At Once upon a Time’s Comic Con panel, the executive producers Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis along with the cast of the show unveiled a teaser introducing yet another new character from the Disney and Pixar movie “Brave”, the Scottish princess Merida (to be played by Scottish actress Amy Mason) exhibiting her archery skills.
A sneak peek of Emma as Dark Swan was also revealed. She is shown being held in a cage and given a meal by a robed servant. When the servant says “They said you were a monster,” to Emma, she catches hold of him and says, “Only on the inside,” and rips out the servant’s heart by grabbing him through the bars of her cage, Movie News Guide reported.
The Season 4 finale lead Emma to the path of darkness when she had decided to take on the powers of the Dark One to save both the entire town of Storybrooke and Regina.
In an interview, while comparing Emma’s Dark Side to the Rumple’s The Dark One, Horowitz says, “Emma will have her own unique spin on what it means to be a Dark One.”
Kitsis adds, “We are going to be exploring love and what happens when you use it as a weapon and what are the things that it makes you do. In the past, we’ve said love is the most powerful magic of all. It makes you do many things you normally wouldn’t think you would,” according to Entertainment Weekly.
Apart from Amy Mason as Merdia the other new characters include Elliot Knight as Merlin, the one and only hope to revive Emma for the darkness, and a new world of Camelot existing in a parallel timeline with Joana Metrassas Guinevere, Liam Garrigan as King Arthur, Andrew Jenkins as Percival and with Sinqua Walls returning as Lancelot.