KITSIS | Rumple is absolutely the Big Bad. And I would also say that the three women can more than hold their own. It’s a very formidable team of evil coming our way.KITSIS | The sorcerer from Fantasia? Yeah, we can rule that out.HOROWITZ | The Fantasia story is a jumping off point. We have something else in mind for the Sorcerer’s background.KITSIS | Absolutely. Snow and Charming have a very interesting connection to the Queens of Darkness. There’s a backstory that we’re very excited to reveal. We’re going to see a lot more of the Charmings in the second half.HOROWITZ | Yeah, we can for the first time tell you that Ariel is coming back (played by JoAnna Garcia Swisher). You will see her within the first half of 4B. There may be some other returns that we’re not ready to confirm yet, from our past years.KITSIS | We can’t wait for everybody to get to know the Queens of Darkness. But really, what we’re excited about is to continue on with the characters that we know and love, putting them together in interesting ways.

HOROWITZ: The character of the Sorcerer we have not cast. The Sorcerer and/or Author will be met within the second half of the season.HOROWITZ: We may. We’ll see some flashbacks. We’ll be mostly focused in Storybrooke and what’s going on there with our flashbacks to other realms along the way.KITSIS: We’re going to meet a couple of new lands and adventures here and there. The other thing we’re excited about is a lot of the flashbacks are really going to take us back to that time in season 1 pre-curse. Snow and Charming post-wedding, when the Evil Queen was evil and Snow and Charming were heroic. We’re going to see a chapter of time during that period that we’ve never seen before.KITSIS: They’re going to have a connection to Snow and Charming. We’re also excited to get their origin stories, but one that we’re really excited about is episode 14, which is how the Evil Queen met Maleficent.KITSIS: We wanted her to have her own place, but the cost and the budget was prohibitive, so it’s looking like season 5 now. We wanted her to have her own place from mini-camp of this year, and every time we try to do it, we just can’t afford it. So we don’t want to do it until we can do it well. But rest assured, Emma does need her own space.