The Scoop on ONCE UPON A TIME's New 'Queens of Darkness'

ONCE UPON A TIME returns to ABC on March 1, and while we eagerly wait for the premiere, ET has learned some juicy tidbits about the series' new evil trifecta -- "The Queens of Darkness" -- Maleficent, Urusla and Cruella.

Creators Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis say Rumplestiltskin (Robert Carlyle) has been working with the three villains to plot his revenge while the show has been away. See what the duo had to say about each character...

Maleficent - "We are going to be sticking to the villain that we created. She was inspired by the original Sleeping Beauty movie, and we love the Maleficent movie that came out, but what we've been doing is building on the character we introduced in season one," Kitsis said. "We are going to get much more into her back story. In fact, we are even going to see a flashback of how Maleficent and the Evil Queen [Regina] met."

Ursula - "She's going to be based into the mythology of our Once Upon a Time universe and we're going to be exploring that further," Kitsis said. "As we saw last year, our Little Mermaid story didn't quite happen the same way as it did in the movie -- and the Ursula story is quite different as well."

Cruella - "I would say that our twist on Cruella is that she isn't necessarily that crazy woman from that Disney movie. Our Cruella -- you'll learn quickly -- has origins that trace her back to the Enchanted Forest and that there is some power to be had with her," Horowitz said. Kitsis added: "There will be some touchstones in the spirit of her character, but in our world she has powers and she'll be much more than the '50s Cruella in the movie."

ABC's ONCE UPON A TIME will return on March 1st with the all-new episode, "Darkness On The Edge Of Town".

About ONCE UPON A TIME:

Master storytellers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz ("Lost," "Tron: Legacy") invite everyone to join Emma Swan, Snow White, Prince Charming, The Evil Queen, Hook and all the other resident fairytale characters as they prepare to defend themselves against a magical force from the past that's too unpredictable even for Rumplestiltskin - Elsa, the Ice Queen from Arendelle.

Welcome to Storybrooke, Maine, a small town that probably won't show up on your GPS, but it's a magical place to visit. Reality and myth merged after Emma broke Regina's curse, which had deprived the fairy tale characters of their memories and trapped them in our modern world. When they finally regained their identities, our heroes were dismayed to discover that they weren't transported back to Fairy Tale Land. To make matters worse, Rumplestiltskin - aka Mr. Gold - decided to escalate his power struggle with Regina by introducing magic into the town. But this is our world, and magic always has a tendency to yield unfathomable consequences.

"Once Upon a Time" stars Ginnifer Goodwin as Snow White/Mary Margaret, Jennifer Morrison as Emma Swan, Lana Parrilla as the Evil Queen/Regina, Josh Dallas as Prince Charming/David Nolan, Emilie de Ravin as Belle, Colin O'Donoghue as Hook, Jared S. Gilmore as Henry, Michael Socha as Will Scarlet and Robert Carlyle as Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold.

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