The Creators of Once Upon a Time Tell Us What to Expect From Their Frozen Story

Once Disney’s animated feature Frozen skyrocketed in popularity, it was inevitable the characters would show up on ABC’s Once Upon a Time. But they really didn’t waste any time, revealing the back of “Elsa” in the Season 3 finale. Now just a few problems—they had to find someone to play her for a real and write her into the story.

We already found out that actress Georgina Haig had been chosen for the coveted role (no official images have been released yet but People did get their hands on a paparazzi shot) and that Anna and Kristoff were also cast. But what does it all mean? Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz sat down with Entertainment Weekly and talked about the highly-anticipated additions to the series.

Surprisingly it was the creators’ idea, not Disney’s, to include Frozen next year. “We really just asked, we took a shot, and we were pleasantly surprised when Disney said yes,” Kitsis told EW. Horowitz added, “They trusted us with something and we take that very seriously, because it’s not just important to the company—it’s important to millions of fans of Frozen, and we want to do our best to honor what they loved about that movie, and more particularly, about those characters.”

But how will the characters be portrayed considering their franchise is very much current and on track for a sequel?

Kitsis: In the past, like, we made Peter Pan villainous, we’ve taken liberties with certain characters. This is a situation where everybody was on the same page. Adam and I were looking to bring the spirit of Elsa [on Once played by Georgina Haig] and Anna [Elizabeth Lail] into our show. We’re not looking to do a sequel, we’re just looking to bring them into our world for a fun story arc. So character and storywise, we just wanted to honor the characters. And with how recent the movie is, that was important to Disney as well.

Horowitz: From the start of Once Upon a Time we always talked about how one of the franchises on the show was love, and not just romantic love. And that was one of the things about Frozen. It was about love, but an act of true love as opposed to the traditional romantic love. We’ve tried to tell stories like that on Once, and this is what we’d like to continue with those characters—explore those ideas in that movie that we’ve already explored on Once and find a way to meet them up.

Kitsis also indicated their Frozen story would pick up after the events of the film and likely not extend to Season 5 but did specify they would stick close to the theme of the film. “What’s interesting to us about Elsa is not who she falls in love with. Our show has always been about family. Love is our franchise, but most of our love has been about families coming together,” said Kitsis. “So we’re not interested in Elsa meeting someone, we’re interested in exploring her as a person, like we have with Regina the past few years.”

There’s some vague spoilers about who Lost’s Elizabeth Mitchell will play in relation to the story at EW, but Kitsis also answered what is probably the most important question: “We won’t be seeing Olaf.”

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