The Hat
General Information
Status:	Destroyed and Burnt
Origin:	Unknown
Current Location:	Storybrooke
Physical Description
Type:	Hat
Color:	Black
Usage Information
Opened by:	Mad Hatter Jefferson Emma Swan Evil Queen
Used for:	Traveling between worlds
Show Information
First appearance:	"Hat Trick"
Latest appearance:	"Queen of Hearts"
Relevant Pages
GALLERY

The Hat is a magical item featured on ABC's Once Upon a Time. It first appears in the seventeenth episode of the first season.

HistoryEdit

Before the CurseEdit

The Mad Hatter is the owner of the hat. He initially uses it to retrieve objects from other worlds for Rumplestiltskin, and possibly other clients, in exchange for gold or other kinds of payment. One of these jobs is to fetch Slippers and the crystal ball from an unknown land, however he only obtains the latter. ("The Doctor")

Jefferson has since stopped using the hat for travel and stores it in a box, but the Evil Queen comes to him with one last favor, and in return she will help bring him out of poverty. Initially, he refuses, but later agrees to her offer out of his own wish to be able to provide a happy childhood for his daughter, Grace.

Hatter puts the hat on the ground and spins it. Through this action, the hat opens up a portal. Jefferson and the Evil Queen hold hands as they go in. They enter a room with many different colored doors that go to different worlds. Before they go through a mirror, Hatter warns her that if two people go into a world, the same amount of people that go through the door must come back.

They reach Wonderland. The Evil Queen is looking for something the Queen of Hearts stole from her. A maze stands in their way, but the Evil Queen burns holes through the hedges to find her way to the center where a vault with many small boxes stands. She takes one of the boxes. Wonderland's guards try to stop them from leaving, but they manage to escape. Hatter wants to leave, but the Evil Queen grabs a piece of a mushroom and puts it into the box. Out of the box, a person grows big from having consumed the mushroom. It turns out to be the Evil Queen's father, Henry. She leaves Hatter in Wonderland, and goes back to the Enchanted Forest with her father. The Queen of Hearts' guards seize Hatter, and he is beheaded, but remains alive. Since then, he has become obsessed with making hats to find the one that would work so he could go back home to his daughter. ("Hat Trick")

When Regina stops Hook from killing Belle, she tells Hook that she has a job for him and that she wishes for him to kill Cora. She then reveals the body of the guard that Hook killed, stating that the same amount of people that go through the portal must come back, and that she wants Hook to bring back the dead body of Cora. She then retrieves the Hat and spins it on the floor, opening up a portal to Wonderland. ("Queen of Hearts")

During the CurseEdit

Regina seeks out Jefferson's help in getting rid of Emma Swan from Storybrooke. She possesses his old hat, and takes it out to show him. He says it will not work without magic, and Regina claims to have some left over. Regina wants to retrieve an item from a certain time in the past. They go to her vault, and Regina tosses some magic trinkets into the hat. It does nothing for the hat, and needs to be powered by more magic. Regina takes out the last item she has from the Enchanted Forest: the engagement ring Daniel gave her long ago. She tearfully parts with it, and gives it up to the hat. It works, and the hat begins to spin. Regina reaches into the hat, and gets what she was looking for--the poisoned apple. ("An Apple Red as Blood")

After the CurseEdit

The hat is used once more when a creature called a wraith is set loose by Mr. Gold, who has ordered it to hunt down Regina and suck out her soul. While David Nolan is keen on letting Regina die, Emma objects because Henry does not want any harm to come to his adoptive mother. Emma, Mary Margaret, and David decide to protect Regina, and do their best to defeat the Wraith. Their efforts are hampered because the Wraith cannot be killed. Regina thinks it is a good idea to send it to another place where it cannot harm anyone ever again. Upon seeing the hat, Emma recognizes it as Jefferson's hat. Regina pretends not to know whose hat it is. Regina tries to open a portal from the hat. It is unsuccessful, but when Emma accidentally touches Regina's arm, the portal magically opens; Jefferson did say Emma brought magic with her. She pushes Regina out of the way as the Wraith is sucked in, but Emma herself is grabbed by the creature and sucked in. Mary Margaret is horrified, and goes into the portal to follow Emma. David tries to do the same, but the portal closes just in time. Afterwards, David demands to know where they went, but Regina claims she doesn't know. ("Broken")

David goes to Regina's house with the hat in hand and grills her for answers. But, Regina refuses to let up and says she does not remember how she obtained the hat or where she got it from. He leaves looking for Mother Superior in the hopes of finding fairy dust to use on the tree trunk Emma came through as a baby, and then things get chaotic with the news of what happens when a person tries to leave the Storybrooke town border--he or she will lose their Enchanted Forest memories. Eventually, Henry tells him the hat belongs to the Mad Hatter, but he does not know where in Storybrooke he is. David heads to Mr. Gold's shop for help. He wants something that can help him find someone. Mr. Gold asks David if he has something belonging to the person. David says yes, but refuses to let Mr. Gold see the hat. He is given a potion, and told that he has to pour it on the person's belonging in order to the find the person.

He follows Mr. Gold's instructions, the potion burns a hole through the hat. Then, it begins to fly in the air and move on its own accord. David follows the hat, which stops on an overturned car. He hears someone under the car calling for help, and pulls out Jefferson. David chats with Jefferson about the hat, and if he could get it to work. Jefferson says no, but eventually tells him that Emma and Mary Margaret are both in the Enchanted Forest; something David was not aware of as he was lead to believe from Regina that their old world was gone forever. ("We Are Both")

After the discovery of the diamonds in the Storybrooke mines, Mother Superior asks David if he still has the remnants of Jefferson's hat. David reveals that he does, and Mother Superior tells David to take good care of it, because with it and the fairy dust created from the diamonds, they should be able to create a portal to the Enchanted Forest. At some point after this, the hat was stolen by Albert Spencer. He later burns it in a fire on the shore after being chased by David and Ruby, stating that now that the Hat was destroyed, David would never be able to get Emma or Mary Margaret back, and had lost his family forever. ("Child of the Moon")

Portal of DoorsEdit

The Portal of Doors is the location where everyone who jumps through the Hat lands. It's a rounded spacious room with no furniture, and red curtains. There are, at least, eleven different doors in there. Each of them reaches a different World, including Wonderland, and the Land Without Color. Some of the doors are:

1. Grey Door
2. Pink Brick Door
3. Green Door with a Hole/Mirror
4. Brown Door with Trees
5. Blue Door with four Holes/Knobs (with possible scales)
6. Medieval Brown and Grey Door
7. Oriental Style Red Door with Golden Knobs
8. Green Curtain Door: Land of Oz^[1]
9. Looking Glass: Wonderland
10. Coffin-like Door
11. Normal Door with a Keyhole

TriviaEdit

• According to the Mad Hatter, the number of people that go into the hat must come out. It seems to be a rule for the hat, not for a world. Otherwise, the circumstances of Jefferson, Dr. Frankenstein and Rumplestiltskin's travels from and to the Land Without Color have yet to be explored. ("Hat Trick")
• It can be assumed that some of the doors in the portal lead to Neverland and the Land Without Color.
• In "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", the Portal of Doors is found at the bottom of a rabbit hole. In Once Upon a Time, it is found in Jefferson's hat.
• It is unknown if the Enchanted Forest is behind one of the portal doors.
• Rumplestiltskin states the hat can only reach lands with magic. Therefore, traveling to the Land Without Magic via the hat is impossible.

AppearancesEdit

ReferencesEdit