The couples on Once Upon a Time are about to be tested. Not only are Emma and Hook on the rocks because Emma has gone Dark, but Emma’s parents, faced with attempting to being her back, are about to have a rough season. We caught up with Josh Dallas and Ginnifer Goodwin during a Comic-Con roundtable and got the scoop on what’s up with the Charmings going into season five. Here’s what they had to say about why we never see baby Neal anymore, how they’re going to cope with the Dark Swan, and how on earth they keep up with all the storylines.

I want to know what is happening with the baby. Are you going to focus on the baby at all this season?

Josh Dallas: Baby, shmaby.

Ginnifer Goodwin: Who is babysitting the baby?!

JD: Yeah, I don’t know if that is going to be the main focus.

GG: I will tell you why it is not a priority: when you have a baby on set, then you have 12 babies to play one baby, and babies don’t like being held by strangers when they are newborns. It makes for difficult film days, and I think that that was realized, and now baby Neal always has a babysitter.

JD: And baby Neal is fairly safe and protected right now. Our first baby has gone very dark, and it is something that the Charmings tried to keep from happening along time ago. They did something really heinous to try to prevent her from going dark, but now she has gone dark anyway, and that is going to be the focus. Snow and Charming are going to some crazy lengths to try to get her to being back to the savior that she is. Of course, we have other worlds to go check out, too.

Read More at Pop Sugar *Spoilers* http://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/Ginnifer-Goodwin-Interview-About-Once-Upon-Time-Season-5-38010438

After we dug into some background Easter Eggs http://www.onceuponatimepodcast.com/snow-white-following-emma-in-the-ouat-pilot-ouat-secrets/ in the Pilot, let’s dig into the mythology of the Pilot, involving Emma.

Emma’s arrival in Storybrooke parallels classic Fairy Tales mixed with tales of Heroes, as well.

In OUAT, we know that Emma will be The Savior/The Hero to break the curse and save those in Storybrooke from a life frozen in time with no knowledge of who they really are, even Emma’s parents.

Emma’s father rides a trusty steed to enter new lands, Emma drives a yellow VW bug to enter the place of her destiny.

The Hero now has arrived in the cursed creation of the Evil Queen – Storybrooke, and Emma stops right in what I call, “The Magical Intersection”. Many incredible things happen there, and now it begins.

Note: The Rabbit Hole sign is not out, as a matter of fact, very few Storybrooke stores (Standard Clocks, etc) are shown. I would think because this was the Pilot, and they weren’t sure if it would be worth the cost until the series was picked up for more episodes of Season 1. The library sign was up (Notice the sign looks different, too) –

The Hero is here. It doesn’t really look like it yet, but wait…

The foot of the Hero touches the cursed ground, and…

The land itself reacts with an electrical burst. It’s as if Storybrooke ‘knows’ that redemption from the curse is now a possibility. As the Hero has arrives, someone comes to meet her. An unlikely pair of sentinels, Archie Hopper and his dog, Pongo. Archie’s approach was not to defend and fight off The Hero, but to greet and report back her arrival to the one who is in charge, Regina.

Note: See that the shops behind Emma have tarps covering the signs.

As Archie leaves (after pointing that the Mayor’s house was down in the direction of Gold’s Pawn shop), we can hear him whistling “Give a Little Whistle” from the Disney classic, “Pinocchio”, and also pops open an umbrella, giving two nods to Jiminy Cricket from “Pinocchio”.

“Give a Little Whistle”

Once Upon is filmed in and around Vancouver. They have great location scouts and they find great locations to use for Once Upon a Time.

When I’ve rewatched the Pilot, many things stand out to me, but some initials found their way into the background. Coincidence? Possibly, but I don’t think so.

A little back ground first. In the Pilot, the location for Emma’s blind date/bounty trap was an upscale eatery with a cylindrical elevator in the center.

* The actual location was Gotham steakhouse in Vancouver ( http://www.gothamsteakhouse.com/ ). We found it on our most recent (and past) trip(s) to Vancouver.

Here is the location from Moviemaps.org https://moviemaps.org/locations/z9

So, back to the OUAT Pilot. Remember the elevator that Emma took? Well, I hate to spoil the illusion, but we were tricked. Let’s look at this photo.

Notice anything funny that doesn’t match the Pilot? The exterior that Emma exits is only a single floor building. That ties in with the first background Easter Egg that I think Adam and Eddy may be causing Emma’s mother to creep into Emma’s Boston life.

Here is the first instance;

The ‘S’ in the back of the elevator. Is it just an artistic flourish? Hmm, I don’t think so. What does the ‘S’ stand for? Swan? Maybe, but I think it stands for ‘Snow’. Let me continue to Emma’s apartment.

Wait! One more thing. A few blocks away from the Gotham steakhouse is the bus station where Henry caught the cab to go to Emma’s Apartment in the Pilot episode.

Here is the location from Moviemaps.org https://moviemaps.org/locations/1gl

Here is the second instance. Later on in the episode when Henry arrives at Emma’s apartment, we see something else in the background that could be a coincidence or the location was chosen on purpose to show it.

The red ‘W’ turning in the background. Could it be another Easter Egg finishing the initials for Snow White? Was it the beginning of ‘Swan’?

It’s not a CGI effect. It turns out, its real.

It’s called the ‘Woodward’ or ‘W’ building sign.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodward%27s_Building

Coincidence or chosen? What do you think?

What names did Hodor say others called Rumple in the episode “Desperate Souls”?