Board Thread:Spoilers!/@comment-1916997-20170111004119/@comment-24674051-20170111184742

As much as we love the characters, most TV series start looking at rotating out the main characters in an attempt to keep things fresh. ER slowly, over the course of a few seasons, completely replaced their entire original cast. Some characters (like Dr Greene, who was a favorite of mine) died, while other were just written out.

They could easily do that with Once. For instance, have an episode or two where a new character comes in gunning for Rumple, and actually succeeds in obtaining the Dagger and Killing him, becoming a new DO, and one that is poised to cause more problems. Bring in a Jasmine (or other Fairy Tale heroine) and over the course of the season, have them take more and more action, until by the end they are a main, and the previous main is downgraded (this would replace Snow, and possibly David). They actually have the setup in place to have Zelena take a bigger role in place of Regina, who is really in a good place to move to background and actually just be the Mayor. Done right, you can, over the course of 2-3 seasons, completely rotate the cast.

But that is just half of the battle that needs to be fought. For Once to survive and thrive on Broadcast TV, it needs a format that is more conducive to bringing in new viewers. The serial format is great for streaming and bingeing (which is part of the reason for the shows success on Netflix), but generally does not do as well on Broadcast TV, when people tend to be more hit-and-miss in viewing. (Just my opinion)