​Note: This article was originally published on Catholic Exchange. Contains spoilers for Season 1 of Once Upon a Time.

Last year, I rewatched the ABC drama Once Upon a Time, which first aired from 2011 to 2018. It’s a strange but endearing show that puts a Disney-centric fairy tale aesthetic on a soap opera. Although I have many criticisms of the series, I still enjoy much of it.
 
On this rewatch, I realized that the show not only promotes (however ambiguously or imperfectly) Christian values like faith, hope, love, and forgiveness. It also carries striking parallels to the salvation story, and even has an analogue to the Bible as a record of history and revelation. The format of the show, pairing a present-day storyline with flashbacks to a related storyline in the past, evokes the kind of foreshadowing and fulfilment discovered in biblical typology.
 
The show’s premise is that a host of fairy-tale characters have been cursed to forget who they are and transported to the modern-day town of Storybrooke, Maine. Time does not pass for them, so they remain frozen at the same age for 28 years. The protagonist of the series is Emma Swan, the long-lost daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, who is prophesied to break the curse. However, Emma grows up as an orphan in the “land without magic,” and for a long time does not believe in the reality of the curse or her royal lineage. Throughout the series, she struggles with accepting her family, her identity, and her destiny.
 
This article will contain spoilers for Season 1 of Once Upon a Time (OUAT for short).
 
 
The Savior
 
From the very first episode, Emma is set up as a Christ-figure. Even before her birth, it is foretold that she will restore the happiness that her parents’ enemy, the Evil Queen Regina, is trying to destroy. Throughout the series’ flashbacks, multiple characters insist that Emma must find her parents and break the queen’s curse at the right time—in her case, when she turns 28—similar to how Jesus was incarnated and made His paschal sacrifice “in the fullness of time” (Galatians 4:4).
 
Emma is like Moses and Jesus in the way she escapes a tyrannical monarch who wants to kill her as an infant. Her parents place her in a wardrobe made from a magical tree that transports her to another realm (perhaps an homage to the wardrobe that leads to Narnia). While discussing this plan, one of the dwarves even says, “Our fate rests on a tree?” which calls to my mind the cross!
 
Snow White and Charming giving up years of time with their daughter reminds me of Jesus leaving the unity of the Trinity in Heaven to be incarnated on Earth. Snow White’s pain in letting go of her child resembles the sorrow of the Blessed Mother giving up her Son to God’s plan for salvation. Like St. Joseph protecting Jesus from King Herod’s soldiers, Charming protects Emma from the Evil Queen’s knights and ensures that she will grow up in safety.
 
 
Memory and Morality
 
A recurring theme across the books of the Bible is the importance of remembering. Throughout the Old Testament, God’s people repeatedly suffer because they fail to remember the great deeds He did for them in the past. The Jewish celebration of Passover commemorates the Israelites’ escape to freedom, and Jesus commanded His disciples to break bread in memory of Him; both rituals are considered a participation in those past events.
 
Memory—or more precisely the loss of memory—is also a central theme in OUAT. The fairy-tale characters have forgotten their true identities and lost their most important relationships. They are familiar with the classic stories, but they do not know that the stories are true, let alone about them. I find this similar to how many people are familiar with the stories of the Bible, but do not believe those events happened or understand that they themselves are part of the overall story.
 
Another noteworthy effect of the Dark Curse is that the heroes, once renowned for their integrity, no longer have a clear sense of right and wrong. In this moral murkiness, they make bad decisions, hurting themselves and each other. This is similar to the effect of Original Sin, clouding human judgment and corrupting relationships.
 
Under the curse, the residents of Storybrooke are trapped in mundane routine and mediocrity. They live in fearful obedience to Regina, the Evil Queen-turned-mayor. Their lives do not seem to hold any meaning. Everyone feels alone.
 
Henry, Emma’s ten-year-old son, comes onto the scene as a prophet, speaking the truth that no one believes and calling people back into a forgotten relationship. Growing up in Storybrooke as the adopted son of Regina, he possesses a book containing stories of the town’s inhabitants. Like the scriptures, it explains where the characters came from and where they must go. Henry is the only one who recognizes how the old stories connect with the people he knows, and he tries to make others realize it, though they dismiss his claims as childish imagination or delusion.
 
Emma is forced to reckon with her past when Henry, whom she placed for adoption at birth, tracks her down and convinces her to come to Storybrooke. Like John the Baptist, Henry prepares a way for the Savior and urges people to believe in them.
 
 
In the Fullness of Time
 
Without giving away details, the Season 1 finale is full of biblical imagery, mirroring the Harrowing of Hell and the battle between Christ and Satan. Ultimately, Emma breaks the curse, which restores the people’s memories. But they remain in Storybrooke, away from their homeland of the Enchanted Forest. They ask each other, if the curse has been broken, “Then why are we still here?”
 
This may have been how the early Christians felt, and may be relatable to the rest of us who live between the Resurrection and the Second Coming. Christ has conquered death and opened the gates of Heaven to us, but we still live under the effects of Original Sin on Earth. We must continue living here, holding on to our memory of the past and our hope for the future, until we reach our true home in Heaven at our death or the end of time.
 
 
Coming Home
 
Even after Emma comes to believe in the truth of the stories, it takes a while for her to open her heart to her parents and accept their story as her own.
 
We face a similar decision regarding our relationship with God and our place in the Communion of Saints. It is one thing to believe in God intellectually, but another to love and trust Him. We can choose whether to accept His invitation to a covenantal relationship, or run from it like the Prodigal Son.
 
Eventually—I will not say in what season—after years of running away from opportunities to have a home and meaningful relationships, Emma accepts Snow White and Charming as her parents, Henry as her son, and the people of Storybrooke as her friends. She embraces their values of faith, hope, and love, putting herself on the path to a happy ending.


I plan to analyze more aspects of Once Upon a Time in future blog posts and a podcast episode.

​Note: This article was originally published on Catholic Exchange. Contains spoilers for Tuck Everlasting.

​Though I only discovered it a couple years ago, the 1975 novel Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt has become one of my favorite books. It is a children’s adventure and coming-of-age story, but also holds much for adults to ponder. Taking place in the first week of August, it is a perfect summer read, with beautifully written descriptions of nature and pensive reflections on life and death.

The plot of Tuck Everlasting revolves around a spring whose water grants the drinker immortality. The Tuck family—Angus, his wife Mae, and their sons Miles and Jesse—made the mistake of drinking water from the spring, which rendered them immortal. They do not age, and they cannot die. When ten-year-old Winnie Foster meets them and discovers their secret, she must choose whether to drink the water and stay young forever, or grow up and eventually die.

According to a 2015 interview, Babbitt wrote the book to help her own child reckon with the inevitability of death. It is secular in its approach to this heavy topic, and no consolation is offered by way of belief in an afterlife or resurrection. Yet, paradoxically, this story about accepting the reality of death turns out to be a powerful affirmation of life.


The Original Plan

The novel contains one possible allusion to the Bible, pointing back to the story of Creation.

God placed two trees in the center of the Garden of Eden: the Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:9). When Adam and Eve took the fruit of knowledge, God sent angels to guard the Tree of Life, so mankind would not take its fruit and live forever (Genesis 3:22).

Why would God do that, if He intended—and intends—to give us eternal life? I am not a theologian, but I think the lessons drawn from Tuck Everlasting may point to an answer.

The spring is located at the base of an unchanging tree, reminiscent of the Tree of Life. The Tucks theorize that the spring may be “something left over … from some other plan for the way the world should be. … Some plan that didn’t work out too good” (Babbitt 41). This seems like a clear nod to the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man. Looking at it this way, Tuck Everlasting serves as a thought experiment for what would happen if someone became immortal while still living in a fallen, aging, death-filled world.


The Meaning of Life

In John 10:10, Jesus says, “I came that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” The Tucks try to make the best of their lives, but their immortality is not the “abundant life” promised by Jesus.

One of the worst consequences of the Tucks’ immortality is that they are cut off from the rest of the world. Their friends and neighbors turned away from them as their agelessness became more apparent. Miles’ wife and children left him because they thought he had sold his soul to the devil. They cannot stay anywhere for too long without running the risk of people discovering their secret. They reunite only once every ten years before going separate ways again.

The Tucks cope with their unusual situation in different ways, and Winnie hears each of their perspectives over the course of her time with them. Naturally, Winnie does not want to die, and so the water of the spring greatly appeals to her. But Angus, comparing the cycle of life to a wheel, explains, “dying’s part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can’t pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that’s the blessing. … You can’t have living without dying” (Babbitt 63-64). This hits on some truth about the connection between life and death. Jesus says multiple times in the gospels that one who loves his life and wishes to save it will lose it, whereas one who hates and gives up his life will find it and preserve it for eternity (Matthew 10:39, Matthew 16:25, John 12:25). The Tucks cannot experience the change and growth that characterize life, and since they cannot die, they are barred from the blessings of Heaven. They long for death because they long for true life, both on Earth and in Heaven.


The Serpent and the Substitute

The antagonist of Tuck Everlasting is the unnamed man in the yellow suit. He wants to find the spring and sell its water, offering “eternal life” to those who “deserve” or can afford it. This is much like the serpent tempting Eve, or the devil tempting us, with half-truths and false promises. But the Tucks know that immortality given that way would be a curse rather than a blessing, and that revealing the spring’s location could cause chaos for all humanity.

Fittingly, it is Mae, the mother of the Tuck family, who acts to protect her family and defeat their enemy. She attacks him by striking his head, an action that echoes Jael killing Sisera, Judith killing Holophernes, and the image of Mary crushing Satan’s head (a symbolic reference to the prophecy of Genesis 3:15)! But when the man in the yellow suit dies of this injury, Mae is sentenced to hang, which would reveal her immortality to the world.

Winnie plays a somewhat Christlike role in the final act of the narrative. She helps Mae escape the authorities by taking her place in jail. Afterwards, she can only justify her actions with the fact that she loves the Tucks. Her parents are ashamed of her, and her actions make their social life difficult. But the local children come to visit Winnie, “impressed by what she had done,” wanting to be her friend, whereas before she seemed “almost, somehow, too clean to be a real friend” (Babbitt 130). This reminds me of how Jesus’ family did not believe him, and of the way Jesus dwelt among mankind rather than staying distant and untouchable.


The Wheel

Tuck Everlasting may show that it was for the best that God prevented mankind from accessing the Tree of Life. Life is precious, and God offers us eternal life, but it is for Him to give, not for us to grasp for and steal. Attempting to do so will lead to death rather than life.

Though we believe in Christ’s victory over death, we still live in a world tainted by Original Sin. While we are here, we must reckon with death as something that is real and, paradoxically, necessary for true life. The Good News is that for Christians, death is no longer to be feared because it has been defeated, and so it is not final. We have hope of going to heaven when we die and the resurrection of our bodies at the end of time. We can have the full experience of the wheel.

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Hear more analysis on the corresponding podcast episode. Bonus material will be available on Patreon.