Viewers tuned into ABC Sunday night to catch the 100th episode of Once Upon a Time. The show's 5th season had a mid-season hiatus lasting about three months, and fans are happy to know that after this season is over, their favorite show will be returning for a sixth season.
Adam Horowitz, the co-creator of Once Upon a Time, tweeted on Thursday, "Thrilled to announce that #OnceUponATime has been picked up for season 6! Thank you ABC and thank you to the most extraordinary fans ever!
Zap2it.com, a site that focuses on television show ratings, said that Once Upon a Time is the anchor for ABC on Sundays, but that the show sees a "good amount" of its numbers go down from season to season after the boost that the Frozen theme brought last season.
The news of the renewal shouldn't come as a surprise, as ABC's Paul Lee told reporters at the Television Critics Association's press tour back in January that he thought "Once Upon a Time has a long and bright future."
In this second half of season 5, we will see the OUAT characters going to Hades, and that will bring back some of the characters that have died in previous seasons and episodes. Regina's mother, Cora, a.k.a. the Queen of Hearts is back and played by Barbara Hershey. Prince Henry, Regina's father, played by Tony Perez is also back. He had his heart ripped out by Regina in season 1 so that she could enact the Dark Curse.
What will the future hold for another season? Well, we probably won't be seeing Star Wars characters- even though they are owned by Disney now. Once Upon a Time's co-creator with Horowitz, Edward Kitsis told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview, "When people asked us the first year what our favorite fair tale is, we always said Star Wars. Season one we stretched the show into Frankenstein. We've done a Franz Kafka reference before and Cuckoo's Nest, but our audience really likes the fairy tales. So, as much as we love Star Wars, I just don't think the Millennium Falcon works with the glass coffin.
Horowitz answered the question about who they want to be on future episodes, saying, "Aladdin and Jasmine are characters we love. The Princess and the Frog is a movie we really enjoyed, and we think that there are wonderful characters in there."
Kitsis also said that Disney never asks the writers to use their characters. Instead, the co-creators come up with ideas and ask Disney to use them.
No one expected the show to go on as long as it did. Originally, the premiere episode of OUAT competed with the World Series and football. The 8:00 p.m time slot was known as "the death slot." Kitsis said that the show was predicted to be the first show canceled, and they believed it. Now, the show is still going strong with about eight million viewers, which is not the twelve million it had at first, but still a sizeable "Oncers" audience.
What characters would you like to see on the show? Let us know in the comments below!
