Once Upon a Time season 7 not being planned as final season

For anyone who felt for certain that Once Upon a Time season 7 was going to be the last one in the midst of all the changes … don’t necessarily think that. If this show can become the little engine that could for ABC on Friday nights, there are plans to keep it on the air. As with so many other things, much of it seems to come down to creative reception mixed with the show’s ratings.

While at the TCA Summer Press Tour this morning, the network’s head in Channing Dungey made it clear (via Entertainment Weekly) just what they are going to be looking at in order to better determine the show’s future on the air:

“A lot of it is going to depend on how these new characters and this new story line resonates … If it does, we have the opportunity to tell multiple years with these new characters and if not, we’ll look at the series as we’re going into this year and talk about how we wind it down. What they’ve got planned is really spectacular.”

One of the things that you do need to remember when it comes to quotes from a network executive in front of television critics is to take everything with a certain grain of salt. Obviously, Dungey is not going to go up there and proclaim that the new season is garbage that ABC should do away with sooner rather than later. There’s no reason at all for her to want to torpedo her own brand.

Yet, there may be a reason for cautious optimism just because the show is moving to a new night, and with that it’s possible that there could be some new conflicts that come out of it. In retrospect, we probably wish that the entirety of Once Upon a Time and its run was geared more towards what we saw in the first season, where there was a little bit more of a story-of-the-week component and we got to see a larger amount of the fairy-tale universe as opposed to the more serialized plots. If that had happened, especially when that’s when the show’s ratings were stronger than at any other point, we do wonder as to whether or not it could have lasted even longer with some of the core characters. There were certain people in the ensemble who were getting roughly the same story every time by around the time we were getting to seasons 4 and 5.

We do think that the show could get decent ratings on Friday, but it’s going to struggle to make them magnificent. Just remember that there is surprisingly a great deal of competition with MacGyver airing on CBS to go along with Blindspot over on NBC.

Do you think that this is the end of the road for Once Upon a Time?

Be sure to share some additional news/insight when it comes to the show! Also, you can head over to the link here in the event that you do want to get some other insight right now when it comes to the show. (Photo: ABC.)