'Once Upon A Time' Creators Explain How Season 7 Reboot Will Work

05/17/2017 06:10 pm EDT

ABC's fairytale drama, Once Upon a Time, is hitting the reset button in its seventh season and the creators Adam Horowitiz and Eddy Kitsis are giving fans more details on what to expect.

Next season will not be the Storybrooke fans once knew, and it won't be Emma (Jennifer Morrison) leading the charge to save everyone's happy endings. Instead, the show will now pivot to focus on Jared Gilmore's Henry, who is all-grown up and played by Andrew J. West.

The new change of direction required six regular cast members to depart the series including Morrison, Gilmore, Josh Dallas, Ginnifer Goodwin, Emilie de Ravin and Rebecca Mader. This leaves room to introduce a new batch of fairy-tale characters, but Hook (Colin O'Donoghue), Regina (Lana Parrilla) and Rumple (Robert Carlyle) will still be around to help Henry along his new journey.

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OUAT creators talked with TV Guide about the major twist and what it means for the coming season.

Kitsis revealed to the website that they knew over a year ago that they wanted to end this chapter of the fairytale story.

"Every year between seasons we have what we call 'mini-camp' where we plot out the next year," Kitsis said. "We started casually talking about it during Season 5. Then we started the year knowing that we wanted to bring this chapter of the book to a close. We just went for it."

A lot of fans noticed Emma and adult Henry's story parallels on the finale and the creators revealed how much will be similar in the coming season.

"The parallel you saw at the end of [the finale] was intentional, but the storytelling is going to be a piece of what we've done all along, but it's going to be different," Horowitz said. "We're not going to be telling the exact same story that we did Season 1 and just switching it to adult Henry."

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While the creators remained tight lipped about certain character details, they did mention that Henry and the mother to his child will have an epic romance "in the tradition of Snow and Charming." They also mentioned that fans will immediately get the answer to Henry's age change, while Rumple, Hook and the Regina have remained the same age.

To the fans worried about the exit of most of the main cast, the creators had a few words to ease the tension.

"It's still the same show. We've done lots of shifts and resets in previous seasons," Horowitz said. "This one may feel a little more tumultuous at first, but in our mind, the spirit and the feeling of OUAT remains and that's what we're going to endeavor to continue to do."

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Kitsis chimed in with, "For us and the fans creatively, it was time for a lot of our characters... their stories were ready to have a conclusion to it. It was time for new stories to begin. We wanted to do something new creatively and honor what we did for the six years. It just felt like now was the time."

Once Upon a Time returns next season on ABC.

[H/T TV Guide]

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