Once Upon a Time Pilot Recap and Reader Poll-TVLine

After months of buzz that seemed to last ever after, ABC premiered its fantastical new drama, Once Upon a Time, this Sunday night. If you checked it out, what did you think of it?


Once (as we, if only for headline-writing purposes, hope it will affectionately be called) used its pilot to establish that the Evil Queen of fairy tale lore, on Snow White and Prince Charming’s wedding day, announced her plan to unleash a powerful curse upon the Enchanted Forest. But before the darkness descended, Snow and friends arranged to use an enchanted tree, fashioned by Gepetto and Pinocchio into a wardrobe, to safeguard one of them from the curse. As it would turn out, that escapee was Snow’s newborn daughter, Emma, whom Rumpelstiltskin (a scene-stealing Robert Carlyle) foretold to be the one person who could one day undo the evil curse.

Cut to: Modern-day Boston, where “bail bondsperson” Emma Swan is tracked down by a young lad named Henry. Toting a book of fairy tales, Henry reveals that he is the son Emma gave up for adoption 10 years prior, and he urges her to go with him to Storybrooke, Maine, where the onetime residents of the Enchanted Forest now live with no memory of their true identities or previous existence.

Once Upon a Time: Your Guide to the Magical Residents — Real and Fairy Real!

In Storybrooke, Emma immediately clashes swords with Henry’s adoptive mother, Regina — aka the town’s domineering mayor fka the Evil Queen. Then, when Henry goes missing, Emma meets Mary Margret Blanchard (nee Snow White), whom she does not know is her own mother. Upon finding Henry (at his “castle”) and trading sob stories with him, Emma decides to stay in town, this despite Regina’s threat to “destroy” her, “if it’s the last thing I do.”

What did you think of Once Upon a Time? Was it just fair or… fair, fairy good? Other discussion topics:

* How many Lost references did you pick up on? (E.g. Regina’s street address is 108, the clock was frozen at 8:15, a Geronimo Jackson bumper sticker on Emma’s Beetle…)

* Did you pick up on Granny’s goth-y granddaughter, Ruby, being Red Riding Hood? The jail cell grump being Grumpy?

* Next week, we will get the Evil Queen’s backstory, complete with the debut of Breaking Bad guy Giancarlo Esposito as the Magic Mirror (and a Storybrooke news reporter), plus Kristin Bauer van Straten (True Blood) guesting as the evil sorceress Maleficent. And in Episode 3, we see how Snow met her prince. Whose backstory do you also hope to see soon?

This article was written by Team TVLine.

***Note: The original article includes a poll where you can rate the pilot.***

Link to the original article:Once Upon a Time Pilot Recap and Reader Poll