The times they are a-changin’ on ABC’s Once Upon A Time. The series will feature a massive time jump and a brand new location for its upcoming seventh season. But not only will our favorite characters survive the time jump and new location… they will also have to deal with a brand new curse which will be much harder to break free from.

The new curse is set by the series’ new villain Lady Tremaine (played by Gabrielle Anwar). “As often is the case on Once Upon A Time, there’s more than meets the eye to what we know about the character. Lady Tremaine doesn’t like Cinderella very much and she’s got an agenda. But there is something broiling beneath that’s personal and painful that is driving all of this,” says executive producer Adam Horowitz to EW.

“She’s somebody who wants to get to the top and will use any means necessary. So why it’s important for her to be royal, why it’s important for her to crush everyone else, is the story of the year. In true Once Upon A Time fashion, evil isn’t born, it’s made, and we’ll see that with her as well,” added executive producer Edward Kitsis.

As expected, the new curse has created a Storybrooke-esque town called Hyperion Heights in Seattle, Washington (aka the Land Without Magic). But don’t consider this town Storybrooke 2.0. Lady Tremaine has thrown in a twist. “We’re going to see in Hyperion Heights that the role Lady Tremaine has taken is very similar in terms of getting to the top, in terms of being a developer, who is this character who is trying to push out the fairy tale characters who are living in Hyperion Heights, gentrifying the neighborhood and bringing other people in,” says executive producer David H. Goodman.

Horowitz: “We’re in a city now. Hyperion Heights is part of Seattle the way Brooklyn is part of New York. It’s more densely populated and it’s filled with fairy tale characters and non-fairy tale characters and that’s another interaction and vibe that we didn’t really have in Storybrooke, where it was all the cursed people.”

And the Tremaine twist is: “Lady Tremaine learned the lesson that Regina didn’t, which is don’t keep them all together where one day they can find themselves, push them the hell out! You push them the hell out and you gentrify the neighborhood and you bring in a cold press juicer and they can’t afford it anymore, then you won’t worry about the Pied Piper finding, you know, Alice,” added Kitsis.

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Goodman: “[Lady Tremaine] is sort of Regina-prime and she’s trying to figure out a way to scatter these fairy tale characters to the wind so they can’t be together, because as we’ve always seen, when these characters get together, they always figure out how to beat the bad guy. Not giving anything away what the curse is, but she’s learning and standing on the backs of these other curses that have come before her to be as effective a villain as possible.”

But wait… Lady Tremaine has the power. Lady Tremaine is separating the fairy tale characters. So is it official that she cast the new curse?

Kitsis: “We said very clearly in the pilot of Once Upon A Time that Regina cast the curse. What you’ll see this season is we don’t necessarily say that in the premiere.”

So, who cast the new curse?

Once Upon A Time returns Friday, October 6 at 8pm/7c on ABC.

H/T: EW