Henry Mills

"You may not believe in the curse, or in me, but I believe in you."

Henry Mills is one of the main characters of Once Upon a Time. Henry is the biological son of protagonist Emma Swan, and the adopted son of antagonist Regina Mills. A lonely boy, Henry came to believe that the people living in his small town were under the effect of a powerful curse that robbed them of their memories of their past identities as fairytale characters. This led him to look up his birth mother, whom he knew to be the key to everyone's salvation.

Early Life
"Miss Swan, you made a decision ten years ago. And in the last decade, while you've been... well, who knows what you've been doing?... I've changed every diaper, soothed every fever, endured every tantrum. You may have given birth to him, but he is my son."

- Regina Mills

Emma Swan, the orphaned daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, was sent to our world to eventually save her peers from the effects of the Dark Curse, cast by the Evil Queen. During her troubled life, Emma was put in foster care and with many foster families, always wondering why she had been abandoned as a baby, never knowing all the while that her parents, famed fairytale characters, wanted to give her her best chance.

At some point in life, Emma was impregnated by an - as of yet - unidentified man. She got into trouble and was arrested, and eventually gave birth behind bars. She then gave her son away, also to give him his best chance, and asked for a closed adoption, meaning she was to have no connection with the child and therefore no legal rights to them. The child, a boy, was adopted by Regina Mills, who tracked him down specifically, and brought him from Phoenix, Arizona as her adopted son. Henry Mills was from there on out cared for by Regina, the Queen, and the Mayor of Storybrooke, Maine, the town that holds all fairytale characters trapped in a daze. Henry grew up to become a lonesome child, who was given a story book by his elementary school teacher, Miss Blanchard, which led him to realize that the people in his town were the characters in the book. He then stole Miss Blanchard's credit card to help track down his birth mother.

Season 1
"They're not fairytales. They're true. Every story in this book actually happened."

Henry's quest to find his birth mother, Emma Swan, brings him to Boston, Maine. He comes to her apartment and Emma is surprised to meet him, and he begs her to bring him back to his home, in Storybrooke, Maine. On the drive over, Henry fills Emma in on the story of the Dark Curse, cast by the Evil Queen, and how it imprisoned all the fairytale characters in his town, in a daze, frozen in time, with their happy endings ripped from them. Emma is led to believe that her son is troubled, which is further evidenced by her meeting of his strict, stern mother, Mayor Regina Mills. When Henry goes missing again, Emma offers to aid Regina and Sheriff Graham in tracking him down. It is Miss Blanchard, Henry's teacher, who eventually tells her where she might be able to find him. Emma then finds Henry in his playground castle and returns to him the story book that he'd left in her car. They have the necessary talk about Henry being given away, which he knows was because she wanted the best for him, and he insists on convincing her to stay and open her eyes to the truth of the curse. When Regina tries to bully Emma out of Henry's life, the blonde decides to stay to make sure her child is alright, and when she rents a room at Granny's Bed & Breakfast, Henry is delighted to see, from his bedroom window, that the pointers in the tower's clock start moving again, a sign that things are about to change.

Delighted to have his birth mother staying in town, Henry fills Emma in on the effects of the Dark Curse, gives her the pages detailing her story in the book, saying that the Queen must never read them, and shows happiness in the fact that she decided to stay and in the thought that she's starting to believe him. His teacher, Mary Margaret, is relieved to see him smiling again, and Emma soon learns that Henry thinks Miss Blanchard is really Snow White... something that stays with Emma, for Henry has now told her she is the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming. Emma then decides to have a chat with Dr. Archie Hopper, Henry's therapist, who advises her against destroying Henry's belief system, and willingly gives her his files on the young man... which, as it turns out, is a scheme set up by Regina - who's none too happy about Emma being in Henry's life - for Emma to be arrested for stealing. Henry gets Miss Blanchard to bail her out, and Regina's next move is to get Emma to admit that she thinks Henry is crazy for believing in the curse... before the child's eyes. Henry's devastated, until Emma comes to him, having decided to stay for longer, and tells him that what she said was only to throw the Evil Queen off, so that she doesn't catch on to their mission to dethrone her: "Operation Cobra". Henry is overjoyed, and Emma burns the pages that he'd given her.

During a class visit to the local hospital, Henry notices an unreclaimed comatose patient who resembles Prince Charming from his book. He then tells his birth mother about this, and Emma plots with Mary Margaret to shatter Henry's belief in the curse by getting the teacher - who's allegedly Snow White - to read a story to Charming. When he fails to react, Henry can finally see that there is no such thing as true love and the rest of it. However, when Mary Margaret humors them, she does get a response: John Doe grabs her hand. Dr. Whale shoots down the teacher's claims, saying that there's been no change in the cerebral activity, but it is soon revealed to us that he's lying in accordance with Regina's plans for the comatose patient. Contrary to Emma's expectations, Mary Margaret tells Henry of the patient's reaction, and they plan to get her to read for him again, hoping he might wake up. Therefore, Henry is still convinced that they're fairytale characters, even though both his birth mother and teacher don't think the same way. However, once they get to the hospital, they learn that John Doe is missing. An angry Regina, the patient's finder and emergency contact, takes Henry away, but he soon sneaks out and heads for the woods, to help Emma, Mary Margaret and Sheriff Graham track him down. They are able to find him unconscious on the water, and the teacher performs CPR on him and brings him back to life. Henry is further convinced that what happened was a reunion between soulmates, but a new twist comes in the form of Kathryn Nolan, the comatose patient's wife. Turns out his name is David Nolan and he's married...

Mayor Mills prepares to go out and allegedly attend a Saturday city council meeting. She specifically mandates that Henry doesn't leave the house until she returns at 5 p.m. sharp, and he is to do his homework in the meantime. He understands that she doesn't want him seeing his mother, Emma, and she tells him Emma's not his mother, just a woman passing through. Once she leaves, Henry immediately joins Emma, who is looking for Ashley Boyd - the real world counterpart of Cinderella - having been hired by Mr. Gold to track her down. Henry and Emma are able to find the pregnant Ashley on the outskirts of town, about to give birth, and they rush her to the local hospital to deliver her. Emma learns from Henry that people can't leave the town or else bad things happen to them, but Emma is an exception, because she's the savior, so she can do anything. Emma tells Mr. Gold, who agreed to adopt Ashley's baby for a large sum of money, that he can't have the child, because Ashley changed her mind. Henry overhears their conversation, and is particularly worried when Gold agrees to let Ashley keep her baby, if Emma agrees to do a favor for Gold in the future. After Emma and Henry meet Ashley's baby, they are forced to rush back to the young man's home, before Regina arrives and finds that he's left. Emma suggests that Henry call her "Pumpkin" as her codename for "Operation Cobra", but he has a better idea in store, one he's not sharing yet. Emma then makes it clear to Henry that she is not going anywhere anytime soon, and afterwards she calls Sheriff Graham and accepts the position of deputy that he'd previously offered her.

Dr. Archie Hopper continues to try and get through to Henry and his belief that everyone in town is really a fairytale character. Archie wonders if he thinks that all the crickets in town were once people, just as Jiminy Cricket used to be a person, and the young man tells him that there are no crickets in Storybrooke, there never were. During their session, a local mine collapses, and when Mayor Mills plans to tear it down and pave over it, Henry becomes suspicious that there might something inside that could prove his theory. Regina is irritated over the fact that her son thinks she's hiding something, and intimidates Archie into ripping Henry's beliefs from him and crushing them. During their next session, Dr. Hopper is hard on Henry, telling him that his beliefs are bordering psychosis, and the frustrated child runs off, and then has the idea to go into the mine and look for evidence. Archie follows him inside during yet another earthquake, and the mine is sealed shut with the two of them in it. They try to get out of it via an old elevator, but the townspeople resort to the use of explosives to try and break the exit, and wind up jamming the elevator. The two are then stuck inside it for a while, waiting to be rescued, and Henry winds up being the one to give his therapist a pep talk, when Archie feels as though he wasn't being a good person when he told Henry what he did. Henry convinces him that he can be the man he wants to be, because of his good conscience. Henry also tells him that he wants to find evidence to back up his theory because he refuses to believe that this is all there is to life. Emma ultimately rescues them both, and Archie tells Regina that he's going to continue treating Henry his way, and she will back off and let him do his job because she might one day find herself in a custody battle and she wouldn't want Archie on her bad side then. Later that night, Henry points out to yet another sign that things are changing: the crickets are heard singing.

Henry attends the welcoming party thrown for recent comatose patient David Nolan, when he is brought back to his household by his wife, Kathryn. At the party, Henry takes his birth mother, Emma, for a sidebar, and he explains to her that David's memory loss is an effect of the curse, which is preventing him from remembering his past as Prince Charming. Emma explains to him that it's a result of his previous state, but Henry isn't convinced. Eventually, David joins them and interrupts their conversation, for they are the only people at the party he actually knows: the ones who saved him. Henry notices how well David handles a sausage on a toothpick, and asks him if he's ever managed a sword, which David interprets as a random juvenile question. David then asks if Mary Margaret is coming to the party, and Emma denies this, making up some excuse for her friend. Some other night, Emma notices someone coming out of Regina's mansion, and realizes it's her partner, Sheriff Graham, who has been sleeping with her. Emma is disgusted for him whe she learns that he was having sex with Henry's mother while the young man was in the house, and that the reason why he was coming out through the window was because Regina didn't want her son to know. Emma tells him that she wishes she was Henry right now, and unbeknownst to their liaison.

When Sheriff Graham - who was once the Huntsman - starts having flashes of his previous life, and of when he was about to kill Snow White, he comes to Mary Margaret to ask her if she believes in past lives, and she tells him about Henry's belief that the residents of Storybrooke are all fairytale characters featured in his book. This leads Graham to come to Henry, claiming to want to talk about the child's book. Later, while they talk in Henry's room and go over the story of Snow White, Henry asks the sheriff when his flashes began, and Graham said they did after he kissed Emma. Henry is somewhat irked that Graham kissed his mother. Graham remembers seeing the wolf, having a knife in his hand, and that he was about to hurt Mary Margaret. This leads Henry to conclude that Graham was the Huntsman. The Huntsman was raised by wolves, which is why Graham sees one - the wolf is his friend, his guide, and is trying to help him. Graham asks how it's possible that he's remembering all of this after kissing Emma, and Henry explains that Emma owes Graham her life, because he spared that of her mother, Snow. Graham then asks how the Huntsman's story ends, and Henry recounts that the Queen takes his heart, because she doesn't want him to ever feel anything again. This alarms Graham, who hasn't been able to have feelings. He then notices a drawing of the Queen's vault in the book, and recognizes it as what the wolf wants to find. Henry tells him it's the vault where she keeps her collection of hearts.

After the untimely death of Sheriff Graham, Mr. Gold gives Emma, the deputy sheriff, a pair of walkie-talkies, that she brings to her son Henry, so that they can communicate with each other regarding "Operation Cobra". However, Henry is blue over Graham's death, believing it to be Regina's fault, and tells his birth mother that they should stop their operation for now because Regina is evil and evil always win because it doesn't have to fight fair. Emma then runs for sheriff against the Mayor-appointed Sidney Glass, and the latter posts a front page article in the local newspaper about the fact that Emma gave birth to Henry behind bars. Henry doesn't have much of a problem learning this, but it only provides him with further belief that his mother's fighting a war she can't win. This leads Emma to accept Mr. Gold as her benefactor, and he sets up a fire in the Mayor's office so that Emma can rescue her and come across as a hero. When Emma discovers this, she feels conflicted over whether or not she should come clean about it, for the revelation might cost her the election. However, during the debate, she decides to stand up for honesty and righteousness, and tells the audience of Mr. Gold's involvement in the fire. Henry is proud of her for standing up to the town's most feared resident, and ultimately Emma learns that her courage led her to be elected sheriff of Storybrooke.

Season 2
"So I'm a prisoner because you love me? That's not fair."

Gallery
Gallery of photographic stills released to promote the character.