Jefferson

"I hate Wonderland."

- Jefferson to Regina

Jefferson, better known as the Mad Hatter, is a minor character on Once Upon a Time. He debuts in the seventeenth episode of the first season. He is played by guest star Sebastian Stan and is the fairytale counterpart of Jefferson.

Season One
One day, Jefferson is out in the woods collecting mushrooms to sell and playing hide-and-seek with his daughter, Grace. When they arrive at home, they see the Queen's carriage at their house. The Queen wants Jefferson's help to retrieve something, and tells him that if he cooperates, Grace will want for nothing, but Jefferson refuses. He seems to have an unpleasant history with the Queen. While at the market the next day, Grace wants a rabbit doll, but Jefferson can't afford it. His daughter is not upset, but he begins to worry that he can't meet all of her desires, unaware that this incident was orchestrated by the Queen.

Jefferson and Grace return home to enjoy a pretend tea party, with an improvised toy rabbit he made. Deciding that he should try to make her life better, Jefferson askes Grace to stay with the neighbors while he performs the task the Queen desires from him, promising to return later, despite Grace's pleas against it. Jefferson later visits the Queen and offers his help. Jefferson spins a hat on the floor. The Queen and him jump in and are surrounded by doors. Jefferson warns her that if two people enter the door, only two can exit. They enter through a mirror and run into a Caterpillar who puffs smoke rings in their faces, prompting annoyance from Jefferson.

They arrive at a hedge maze which leads to the Queen of Hearts' castle, however the Evil Queen makes short work of the magical maze by sending a ball of flame through it. They manage to get what the Queen wants, which turns out to be her precious father Henry, and escape from the Queen of Hearts, but before they leave the Queen reveals that she is leaving with her father, thus Jefferson can't go back.

The guards catch up with him and take him to the Queen of Hearts. She beheads him, yet he is still alive. She tells him that if he wants his body back, he must tell her what happened with him and Regina. He does and he is given his body back. He is told that he needs to make another hat to leave. Jefferson is later seen making a hat, having gone mad trying to get it right, and the room is shown to be filled with thousands of hats.

Trivia

 * Jefferson's name is a reference to the band Jefferson Airplane, which had a hit song called "White Rabbit", itself a reference to "Alice In Wonderland".
 * He is one of the few characters in Fairytale Land who calls the Queen by her given name.
 * The hat he spun took him to a room with a series of doors, one of them being the Looking Glass, which leads to Wonderland.
 * He's the second fairy tale character, after Regina, to retain his name in Storybrooke, most likely because he, too, remembers his past life.

Chapelier fou Jefferson_(Märchenland)