just “Steveston through a filter,” and I’ll also say this: There’s a reason for why some of the Underworld appears the way it does, why it appears to be a Storybrooke in a different form. Without us spoiling too much, there’s a very specific reason why the Underworld appears as a screwed-up version of Storybrooke.
STEVE PEARLMAN (EXEC PRODUCER) | From a production perspective, it’s been really fun to take our world as we know it and turn it on its side — to make it Mr. Gold’s shop, but a different version of Mr. Gold’s shop. [The vision] was always a topsy-turvy version of Storybrooke, but there was quite a bit of design work that went into it, to make it look real but a bit apocalyptic. And then there is also a series of hidden caves and rivers that are a bit more in line with the mythology of Hades and Zeus.TVLINE | I like what the Underworld does for you, in getting to revisit past characters such as Cora, Pan…. It almost feels like a “greatest hits” album.
KITSIS | That’s right. With the back half of Season 5 and the 100th episode, people will see that there’s a very Season 1 feel to it. The theme is “Unfinished Business,” because there’s a lot of emotional closure that hasn’t happened between people we’ve seen and lost. It was a great way to celebrate five years of the show and get a chance to see people we haven’t seen in a while that really impacted us.
HOROWITZ | Sometimes you have to look back to move forward and that’s part of what the storytelling is about in the second half of the season. While there certainly are old friends and old enemies from the past who return in a new form, it’s about how the past of many of our core characters has held them back or has prevented them from finding the place that they want to be in their lives.
JOSH DALLAS (DAVID) | The coolest thing about the Underworld is that we get to confront our pasts, which is always a dangerous thing.TVLINE | Give me a flavor for one of the reunions.
KITSIS | One of the reunions is Regina seeing her mother again – especially since the last thing her mother said before Snow White killed her was, “You would have been enough.” We’ve never seen Regina and her mother cordial.
LANA PARRILLA (REGINA) | They left off in a pretty good place, except it ended pretty quickly. So when you first see them, they have this really warm, deep embrace. They’re really happy to see each other and experience what their relationship could have been with Cora having her heart back.
HOROWITZ | I’m also very curious what it’s like for Rumplestiltskin if he were to encounter his father again.
For the full Q&A click HERE
