Once Upon a Time season 4 will introduce fans to plenty of familiar faces during its story arc inspired by Disney’s Frozen . However, it looks like Anna (Elizabeth Lail) and Elsa (Georgina Haig) are about to meet an icy nemesis that wasn’t in the animated movie.
As The Inquisitr previously reported, Lost star Elizabeth Mitchell was cast as a mystery character connected to the Frozen sisters’ Arendelle home and the world of Storybrooke. Showrunner Edward Kitsis revealed that Mitchell will be playing one of two characters: Anna and Elsa’s mother or a second Snow Queen. Judging from new photos taken from the Once Upon a Time set , it looks like she’s definitely playing the latter.
Spoiler TV has shared a large collection of set photos, and many of them feature Elizabeth Mitchell wearing a white dress that looks very much like the garb a Snow Queen would rock. It’s a sparkly white gown with a high collar similar to the blue dress that Elsa wears. The icy blonde looks nothing like Anna and Elsa’s dark-haired mother from Disney’s Frozen , and she’s even wearing a pendant that looks like a snowflake.
(New) another photo of Elizabeth Mitchell on set. #OnceUponATime pic.twitter.com/geK8rRONdv
— once upon a time (@OUAT_Fanatics) August 20, 2014
(NEW) Elizabeth Mitchell on set. #OnceUponATime pic.twitter.com/VuVcD5Uisb
— once upon a time (@OUAT_Fanatics) August 20, 2014
Executive producer Adam Horowitz recently talked to TV Line about working with Mitchell on Once Upon a Time .
“She’s awesome, we love her, we’re so happy to have her and we can’t wait for the audience to discover who she is playing.”
He also hinted that Elizabeth’s character might be evil when he was asked about the possibility of the actress playing season 4’s Big Bad. He teased, “We never bring Lost actors on our show to be villains, so….”
His sarcastic comment referred to Once Upon a Time ‘s last female villain, the Wicked Witch. Zelena was played by Lost actress Rebecca Mader.
Mitchell has an interesting connection to another fairytale villainess. In the movie Gia , she played Angelina Jolie’s lover. Jolie recently played the dark fairy who cursed Sleeping Beauty in Disney’s Maleficent .
Elizabeth’s character could be based on the sinister Snow Queen from the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale about a powerful, cold-hearted ice queen. She kidnaps a young boy whose eyes and heart have been pierced by shards of a magic mirror, and she erases his memories of his friends and family. After he’s whisked away to the Snow Queen’s palace, he’s forced to spend his days trying to win his freedom by solving a massive puzzle made from chunks of ice. Luckily, he has a brave young female friend who will stop at nothing to rescue him from the Snow Queen’s cold spell.
Disney’s Frozen was based on Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen, but obviously the House of Mouse drastically changed the story. Perhaps Once Upon a Time plans to incorporate more elements from the original fairy tale into its Frozen story arc.
One fan theory is that Mr. Gold had Elsa locked up in his vault because he mistook her for Elizabeth Mitchell’s evil Snow Queen. Now that you’ve seen photos of Mitchell’s costume, you can see how Rumpel might have made that mistake.
Are you more excited about Elizabeth Mitchell’s Once Upon a Time character after seeing the set photos?
[Photo credit: WENN via Aceshowbiz ]