Anna is a character who appears in the fourth season of ABC's Once Upon a Time. She is the princess of Arendelle and Elsa's younger sister.
She is based on the character of the same name from the Frozen franchise.
Role in the series[]
In a time frame set two years after the events equivalent to the events of Frozen and approximately a year before the first Dark Curse in the general Once timeline, Anna is engaged to Kristoff. In honor of the momentous occasion, Elsa grants Anna both a beautiful new necklace and a gown originally owned by their deceased mother. As Anna tries on the dress, Elsa discovers their mother's diary. Within the text, it is revealed the king and queen left Arendelle because of Elsa. While Elsa believes it's because they feared her and saw her as a monster, Anna believes otherwise. To prove the true reason, Anna takes Elsa to Grand Pabbie. Pabbie is unable to uncover the exact reason the king and queen left, but reveals where they were heading; a land known as Mist Haven. While Elsa still worries, Anna stays positive and suggests they travel to Mist Haven to find out the truth for themselves. Reluctant about the idea, Elsa denies it, claiming she doesn't want to abandon her kingdom and fears Hans and his brothers will strike should they leave Arendelle. Unable to convince her sister to tag along and grant permission, Anna secretly boards a ship and travels to Mist Haven, herself, in hopes of finding the truth about their parents' mysterious journey.
After arriving in the Enchanted Forest (Mist Haven), Anna encounters David, long before he became a prince, as well as the infamously powerful sorcerer, Rumplestiltskin, who plays crucial roles in her quest.
Anna meets David.
At some time later, Anna arrives home and reunites with Kristoff. She informed Kristoff that her parents did travel to the Enchanted Forest out of fear of Elsa, and they seek to use a box that contains the sorcerer's magical hat to rid Elsa of her powers. When Kristoff asked how she is going to break this to Elsa, Anna says she has no idea what to tell her elder sister.
When she reunites with Elsa, Anna instead lies about her discovery, claiming their parents didn't find what they seek when they travelled to the Enchanted Forest. To her surprise, she discovered that Elsa has more control over her snow/ice magic. Even more surprising is when Elsa introduced her to Ingrid the Snow Queen, their maternal aunt, who also possesses the exactly same abilities. Despite Elsa's claim that Ingrid was a relative of theirs, Anna was suspicious, since their aunt isn't in any of the family's portraits or records. After sharing this revelation with Kristoff, Anna decides to visit Grand Pabbie again to find out their family's secret involving Ingrid. When Kristoff discusses Anna's decision to withhold the truth from Elsa, concerning what her parents did in the Enchanted Forest, Anna decides to keep hiding the truth from her sister until the time is right to tell her, which he supports. After Anna departs to find more answers, she and Kristoff are unaware that Ingrid has been eavesdropping on their conversation the whole time.
Anna knocked out by Ingrid.
Ingrid eventually kidnaps Anna and imprisons her within the castle's dungeon cell. She then admits that she wants a family of people like her and Elsa (magically inclined), and considers Anna to be the "odd one out" due to having nothing in common with her and Elsa, and not fitting the perfect criteria as the third family member. Ingrid vows to find the perfect replacement and have what she desires: a family that loves her for who she is.
Ingrid manipulates her into thinking that Anna plans to use a sorcerer's hat to absorb all of her abilities. Learning that she is locked up in the dungeon cell, Elsa pays Anna a visit and tells Anna that she doesn't believe their aunt's lies. They now had plans to find the urn and trap Ingrid in it.
As part of the plan, Anna was returned to the dungeon cell, where she'll ambush Ingrid when she comes to check up on her. Unfortunately, Ingrid was onto their scheme, and Anna now found herself in chains and trapped in the cell with her. Ingrid then uses a shard of mirror to place Anna under her spell, the Spell of Shattered Sight, resulting in Anna releasing her inner anger and resentment towards her elder sister. As Elsa is bewildered at her little sister's venomous anger, Ingrid appears and admits she did it to show Anna's inner darkness, causing Elsa to realize her aunt has placed her sister under her spell. Ingrid demands that Elsa freezes Anna to prevent her from trapping Elsa inside the urn; however, Elsa refuses to hurt her sister and holds her arms against her sides. In an unexpected twist, Anna, still under the spell's influence, unseals the urn and traps Elsa inside. As she is slowly absorbed into the urn, Elsa tells her that she will always love her no matter what she does. Recovering from the magic spell, Anna was horrified by what her aunt made her do to Elsa. As Ingrid prepares to choke her to death, Kristoff arrives to save Anna, armed with only his ice pick. With her aunt finally consumed by her anger and overwhelm with disgust at how the couple sees her as a monster, Anna can only stand and watch as Ingrid uses her power to freeze both her, Kristoff, and Arendelle out of pure fury.
Thirty years later, after Ingrid begins to cast her Spell of Shattered Sight in the town of Storybrooke, Arendelle, along with Anna and Kristoff, finally thaws out. While she contemplates finding and freeing Elsa from Ingrid, Anna found a piece of gold straw on the floor that was left behind by Rumplestiltskin and deduced that he must have followed her to Arendelle and taken Elsa from Ingrid while they were frozen. As they start devising a plan to rescue Elsa from Rumplestiltskin, Hans and his brothers, who had recently been thawed out, barge in and declare Arendelle as his kingdom now. As they figure out what to do next to rescue Elsa, Anna recalls reading in her mother's diary about a wishing star, which she assumes is used to grant a wish. She remembers the journal stating her parents tracked the item to a man, a pirate by the name of Blackbeard.
Anna and Kristoff bargain with Blackbeard for the wishing star, hoping to find Elsa. Unfortunately, they realize it's a trap as Hans and his brothers surround them. Blackbeard tells her about his past encounter with her parents, who sought the wishing star, but they could not use it since the item needs someone with a pure heart. Hans then takes the couple to a spot out at sea called Poseidon's Boneyard, the same spot where Anna and Elsa's parent's ship went down, hoping to dump the couple to the bottom of the sea. The trunk is then shut and thrown into the sea, which sinks and fills with water. Kristoff managed to free himself and Anna from the binds. Believing they will die, Anna, begins reciting her marriage vows to Kristoff, though he insists they won't be married until they are out of danger.
Anna and Elsa reunite.
They proclaim their love for each other as they're about to meet their watery fate, but fortunately, due to the power of Elsa's belief in finding her sister and her possession of the wishing star, Anna's necklace for her and Kristoff's wedding, the trunk is transported to the shores of Storybrooke where the siblings reunite, along with their mother's message in a bottle. Anna is led to the diner so the fairies can make a spell with her hair to counter Ingrid's imminent curse, since she'd been affected before and can't be again. However, they find the fairies have gone, courtesy of Killian under the control of Mr. Gold, the town's counterpart of Rumplestiltskin. At the sheriff station, Anna reunites with David and meets his family: his wife Mary Margaret, their baby son Neal, and their daughter Emma, whom she and Kristoff had just recently met when they arrived. With the spell just moments away, Elsa helps Kristoff handcuff himself to a desk before it approaches, while she, Anna, and Emma brace for impact. Though the three are immune to the spell's effects, Anna could only helplessly watch as Kristoff, trying to resist, is slowly affected.
With the town now affected, Mary Margaret and David argue with each other from their separate cell, and Kristoff begins to express his relief that Anna keeps postponing their wedding. After fruitlessly trying to persuade Kristoff that Ingrid's spell causes him to say all the hurtful words about her, Anna left him to discuss with Emma and Elsa about the situation. When Emma recalls her promise to give the people of Storybrooke their happy ending, Anna remembers Ingrid's curse being similar to a myth called The Trolden Glass, in which she reveals that the curse can be broken by killing the person who had cast the spell, the king; meaning they have to do the same with Ingrid. Before she and Elsa left to face Ingrid, with no other option since they can't reason with her, Emma leaves Anna to look after Neal.
As the town is thrown into utter chaos, Anna tried to dissolve Mary Margaret and David's quarrel by bringing up their early lives and how they met in the Enchanted Forest as Snow White and Prince Charming, but to no avail. Later, Regina, affected by the spell and in her attire as the Evil Queen, arrives at the sheriff's station to look for Emma but found Anna, Kristoff, Mary Margaret, and David locked up in their cells. Despite Anna's attempt to calm her down, Regina teleported her and Kristoff to the beach they arrived from. After a frustrated Kristoff attempt to swim back to Arendelle after giving up on the current event that transpires, Anna knocked him out with a bottle that carries her mother's message. Anna discovers its content and decides to bring it to Elsa and Emma, who are confronting Ingrid in her lair.
After arriving, Anna reveals to Elsa their mother's last words in the letter and reads the whole thing out loud. It's revealed that, before they died, their parents were wrong to keep the girls apart, as well as hiding Elsa and her abilities, along with Ingrid and Helga's existence, from Arendelle. The letter also shows their mother's instructions on how to restore the memories of the people of Arendelle with a memory stone of her elder sisters and how they should free Ingrid, and they should tell their aunt that she loved her and that she regretted deeply what she had done. After reading the letter and seeing the good memories of her and her sisters, Ingrid realized that Anna is right and begins to regret her action. Realizing her wrongs, Ingrid undoes her curse by sacrificing her own life. Before she dies, Ingrid returns Elsa and Emma's missing memories and Storybrooke returns to normal. With Ingrid's redemption now complete, Anna and Elsa now seek to honor their mother's last wish to return to Arendelle to let its people know of Ingrid and Helga.
Anna, moments before her wedding.
Following the end of Ingrid's curse, Hook, seemingly with Mr. Gold's help, informs the group that he discovers a door to Arendelle hidden in an abandoned mansion. After they found the door that will take them back to Arendelle and confront Hans, they thank Mary Margaret, David, and especially Emma for their good deeds, of which Anna thanks them for looking after her sister. After Elsa and Kristoff walk into the portal, Anna starts to follow but stops to ask the three that she wanted to thank, Hook and Gold, until she curiously asks about Mr. Gold's identity when he was still living in the Enchanted Forest. She guesses, incorrectly, that he was a "fairy godfather", although David reveals that Mr. Gold was actually Rumplestiltskin. To this, Anna reveals Rumplestiltskin lied about not knowing her or Elsa and tells them that she knows of him from their past encounter, causing Emma to suspect Mr. Gold has not changed and has ulterior motives.
At an unknown amount of time later, Arendelle has been reclaimed by the two sisters, and Hans is dethroned; Anna even got her hand bruised from punching Hans in the face. While in the castle's east wing preparing for her wedding with Kristoff, Anna discovers a portrait of Ingrid, Helga, and Gerda, which she places in the great hall. Before the wedding starts, Elsa, struck by Anna's past decision to postpone the wedding to go to the Enchanted Forest, asks her why she chose to do so. Anna cheerfully reasons that she couldn't be happy if her big sister wasn't as well. With the wedding now in full swing, Elsa helps Anna walk down the aisle.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Unlike her animated counterpart, Anna is already engaged to Kristoff by the time of the series, while animated Anna gets engaged to Kristoff at the end of the second film.
- Anna's name is pronounced "AH-na" in Norwegian, as opposed to the usual English pronunciation "AN-ah".
- The outfit Anna wears when she first meets Ingrid is the same one she wears in the film.
- Anna's alias Joan is a reference to the line "hang in there, Joan" from the song "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?".
