Once Upon a Time season 6 Evil Queen plans

The Once Upon a Time season 5 finale saw Regina separating herself from her Evil Queen persona. Season 6 will be exploring more of these two different characters.

After drinking a serum from Dr. Jekyll, Regina Mills finally freed herself from her darker half, the Evil Queen. But the latter survived to wreak havoc another day. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, showrunners Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz delved deeper into the consequences of this split.

Kitsis said:

“The two roles are obviously going to be very separate in the sense that we saw a snippet of an Evil Queen who looked at what Regina has become and is very disappointed…If she’s unleashed, she would show Regina what ripping away everyone’s happy ending truly looks like.”

Horowitz added:

“There’s a lot of questions to be asked about what it means when you separate parts of yourself and can you really separate these parts of yourself?”

They also mentioned that they chose to integrate the Jekyll and Hyde story in the next Once Upon a Time season because they wanted to tackle the idea of whether one can truly eliminate the darkness inside one’s self, something the show has also tried to explore with the Dark Swan arc of season five.

Once Upon a Time season six will be exploring characters from a newly introduced realm, the Land of Untold Stories. Two characters from this new world, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, have already made their way to Storybrooke but more will undoubtedly show up.

Kitsis and Horowitz previously revealed in EW that the sixth season of Once Upon a Time will not be split into half-season arcs, as has been the case for the past 3 seasons. Kitsis said:

“This season is going to be different from past because it’s not going to be Hyde comes to town, we fight with him for 10 episodes, and then in the winter finale, he dies and we move on…We are changing around what we’re doing this year and going back to that season 1 mentality of small town stories and smaller arcs.”

Horowitz added:

“We’re also planning a 22-episode story as opposed to breaking it up into two halves this year. It’s been really exciting and fun…. That’s actually providing the opportunity to look at our characters in a different way…What’s really exciting about it is, for season 6, really being in Storybrooke again. As we hinted in the finale last year, in seeing the Evil Queen [Lana Parrilla] split, it’s allowing us to do that for a lot of our characters — not as literally — but it’s turning inward on a lot of these characters that we’ve been with for five seasons so far.”

Watch this space for more updates on Once Upon a Time season six. Read our reviews of season five HERE.