Season 3
Master storytellers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz invite everyone to Storybrooke, Maine, a small town that probably won't show up on one's GPS.
To ensure that no one in fairytale land - especially Snow White - had anymore "happily ever afters," Evil Queen Regina cast a curse which trapped the fairytale characters, frozen in time, and brought them into our modern world.
Although still alive, they had no knowledge of their former selves and were sleepwalking through life - ageless - for 28 years, until their saviour arrived in the form of Emma Swan.
Unbeknownst to Emma, she was the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming who whisked her out of fairytale land and into our world as an infant to save her from the curse. Abandoned as a baby, Emma's life was anything but magical.
When her 10-year-old son, Henry, whom she gave up for adoption years ago, appeared on her doorstep with a book of fairytales and told her a crazy story about how she's the prodigy of fairytale characters who are all trapped in a town called Storybrooke, she thought he was nuts.
But curiosity got the better of Emma, and she brought Henry back to the town and soon found out that Storybrooke was more than it seemed.
Regina, ever the control freak, had placed herself as Mayor of the town and was Henry's adoptive mother. Over time Emma began to see through the cracks of the curse, believed that the stories were true and was finally able to break it.
Reality and myth merged as the fairytale characters began awakening once the curse was lifted and remembered who they were. But to their dismay, they weren't transported back to fairytale land.
To make matters worse, Rumplestiltskin - aka Mr. Gold - decided to gain the upper hand in his power struggle with Regina and introduced magic into the town.
But this is our world, and magic has a tendency to have unfathomable implications.
Once Upon a Time stars Ginnifer Goodwin as Snow White/Mary Margaret, Jennifer Morrison as Emma Swan, Lana Parrilla as Evil Queen/Regina, Josh Dallas as Prince Charming/David, Emilie de Ravin as Belle, Colin O'Donoghue as Hook, Jared S. Gilmore as Henry Mills and Robert Carlyle as Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold.
Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz are creators and executive producers. Steve Pearlman is also executive producer. The show is from ABC Studios.