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He said that the house is a promise. Kind of like a plan for the future.

Henry Mills to Emma Swan src

The Swan House is a Storybrooke location on ABC's Once Upon a Time. It first appears in the second episode of the fifth season.

History

Before Third Curse
During Hook's time in Camelot to help his allies find Merlin, he begins planning a possible future with Emma once she is rid of her darkness. In Storybrooke's newspaper, he finds an ad for a house that he and Emma could move into together. Later, Henry shows the ad to Emma to give her inspiration to continue fighting for her family and friends. While Emma also wants a future with Hook, her fear of the unknown makes her unwilling to give up on the darkness. With Hook's assurance that the future is nothing to be afraid of, she lets go of her fears. However, when Hook ends up dying, Emma cannot see herself going on without him and makes him a Dark One, in order to save his life. This has negative effects, with Hook choosing the darkness over her, and enacting another Dark Curse. Before the curse takes effect, Emma erases his memories as well as everyone else's, in the hopes of finding a way to restore Hook to the man he used to be. ("Broken Heart")

After Third Curse

After everyone returns to Storybrooke, Emma assumes her place as the Dark One and moves into the house that Hook had picked out for the both of them, although he doesn't remember anything that happened in Camelot. Upon hearing Hook summon her, she promptly appears and whisks him to the front of her new home. Emma invites him in, which Hook is surprised at, though she playfully states that they can still be together even if she's the Dark One. He notices a barred door to the basement and begins walking towards it, but he is stopped by Emma, who hands him a glass of alcohol. Hook, however, has other plans and kisses her, attempting to bestow true love's kiss on her. When he pulls away, distraught over it not working, Emma realizes he has been talking to Belle. She insists it didn't work because she has accepted herself as she is, but Hook refuses to believe it, as he can still see the good in her, and asks what happened in Camelot. At first, Emma says she wishes she could tell him, before teasing him about how it'd be no fun to give him a straight answer. She tries to charm him into staying, but Hook leaves. That evening, Regina bursts in, demanding that Emma call off the fury that kidnapped Robin Hood. While Regina believes Emma's unpaid price of magic set the fury off, Emma reveals Regina is the one who didn't pay the price six weeks ago. With growing agitation, she challenges Regina to be the savior and do what needs to be done. By the end of her speech, Emma has forced Regina to back out to the door entrance and then magically slams the door in her face. After Regina saves the town, Emma observes the residents spending time at the diner, before returning home to sit at the table with her dagger. A manifestation of Rumplestiltskin reappears to guide Emma into the basement, where he tempts her with the idea of snuffing the last bit of light inside her, by pulling out Excalibur and uniting it with the dagger. On her attempt to take out the sword, Excalibur blasts her away, as Rumplestiltskin tells her to find a hero to pull it out. ("The Price," "Broken Heart")

Ignoring Rumplestiltskin's advice, Emma steals Happy's pick ax and uses it to unearth Excalibur, but instead, the ax ends up breaking. With no other way, Emma decides she must seek out a hero, namely Mr. Gold, because his heart is now a blank slate. Somehow, she discovers Belle is putting together a healing spell to wake Mr. Gold from his coma, but the last ingredient needed is something that touched him when he was still a man. After setting up a faux date with Hook, Emma tricks him into revealing a time when he threatened Mr. Gold, then just a cowardly man, with a sword. She steals the sword, and then kidnaps Mr. Gold to her home basement, where she crushes the weapon over him. As the sword's remnants scatter onto him, he awakens, fearfully realizing Emma is now the Dark One. To him, she reveals her plans of making him into the hero she needs to free Excalibur. ("Siege Perilous")

In the home basement, Emma gazes at a middlemist flower as she twirls it in her hand. Behind her, an imprisoned Mr. Gold tries to talk her out of giving into her darkness, as he knows what that once felt like. He tells her to consider letting him go, but she reasons that he is the only one who can get the sword for her. He has doubts about being the hero she wants, though she hints there is a secret weapon to help him become that hero. ("The Broken Kingdom")

After fetching Merida, Emma returns to the basement to free Mr. Gold, who continues to ask her to let him go. He warns that no matter her good intentions, she will always lose her loved ones in the end, like he did. Emma contemplates his words for a moment, before commanding Merida via her heart to bring Mr. Gold to the woods to make him a hero, as she herself leaves the house for a nearby shed. Later, Henry turns up on her doorstep, persuading her to join him on an Operation Cobra mission to rescue Violet Morgan's horse Nicodemus. While she is gone, Regina, Robin, Belle and Hook arrive, intending to break into the house. They are unable to enter because of a door enchantment, but when Belle guesses that Emma would probably let Henry in, Regina conjures Henry's scarf, using it to bypass the barrier. Wandering into the basement, the foursome find Excalibur in the stone, noting that the sword's markings are the same as the dagger. Hook moves to pull it out, but Regina stops him, warning about the sword possibly being booby trapped. Belle finds evidence Mr. Gold was previously in the basement, prompting Robin to suggest they search the rest of the house, but they scramble to leave after Regina gets a text from Henry about Emma returning home. On the way out, Hook opens a box containing a dreamcatcher, leading Regina to realize Emma used it to take their memories. ("Dreamcatcher")

When Mr. Gold escapes, Emma sends Merida to kill Belle so he will be forced into action. Instead, a captured Merida is brought back to the basement by Mr. Gold and Belle, where Emma is already waiting for them. Mr. Gold offers to try pulling out Excalibur if Emma returns Merida's heart and reveals the whereabouts of Merida's brothers. With the heart, Emma holds it as she approaches Merida, commenting that she was done using the heart anyway, before shoving it into the redhead's chest. When prompted about the fate of Merida's brothers, Emma impatiently states that they're fine and currently with their mother. As Mr. Gold goes to the sword, Belle asks what will happen if he fails to pull it out, with Emma callously remarking that Belle will have to clean up after his ashes. Before going ahead with the attempt, Mr. Gold tells Belle that if he could change things, he would be the man she deserves, to which she encourages him, saying that it's never too late. Mr. Gold succeeds in freeing Excalibur, and before taking his leave with Belle, he cautions Emma to not underestimate him now that he's a hero. ("The Bear and the Bow")

Using the last flame ember from mankind's original fire, Emma merges Excalibur and the Dark One's dagger into one weapon, as all the previous Dark Ones, including Rumplestiltskin and Nimue, are present for the ceremony. As the reforged weapon lingers in the air, Emma hesitates in grabbing it, recalling the warning Merlin gave her when she was a young girl about not taking Excalibur. With encouragement from Nimue, Emma eventually takes hold of the sword. ("Nimue")

Sometime during one day, Emma steals squid ink from a safe in Mr. Gold's pawnshop. She brings it to her house and then hides it behind a wall painting. After saving Hook twice to keep him from realizing he is a Dark One, Emma leads him into her house, where she allows him to look through a telescope at the sea, a scenery she knows he is fond of. She then reveals the house was his idea back in Camelot, and that everything she's done since then has been to sustain the future she wants with him. Hook lets down his guard, believing Emma will finally tell him the truth, and is drawn into a kiss by Emma. She breaks the kiss, admitting she cannot reveal everything to him until after it's finished, because if he knew what she had planned, he would try to stop her. When Hook passes out from the kiss's effects, Emma chains him in the basement. She leaves momentarily to collect Zelena from the hospital after she has given birth, and then imprisons the redhead in the basement with Hook. Once Hook is awake again, Emma reveals she plans to put all the darkness in Zelena and then kill her with Excalibur. This will extinguish the darkness in Emma, and unknown to Hook, himself as well, but Hook speaks out against Emma killing someone to secure their future, even if it's Zelena. After Emma leaves, Zelena convinces him to use his hook to take off her cuff, restoring her magic so she can free the both of them. The pair head to the main floor of the house, where Zelena leaves out the back door, while Hook stays to confront Emma. He finds squid ink hidden behind the wall painting, tossing it onto Emma, who becomes paralyzed by the ink, before he questions her on her motives. Zelena returns to provide the answer by stabbing him in the chest, proving he is immortal, and then lets him view his memories in the dreamcatcher, which shows Emma reviving him after his death by turning him into a Dark One. ("Birth")

Seeing Emma's lies as a betrayal, Hook steals her memories to make her forget about his plan to bring all the Dark Ones to Storybrooke. While Emma is engrossed by the aftereffects of her memories being taken, Zelena puts the cuff on her, making her unable to use magic. Soon after both Zelena and Hook are gone, Regina, David and Mary Margaret barge into the house to find Emma. She admits what she did in Camelot to Hook, with Regina and Mary Margaret expressing disapproval over her trying to fix the problem herself and the fact she didn't come to them for help. ("Broken Heart")

With her loved ones bound for the Underworld after they are given the mark of Charon by the Dark Ones, Emma decides she must sacrifice herself to save them. After getting Excalibur from Mr. Gold, she puts it in a closet at home and departs for the diner, where she leaves a farewell note to her family. When she returns home to get the sword, Hook demands it from her. He justifies that if she can't die since he owes her for helping him becoming the man he is. When Emma asserts that the Killian she knew didn't care about revenge, Hook states that he did, except that she briefly distracted him from it. She questions if it's worth it if he becomes the thing he had hated the most, to which he quips that if she hadn't wanted him to change, she should have let him die. She apologizes, stating she couldn't let another person she loved die, while he darkly asserts that now she can watch all of her family die. Emma then tries to kill him, but Hook tricks her into giving him the sword by reappearing as Henry in disguise. Following Hook's death, in which he sacrifices himself to destroy the darkness, Emma goes home, lying on her couch as she holds the ring Hook once gave her in Camelot. Suddenly, she hears the call of the dagger, prompting her to go to Mr. Gold at the pawnshop to find out what is going on. ("Swan Song")

As the heroes begin their search for Mr. Gold, who stole Storybrooke's magic, Emma suggests Regina should sit out from the mission because she's still grieving over Robin. Regina, offended that Emma believes she will revert to being the Evil Queen, disappears to look for Mr. Gold herself. Before going to join her family, Emma instructs Henry to stay at her house, where it's safe., but instead, the boy goes to the pawnshop to formulate a plan to destroy magic for good. ("Only You")

At her house, Emma is the midst of making out with Hook when they both notice the table shaking. The two head outside to see what is going on, and spot a dirigible flying overhead. ("The Savior")

One morning at her house, Emma is surprised when her father makes her an abundance of pancakes and asks him what's wrong. David admits he's worried about not seeing her as often now that she and Hook are living together, but she insists this changes nothing with her family. Snow prepares to leave for her first day back at her teaching job, but on her way out with Henry, Regina and Jekyll arrive with bad news about Hyde. At David's urging, Snow and Henry continue on to school, while he and Emma deal with the situation. After revealing Hyde escaped his cell, Jekyll recalls finding a necklace in his inn room that belonged to a woman he cared for, and his belief that Hyde purposely left it to taunt him. ("Strange Case")

On another day, Hook goes to the shed near Emma's house, where he hides the shears in a toolbox. After Emma leaves home to look for Aladdin, Henry tries to assure Hook that he doesn't have to keep him company, but Hook asks him to show him how a webcam works. Hook notices Henry's breakfast and dumps it out, much to the boy's dismay, before deciding he'll cook him a better meal. As Henry is putting out the trash, the Queen plays on his growing resentment towards Hook by helping him find the shears in the shed, as proof Hook doesn't have Emma's best interests at heart. Henry leaves for the harbor to dispose of them, and Hook later goes to stop him, upon realizing what happened when he finds both the boy and the shears missing. ("Dark Waters")

Following Emma's defeat of Gideon, she and her family return to her house, where they have a toast to celebrate the victory. Later, David goes outside to sit on the porch steps and look at a video still of Snow. He hears a noise and gets up to investigate, but upon turning around, he sees his deceased father Robert covered in blood. When David passes out, Hook comes out of the house and shakes him awake. He urges him to wake Snow and get some rest, but David snaps at him, stating he doesn't need advice from a pirate. Once Hook backs off and goes back into the house, David spots Robert's coin on the ground and picks it up. After getting David's blessing to propose to Emma, Hook walks home. Outside the house, August rides up on his motorcycle to deliver some missing storybook pages to Hook and asks him to give them to David. Hook looks through them, and in one page in particular, he sees a drawing of Robert, whom he is shocked to recognize as a man he killed long ago. He quickly hides the pages in his back pocket when Emma pops out of the house to welcome him home. Once the blonde has gone back in to make a snack, Hook pulls out the ring box, opening it to reveal the ring meant for Emma, before a conflicted look falls over his face as he snaps it shut. ("Murder Most Foul")

Sometime after this, Hook hides the ring in his sea chest somewhere in the house. While he is away from home, Emma finds the ring and realizes he is going to propose to her. She comes down the stairs to greet him with a kiss when he returns and notices he has been drinking rum. Hook admits he needed it to give him courage for what he's about to tell her, to which Emma excitedly proclaims her answer is yes before revealing how she found the ring. Knowing that he meant it to be a surprise for her, Emma returns the ring to him so he can propose to her as he originally intended. Hook obliges by kneeling and asking for her hand in marriage, and he slips the ring on her just before she tearfully says yes. As she embraces him in an tight hug, Hook smiles joyfully as well, until he recalls the weight of his secret. ("Ill-Boding Patterns")

Unable to be honest with Emma or live with his guilt, Hook sits by the fireplace in Emma's house, where he takes his dreamcatcher and looks through his memories of killing Robert. Emma walks in on him and realizes he intended to burn the dreamcatcher without even telling her the truth. Hook explains his fears about her reaction and his ability to face her parents, but a tearful Emma angrily suggests he could've come to her for support so they could deal with the weight of the burden together. Seeing as he is not the man she thought she was marrying, Emma returns the ring to him, telling him that they can talk when he is ready to trust her. Later on, she returns home to find Hook is gone. ("Page 23")

Believing Hook has abandoned her for good, Emma packs up his things into a box as Henry sits beside her on the couch. She longingly toys with one of his rings, which Henry notices and asks if she is all right. Emma affirms she is and then gets a phone call about a fight that broke out at a bar. As Emma leaves the house to go investigate the incident, she tells Henry to take the box out to the shed later. Henry agrees but becomes too distracted by his phone. Emma returns home to find the box where she left it and takes it with her on her way down the house steps. Suddenly, she hears Hook's voice coming from the box and she reaches in to retrieve a conch shell. Hook tells her that Gideon forced him out of Storybrooke and that he is on his way back to her. Emma is elated by the news, but when she attempts to respond to him, he doesn't hear her. Aesop, a bartender she befriended in the earlier evening, shows up to reveal himself as Gideon, and that if she wishes to have Hook back, she'll have to help him kill the Black Fairy. ("A Wondrous Place")

Directly after receiving the ultimatum about Hook and the Black Fairy, Emma walks back into her house as Gideon follows her in. She grabs his neck in a vice grip while demanding he undo whatever he did to keep Hook from coming home, but Gideon continues to ask for her assistance. This only further angers Emma, who drops her hold on him and slaps him hard, drawing blood from his lip. Gideon instead tells her about his experience with the depravity of the Black Fairy's soul and what she has done to other enslaved children, all of whom he promised to save and Emma will either have to comply with his demands or never see Hook again. With that, Gideon teleports out, leaving Emma to contemplate the deal. ("Mother's Little Helper")

One morning at home, Emma is cooking pancakes at the stove when Hook playfully interrupts her. She returns his ardor with heated kisses and the couple's fervor for each other grow in intensity, however, things cool off once Snow unlocks the front door and comes in looking for Emma. Upon seeing the two, Snow realizes they were in the middle of something and offers to come back later, but Hook decides to go upstairs to take a cold shower. Emma is somewhat surprised when her mother shows her a whole binder of wedding plans she has been putting together since the first curse broke. Snow explains that her enthusiasm is due to her desire to be involved in Emma's special day when she wasn't able to be there for other milestones in her life. Emma, touched by her mother's sentiments, embraces her in a hug before she is phoned by Regina. ("Where Bluebirds Fly")

With the Black Fairy defeated by Mr. Gold, Emma and Hook's wedding is scheduled to take place the next day. That night, Hook drops by Emma's house to ask Henry to be his best man and gives him the rings to keep until the ceremony. Emma comes downstairs to greet Hook, who tells her that he doesn't intend to stay for the evening as it's bad luck to see his bride-to-be on the eve before the wedding. ("The Black Fairy")

In the hours before her wedding, Emma is still trying to decide which dress to wear when Snow offers up her old wedding dress to her. Snow later returns from the dry cleaner's with the dress as Emma is sharing drinks with Zelena and Regina. Emma barely has any time to look at the dress before it is suddenly dyed black by none other than the Black Fairy, who reveals she is still alive because her son Mr. Gold did not banish her as the heroes assumed he had. Rather than wait for the final battle to play out between them, the Black Fairy suggests Emma can forfeit her heart to her now and even attempts to weaken Emma's resolve by reminding her of who she has always been: a little lonely orphan girl. However, Emma is unmoved, to which the Black Fairy directs her to the clock tower to see what she has in store for her. ("The Song in Your Heart")

Visitors

Trivia

On-Screen Notes

115 W 10th St, Storybrooke
NANTUCKET STYLE HOUSE

One of Storybrooke's
finest heritage homes
awaits you. Completely
renovated throughout,
this house features an
open floor plan with 10'
ceilings on the main floor,
custom cabinetry in the
kitchen, stainless steel
appliances, bamboo hard
wood floors throughout,
limestone, marble and
granite in all baths and
kitchen, custom fp [sic] & huge
400 square foot secluded
South facing terrace off
kitchen / dining room.
Professionally landscaped

with sprinkler systems
rock work and night
lighting, 2 bedrooms on
2nd floor, master
bedroom can easily
accommodate a King Bed
and has lot of closet
space! 3rd floor addition
allows for full height and
is fully finished for use as
a den, bedroom, office or
combo. There is a
detached single garage
with plenty of room for
storage. Exterior shed
may be used for more
storage.
Open House Sunday 12-5
("Birth")

Production Notes

  • The show creators originally wanted Emma to get her own place in the fourth season, but the cost and the budget was prohibitive, and every time they tried to do it, they could not afford it. It was moved to Season Five instead.[4]

Popular Culture

Prop Notes

Set Dressing

Filming Locations

Appearances

Note: "Archive" denotes archive footage.

References

  1. TwitterLogo Charitini🌸 (@hopeswanjones) on X, formerly Twitter: You should rename "Emma's house" to "Emma and Killian's house" ..they bought it to live there together after all❤️And he picked it (September 28, 2017). (backup link) (archive screenshot)
    TwitterLogo Adam Horowitz (@AdamHorowitzLA) on X, formerly Twitter: Yeah, but she had to pay for it. The bank didn't take doubloons so the title is in her name. (September 28, 2017). (backup link) (archive screenshot)
  2. 2.0 2.1 File:502ComeOn.png
  3. File:508OurFuture.png
  4. Abrams, Natalie (December 15, 2014). 'Once Upon a Time' bosses tease getting back to basics. Entertainment Weekly. “Does Emma finally get her own place? KITSIS: We wanted her to have her own place, but the cost and the budget was prohibitive, so it’s looking like season 5 now. We wanted her to have her own place from mini-camp of this year, and every time we try to do it, we just can’t afford it. So we don’t want to do it until we can do it well. But rest assured, Emma does need her own space.”
  5. Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis (August 7, 2012). Once Upon a Times Adam Horowitz's and Edward Kitsis's Weeks in Pop-Culture Consumption. Vulture. “Long day in the room and I need to let my mind wander. Tonight's playlist is all Grateful Dead. Yes, I'm a Deadhead. I look for something from my favorite year, 1973, when they were gooey and jazzy and just all around in the zone.”

    Monica (October 21, 2013). Adam Horowitz & Edward Kitsis Talk New Seasons of OUAT and OUATIW. CableTV.com. Archived from the original on July 17, 2019. “I was a deadhead, loved The Grateful Dead. When you are a deadhead it becomes less about the music and more about the community…”
  6. 6.0 6.1 Abrams, Natalie (October 16, 2015). The Hot Seat: 'Once Upon a Time' bosses answer your burning questions. Entertainment Weekly. “Is there any meaning behind Emma's house number 710? KITSIS: Yes. By the way, the meaning behind it is it's the Grateful Dead House on Haight Ashbury, which is really for me and Josh Dallas. The rest of our fans don't care about the Grateful Dead. Every once in a while, we'll stick in an Easter egg just for us, so I don’t want our fans to start combing through what 710 means. If they’re interested, I would say start with "American Beauty" and then get some bootlegs.”
  7. The Grateful Dead House (710 Ashbury St.). City Walking Guide. Retrieved on July 13, 2020. “They later changed the name of their group to The Grateful Dead. The charter members were Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Ron McKernan and Bob Weir. The group lived at 710 Ashbury Street from 1966 until 1968.”
  8. File:508Idea.png
  9. File:110MaryMargaretLeaves.png
  10. File:604RomanianPowerLifter.png
  11. andana. Binisaya.com. Retrieved on July 13, 2020. “English to Binisaya - Cebuano Dictionary and Thesaurus. (...) andana [an.dá.na.] : floor (n.); story (n.)”
  12. File:315GoIntoLabor.png
  13. File:604EnjoyYourBreakfast.png
  14. File:311ServingBreakfast.png
  15. 15.0 15.1 3814 OXFORD Street Burnaby V5C 1C3 : Vancouver Heights. Herb Johnstone. Retrieved on July 13, 2020. “The Angus and Margaret MacDonald House is one of Burnaby's Landmark Residential Heritage Buildings built in 1909 as part of the exclusive subdivision known as "Vancouver Heights". It is Burnaby's most elaborate example of the Queen Anne Revival style. This home is 4 levels, 5 bedrooms, 3350 sqft plus an unfinished basement (approved for future legal suite). The most notable features of the structure are the three-storey front turret and a "wrap-around" verandah supported by elaborate Ionic columns.”
  16. SET: ONCE UPON A TIME's New Dark Swan House in Burnaby Heights. Hollywood North Buzz (July 28, 2015).
  17. SHOOT: ONCE UPON A TIME Films Dark Swan (Jennifer Morrison) & Son Henry (Jared Gilmore) at Swan House in Burnaby. Hollywood North Buzz (August 25, 2015). “Once Upon a Time filmed several scenes outside the Dark Swan house in Burnaby today. Production paid for the young family who lives there to stay in a hotel for two nights. They had complained about fans knowing the address and about overzealous ones showing up in their yard for a closer look at Emma’s new house but that seems to have stopped.”
  18. Screenshot from iZombie: "Virtual Reality Bites"
  19. Tumblr The Enchanted Forest News Service (@efnewsservice) on Tumblr: Emma's House - Bridge Studio set tour (March 25, 2017). (backup link) (archive screenshot)
    InstagramIcon Ouacspodcast (@ouacspodcast) on Instagram: Some photos of the CS house set at Bridge Studios! (March 28, 2017). (backup link) (archive screenshot)
  20. File:TWSgtMac7-SwanHouse.png
    File:TWSgtMac7-SwanHouse2.jpg
    File:TWSgtMac7-SwanHouse3.jpg
  21. InstagramIcon Craig Clarke (@vfxsup) on Instagram: JMo gets a turn at the dark one (Bridge Studios) (March 15, 2018). (backup link) (archive screenshot)
    InstagramIcon Craig Clarke (@vfxsup) on Instagram: More dark ones! It's Jmo’s turn this time ;) I have a pile of pics from this day that you will see in the photo book! (Bridge Studios) (June 5, 2018). (backup link) (archive screenshot)
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