Once Upon a Time Returns to Hulu, and the Hero Image… Is a Choice

When I think back on the ABC fairytale series Once Upon a Time, I first and foremost picture the “requel” season’s Cinderella 2.0 on a motorcycle.

Just kidding; no I don’t. And I’d argue that no OUAT fan does. And yet that is the hero/landing page image that Hulu chose to trumpet OUAT‘s return to the platform, which now shares custody of the series with sister streamer Disney+.

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To be clear, this hero image of Dania Ramirez’s Cinderella aka Jacinda has been used before — including when OUAT left Netflix for Disney+ three years ago — but it nonetheless is a bizarre choice to promote a series in which said heroine appeared in 15% of the 155-episode library. Then again, Hulu has made similarly peculiar picks over the years. For example, an image from Scrubs: Med (the medical comedy’s own reboot season) is used to promote the Scrubs library, and Sophia Bush was the face of Chicago P.D. for a long while after she had loudly exited the show.

To refresh your OUAT “requel” season memory, in case a curse wiped it clean:

When it debuted almost 12 years ago, ABC’s Once Upon a Time followed mild-mannered bail bondsperson Emma Swan (played by Jennifer Morrison) as she came to realize that she was the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming (Ginny Goodwin and Josh Dallas), but as a newborn had been whisked away to safety in our world when the Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla) cast a curse upon the fairytale realm.

Other main characters for much of the series’ run included Mr. Gold/Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle), Emma’s son Henry (Jared Gilmore), Captain Killian “Hook” Jones (Colin O’Donoghue) and Belle (Emilie de Ravin).

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Come Season 7, though, Morrison, Goodwin, Dallas and de Ravin all peaced out amid budgetary belt-tightening, and that loss of multiple major players dictated the conjuring of a “requel” (reboot/sequel) season that involved a new curse, new identities for the returning but newly amnesic characters, and some new faces.

Among the Season 7 additions were a grown-up Henry (now played by Andrew J. West) and a new iteration of Cinderella aka Jacinda, played by Alert: MPU‘s Dania Ramirez. (OUAT‘s OG Cinderella aka Ashley Boyd was played by Chicago Med‘s Jessy Schram in a handful of episodes.)

The “requel” season would prove to be OUAT‘s swan song, met as it was by extremely tepid viewer reaction (TVLine readers gave it an average grade of “C+”) and waning ratings. That said, the grand finale, which brought back Morrison, Dallas and Goodwin, was a crowd-pleasing banger (revisit our post mortem with Kitsowitz).

What do you think of Hulu’s choice of Once Upon a Time hero image?

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