The 2017 San Diego Comic Con was not all about comic books. It was also a popular platform for media outfits to showcase their latest offerings from movies to video games and even TV programming. This was the perfect opportunity for ABC to drop more tantalizing teases of what is in store for season 7 of the urban fantasy series “Once Upon a Time” which will start in October. Information already gleaned from before the SDCC has already revealed that the new season is a soft reboot on the series storyline, which explains the influx of new cast members – five actresses, even.

Now the latest snippet has an inside scoop on the new magical menace that the characters will face.

New face of evil

As laid out in the epic season 6 finale of “Once Upon a Time” a great number of the regular cast have made their final appearances in the ABC series, including series lead Jennifer Morrison as Emma Swan. The storyline also sees what appears to be a definitive end to the magical curse that has been a driving force of the entire show for so long. As new actresses join the cast, the foundation of the soft reboot plot for season 7 has been revealed: there’s a new curse, and a new young true believer to guide a new hero.

The character of Emma’s young son Henry has been aged up and is now portrayed by Andrew J.

West. With the help of his daughter Lucy (Alison Fernandez), he must somehow get to the bottom of the new curse that is ruining the worlds of various fairy tale characters all over again. This curse is revealed in SDCC to be the work of Lady Tremaine (Gabrielle Anwar), the evil stepmother of Cinderella (Dania Ramirez), who is revealed to be the grown-up Henry’s wife.

New city of adventure

While the previous seasons of “Once Upon a Time” have the enchanted modern town of Storybrooke as the nexus of sorts between the fairytale realms and the real world, season 7 moves the action to the Seattle neighborhood of Hyperion Heights. In her real-world persona, Lady Tremaine is a mean land developer seeking to gentrify the neighborhood and kick its residents/fairy-tale characters out.

Despite her more sinister and genre-savvy villainy, it will be revealed similarly as previous antagonist Regina Mills/Evil Queen (Lana Parilla) that her nature is rooted in a moral lesson of the ABC series: that Evil is not born but rather made.

The season 7 premiere episode of “Once Upon a Time,” entitled “Hyperion Heights,” will air October 6, only on ABC.
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