Once Upon a Time

A closer look at the story

"And they lived happily ever after"... or so everyone was led to believe. Emma Swan was abandoned as a baby and has spent her life learning to fend for herself. One day Henry, the son she gave up years ago, turns up at her door, and everything starts to change. According to Henry's book of fairy tales, Emma is the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming and was sent away to another realm as a baby to protect her from the Evil Queen's curse. Emma does not believe a word of it, yet she takes Henry back to the town of Storybrooke in Maine and, worried about him, decides to stay for a while. She soon notices that something strange is going on: this is a place where every fairy-tale character we know lives on without remembering who they were, trapped between two worlds. Only one person knows the truth about the curse, and only one can break it. Created by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and airing on ABC from 2011 for seven seasons and 156 episodes, the series stars Jennifer Morrison, Lana Parrilla and Robert Carlyle.