Well, ABC's Once Upon a Time is finally making full use of its stable of fairy tale characters by having many of them burst into song during the show's first ever musical episode. Now, we finally have some details on what fans can expect from the tuneful experience. It looks like the first thing to be glad of is that this won't be a random episode that has nothing to do with what the characters are going through by the time the musical comes around. According to executive producer Edward Kitsis:
The first thing people should understand is the musical is not a standalone --- so it will be continuing the story. It's not like, 'Oh, we're taking a break from all the intensity to do a musical!' It is absolutely going to further what we've been doing and it sets up the finale.
While it might be kind of nice to take a bit of a break from the intensity of the action that's currently going down on Once Upon a Time, it's good to know that the musical episode, which is expected to air sometime in the spring, will continue to drive the action of the show forward and actually help set up the finale. I'm sure a stand alone episode would have been fun, but it probably would have been more work than it was worth to craft an entire episode that had nothing to do with the overarching plots that we've seen so far this season. It would be akin to creating a show within the show, and probably would have led to the audience watching events that took place in a dream or hallucination sequence, and, really, at this point what's the fun of that?
Edward Kitsis also told Entertainment Weekly that we'll be treated to something special when it comes to not only the songs they have prepared for the episode, but in who'll be doing the singing, as well.
We're doing all original songs. You're going to see a wide-range of people singing from regulars to cameos to people you wouldn't expect.
Man, that sounds cool, doesn't it? A lot of the main cast has experience with music, including Jennifer Morrison, Josh Dallas and Ginnifer Goodwin, so it's almost a given that they'll be breaking into song, but it also seems like we should expect to hear from a wide variety of characters during the musical. The report from Entertainment Weekly notes that most of the main cast will perform more than one song and that characters such as Granny, Grumpy, Gepetto and Henry will be warming up their pipes for this event, as well. In addition, executive producer Adam Horowitz wants to make sure that everyone knows that the show is planning some surprises:
You'll probably see more people singing than you'd expect, and some fun in how it's done.
Well, I don't know how the show could make breaking into song any more fun than it already is, but I bet they found a way. Once Upon a Time airs Sundays at 8/7 CST on ABC.
