Once Upon a Time bosses tease 'satisfying' finale

The Final Battle has begun — and not everyone will make it out alive.

Ahead of Once Upon a Time‘s two-hour season finale, the Black Fairy (Jaime Murray) unleashed a curse aimed to separate Emma (Jennifer Morrison) from her loved ones. Where is everyone? Can they break this curse?

Here’s the newly released logline for the season-ender: “Henry awakens to a cursed Storybrooke and discovers Emma has been in the mental hospital, and the Black Fairy is the new mayor. Henry attempts to help Emma regain her memory while Gold tries to find out what has really happened to Belle. Meanwhile, Snow, Charming, Regina, Zelena, and Hook are trapped in a crumbling Fairy Tale Land and desperately try to figure out a way to be reunited with Emma and Henry.”

The season finale will feature guest star appearances by several familiar faces, including Jasmine (Karen David), Aladdin (Deniz Akdeniz), Tiger Lily (Sara Tomko), and Violet (Olivia Steel Falconer), among others, as well as Andrew J. West and Alison Fernandez, who are credited simply as Young Man and Little Girl. Check out our theory on that here.

Following a recent screening of the musical episode, executive producers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz sat down with press members to answer some burning questions about the finale:

Now that the curse has hit, what’s in store for the finale?
ADAM HOROWITZ: There’s a curse that’s coming. We’re well aware that we’ve done a curse occasionally in the past on the show, but this time we’re trying to do a little twist on it.
EDWARD KITSIS: I would say that the Final Battle and the curse are all tied in one, and the first act of the finale will make sense of what we’re doing this time.

Is there a geographic move, because they’re talking about how everyone is going to be split up?
KITSIS: For some people, there may be a geographic move.
HOROWITZ: It’s a combo platter kind of curse. There’s a bunch of different things that happen.
KITSIS: The Black Fairy is not to be messed with. She’s got some airtight [plans].

When you approach a curse, what’s the thought process behind it? Any set rules?
HOROWITZ: In this case, it was less about thinking of it as a curse, and thinking about it as What is the Final Battle? We had a concept for what this Final Battle would be and we kind of worked backwards from that, and that led to in this curse that you saw hinted at in the musical episode that then starts to play out in the two-hour season finale.

Will everyone make it out alive?
KITSIS: Can’t promise you that.

Can you talk about the process of breaking the curse?
KITSIS: I would say that how they’re going to break the curse is kind of the conundrum of the episode because the usual tricks don’t work anymore.

A big part of this musical episode was Emma not being alone when she goes into the Final Battle and we see everyone gets sucked into the curse. Will the Black Fairy be going into the Final Battle alone or will she be bringing Rumple and her people?
KITSIS: She’ll be bringing her spicy attitude and that’s all she needs.

What can you tease about Rumple’s role in the finale?
KITSIS: I will say the Final Battle will be thematic for everybody and that Rumple, as a man who is a difficult man to love, I think he will have a very difficult choice to make again.

What is the theme?
KITSIS: I would say the theme of the final two hours is belief.

As opposed to hope?
HOROWITZ: Do we ever not do hope?
KITSIS: Hope and belief are all the same. They’re friends, they’re roommates.

Speaking vaguely about the finale, what are some of the characters that you’re most happy with their journey and arc from the beginning of season 1 to the end of season 6?
KITSIS: Absolutely Emma.

What do you think she learned the most?
KITSIS: I think she learned to trust other people, and I think that’s the hardest thing to do. When you are used to being on your own, it’s very hard to let someone in and have it be real. It’s very easy to be surface and “like” their stuff on Facebook; it’s hard to actually be the person they call, and I think that Emma has gone from somebody that slept in her car and denied she had a kid to someone who actually has found a real life, and to me, that’s the show, right there.
HOROWITZ: I agree, and I would say adding to that also Regina, who has gone through so much from where she started in the pilot to where she is now. I’d say in the season finale, there are real echoes to the pilot, and where she began, and where she and Emma began, and where they are now. It’s been a tumultuous journey for both of them as they’ve grown and changed over the years. For us — and hopefully you and the fans will agree — we think it’s a satisfying place they find themselves.

Once Upon a Time‘s two-hour finale airs Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.