ABC's hit drama Once Upon a Time took the beloved fairytale characters people knew and loved, updated their stories, and dropped them into the real world. Though the show ended in 2018 with its seventh season, Once Upon a Time's devoted fanbase can still re-watch their favorite episodes through Disney+.
According to Gizmodo, the first season of Once Upon a Time is widely regarded as one of the show's best with the pilot being a standout episode that elegantly introduced viewers to many of the essential fairytale characters. Emotionally charged and exceptionally intriguing, the pilot drew fans in and made them excited to see if the Savior would break the Evil Queen's Dark Curse. While Emma eventually succeeded in her destiny of bringing back happy endings, many other notable things changed after the pilot through the course of the show.
Changed: Emma Was Alone
The pilot episode introduces Emma Swan, the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, the mother of Henry Mills, and the Savior of Storybrooke. However, she doesn't know any of those things when the audience first meets her. Emma is all alone in the world. She celebrates her birthday by herself, wishing on a blue star-shaped candle that she wouldn't be by herself before her son shows up at her door.
Throughout the course of the show, Emma - an orphan and a loner - discovers that her family is bigger and more wonderful than she could have ever imagined. And it keeps growing along the way. By the end of the series, Emma has her parents, is married, has her son and a daughter, and is surrounded by people who love and respect her - a far cry from the lonely girl in the pilot.
Stayed The Same: Henry's Belief
The only reason Emma was brought to Storybrooke was because Henry believed that a book of fairytales was real. Although there are a few times when he forgets who everyone is, Henry's belief is an important and consistent trait for his character.
Henry's conviction is what ultimately convinced Emma to believe in fairytales and happy endings and saved the town of Storybrooke from the original Dark Curse. Getting Henry to believe again was also key to breaking the second Dark Curse in season 3. As seen in season 7, Henry passed his strong belief on to his daughter, Lucy, when she mimicked his original quest to help everyone in Hyperion Heights, Seattle, remember who they were.
Changed: The Main Characters
Snow White, Prince Charming, the Evil Queen, Rumplestiltskin... the list goes on. Most of the classic fairytale characters introduced in the pilot continued to be major players through the majority of the show. However, as the seasons went on, the cast grew significantly.
Some of the show's best characters like Belle, Captain Hook, Robin Hood, and the Wicked Witch of the West were introduced after the pilot and would be integral parts of Once Upon a Time. Other characters, like the Huntsman and Little Red Riding Hood, would leave the show in later episodes. This is not to mention the massive shift in the main character roster from season 6 to season 7 when most of the original cast exited and Henry Mills grew up to be portrayed by Andrew J. West.
Stayed The Same: Snow White and Prince Charming
The opening scene of Once Upon a Time shows Prince Charming waking Snow White from her sleep with true love's kiss. Though the curse separated them for a while, they always found their way back to each other.
This didn't change through multiple curses, evil plots, and alternate realms; they were the most consistent love story in Once Upon a Time. One of Snow and Charming's last scenes shows them on a farm with their son living out their happy ending together as a family.
Changed: Regina and Emma Were Both Henry's Mom
Regina makes it very clear to Emma in the pilot that the latter has no place in her son's life. Emma may be Henry's biological mother, but she hardly knows him as she gave him up for adoption right after he was born. Regina raised Henry, but she doesn't truly know how to love him.
Though there is much conflict between the two characters at the beginning, especially as Regina is the Evil Queen and Emma is Snow White's daughter and the Savior, Henry's moms eventually find a way to both be there for Henry. They both love him and participate in raising him together.
Stayed The Same: The Storybook
"Every story in this book actually happened." Henry's storybook contained all of the histories of the residents of Storybrooke, as well as stories of other characters that the heroes would later meet. The storybook turned up when it was needed and helped both Henry and Emma to believe in magic and the reality of the Enchanted Forest.
The storybook could be added to as the story continued, but only bad things happened when an author attempted to rewrite the histories in the book. A new storybook detailing what happened to the characters after they left the Enchanted Forest was eventually completed by Henry, helping his daughter believe in season 7. The original book, however, remained one of the most important things introduced in the pilot and kept the treasured original stories of the characters despite how the residents grew over the seasons.
Changed: Everyone Remembered Who They Were
The Dark Curse ripped the fairytale characters away from the Enchanted Forest, erased their identities, and forced them to live in a land without magic. The pilot shows how the characters live lonely and isolated, frozen in time waiting for something they cannot remember.
When Emma believed, woke Henry with true love's kiss, and broke the curse at the end of season 1, the citizens of Storybrooke realized that they were really from the Enchanted Forest. Not only that, but because of Rumplestiltskin, magic was brought to Storybrooke, Maine.
Stayed The Same: Emma's Superpower
Emma Swan's superpower was that she could always tell when a person was lying. It was why she believed Henry when he said she was his mother and why she stayed for him when she realized Regina was lying about loving him.
Emma eventually discovered that she had additional powers and the ability to use magic as the product of true love, but her original gift for intuition about people from the pilot was always integral to her character and was a skill she employed often throughout the seasons.
Changed: The Good Queen
Regina got her happy ending, though not in the way she expected. In the pilot, the Evil Queen assumed that her happy ending would come with everyone else's suffering. She interrupted Snow White and Prince Charming's wedding to promise that she would take away everything that they all loved.
After the curse broke, Regina spent the next 7 seasons undergoing realistic and compelling character development until she became one of the heroes. In the end, Snow crowned Regina "the Good Queen" of the realm, finishing the queen's story with a complete turnaround from the pilot.
Stayed The Same: The Theme Of The Show
Hope was the theme of Once Upon a Time from the very beginning. Snow White was usually the character to encourage this in everyone, but the series repeatedly showed that hope was infectious, as well as being a family trait. Mary Margaret, the cursed identity of Snow White, gave Henry the fairytale storybook she found so that he would have hope.
As Mary Margaret said to Emma in one of the pilot's memorable quotes, "Believing in even the possibility of a happy ending is a very powerful thing." Though Emma took a while to convince, she finally came around to realizing that hope was one of the strongest powers they had. Emma and Hook eventually name their daughter "Hope" in the series finale, bringing the family full circle to where they started.