Here’s a recap of Jamie Dornan’s heartbreaking death on Once Upon A Time. Before he got famous for playing kink master Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades film trilogy, Jamie Dornan played Sheriff Graham Humbert on ABC’s fairy tale drama Once Upon A Time. As the local lawman in the cursed town of Storybrooke, it was Graham who arrested Emma Swan after she crashed her car in the show’s pilot.
It was the perfect meet-cute and an attraction quickly developed between Graham and Emma. The pair even became co-workers when Graham hired Emma as his deputy. But, living in a place like Storybrooke where almost everybody has a fairy tale counterpart they’ve been cursed to forget, their relationship on Once Upon A Time was never going to be simple. Still, it was a quite a shock to discover the sheriff was having an affair with Storybrooke’s mayor Regina Mills - AKA the Evil Queen that created the cursed town - and even more so for Emma when she happened upon him sneaking out of Regina’s house one evening.
Unfortunately for Jamie Dornan, his Once Upon A Time character was killed off just seven episodes into the first season. In “The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter,” flashbacks to the Enchanted Forest timeline revealed Sheriff Graham’s fairytale counterpart was the Huntsman to Ginnifer Goodwin’s Snow White. After the Evil Queen hired him to kill her stepdaughter, the Huntsman took mercy on Snow White and spared her life. When the Evil Queen found out, she took the Huntsman’s heart and effectively kept him under her control as her plaything. That relationship crossed over when Storybrooke was created and the Evil Queen and the Huntsman became Regina Mills and Sheriff Graham.
When Graham discovered his true identity as the Huntsman in Once Upon A Time, he raced to find where Regina had hidden his heart so he could reclaim his life, but the vengeful mayor had other plans. Realizing how close Graham and Emma Swan are getting Regina crushes his heart to dust, killing him instantly. To make an already sad moment more heartbreaking - quite literally - Graham died just after he and Emma kissed which caused him to fully remember his Enchanted Forest past.
Despite Graham’s death, it wasn’t Jamie Dornan’s last outing on Once Upon A Time. He appeared briefly as the Huntsman in season 1 finale “A Land Without Magic” when he saved Prince Charming from the Evil Queen’s henchmen. Dornan also popped up in the Once Upon A Time season 2 episode “Welcome To Storybrooke” as Sheriff Graham in a flashback to the early days of the town’s creation. But sadly, all the magic in Storybrooke wasn’t enough to reverse his heartbreaking death in season 1.