‘Once Upon a Time’ season 3 spoilers: Do you want a Peter Pan origin story?

Even though we only just met Peter Pan on “Once Upon a Time” season 3, this is clearly a character that we have slowly come to know well ever since the end of last year. While he may just be a young boy in some ways, he is powerful enough for the likes of Rumpelstiltskin and Captain Hook to fear him, and even distract each other for a minute from the fact that they hate one another. That’s a pretty fascinating pull when you think about the story that we have been told so far when it comes to their characters.

So is there an assumption that this story is much deeper than what we have seen? There should be, and we have confirmation that we will be diving much deeper into the Peter Pan origin story before this fall run is over. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, executive producer Edward Kitsis hints at “Heart of Darkness” being a significant influence, and also explains what really makes this character so interesting:

“Someone who refuses to grow up has to have a lot of problems. It sounds great when you’re 16 but when you hit 25 or older, you start to go, ‘Oh god I would hate to be 16 again. I’m missing out on the things of life.’ You can’t just hit the pause button.”

Suddenly, this Peter Pan becomes about a thousand times more interesting than the one in the Disney movies, who was really quite frankly annoying at times. A darker interpretation yields a richer story, given that the writers are clearly asking some of the questions that we have been longing to know answers to. While being immortal may sound great on paper, there are surely quite a few caveats to it.

While you may not get any answers about Pan’s origin story from it, the promo here for this coming episode will at least serve as a nice way to get excited about what lies ahead.

Photo: ABC