Once Upon a Time stars on that unfinished love story
Warning: This story contains major spoilers from the series finale of Once Upon a Time. Read at your own risk!
Once Upon a Time ended its seven-season run with a beautiful finale that brought all the realms together under the rule of The Good Queen Regina. Even so, one particular fairy tale felt incomplete by series’ end — the love story between Alice and Robin.
New additions in the rebooted seventh season, Alice (Rose Reynolds) and Robin (Tiera Skovbye) went on to be fan-favorite characters, whose love story unfolded during the back half of the season.
During the series finale, Robin took a brief moment to ask Wish Hook (Colin O’Donoghue) for his blessing so she could marry his daughter Alice. Although the couple is only briefly spotted during the series-ending coronation scene, it’s safe to say Alice did say yes to Robin’s proposal — particularly because of this little detail that Reynolds revealed to EW while on set of the series finale.
“It’s really funny, because I got to choose my ring the other day and of course I picked the biggest, most shiniest one,” Reynolds says with a laugh. “Tiera looks at me and she goes, ‘What are you doing?’ We came up with this idea that the dwarfs mined for it; they mined for a massive stone.”
Alas, the Alice and Robin’s story goes unresolved, as viewers are left to imagine what’s next in their future. “I like that they left it open-ended,” Skovbye says. “I do really love that you know that Robin and Alice are together, and that that relationship is solid and happy.”
For her part, Reynolds believes a wedding would be just around the corner had the show been renewed for an eighth season. “I think the future is bright for them, but I do like the idea of it never stopping,” she says. “You get the happiness with Alice and Hook, they can be together and they get reunited, which is gorgeous. I don’t want everything to be perfect, so I’m interested to see what other obstacles they’d face as they go through.”
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The ending was a little more definitive for the men in Alice’s life, however. During the finale, as Wish Rumple (Robert Carlyle) aimed to isolate our beloved heroes for eternity, Hook nearly died by saving Alice from being sucked into a portal. Rumple came to his rescue, ripping out his own heart to give to Hook, which effectively killed Wish Rumple and allowed Hook to reunite with his daughter.
“She’s connected to both Hook and Rumple, they are both her father figures,” Reynolds says. “It’s like picking between your favorite dads with her. Yes, Rumple was gonna do it anyway, he was always gonna make that choice — Belle [Emilie de Ravin] is his soul. That’s where his soul belongs and they’re connected in that way. To be honest, there was nothing Alice was gonna say to make him not do it. He was always gonna do that. He loves us both, Hook and Alice, so he wanted us to be together. It kind of is the best of both worlds, but seeing someone sacrifice that much for someone is really powerful, and I think Alice wasn’t ready for that. It’s really hard.”
Read our postmortem with executive producers Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis here, find out how Lana Parrilla reacted to Regina’s ending here, and see how O’Donoghue felt about that Hook and Rumple ending here.
