Once Upon a Time Kills Off [Spoiler] in Shocking Sacrifice

We usually love it when the villains get their just desserts, but it's never quite that simple on Once Upon a Time.

After a whole season of being the baddest witch in town, Victoria, a.k.a. Lady Tremaine, a.k.a Rapunzel (Gabrielle Anwar) bit the big one in a surprisingly heroic blaze of glory. Her love for her daughter Anastasia (Yael Yurman) was only ever rivaled by her distaste for her daughter Drizella (Adelaide Kane), which is why it's so surprising that she sacrificed her own life to save Drizella's when Mother Gothel (Emma Booth) tried to kill Drizella to wake Lucy (Alison Fernandez) up.

It didn't exactly redeem Victoria or make us like her, but it at least managed to fix one of the many relationships she broke during her tragic, little life.

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"Evil is made, it's not born," showrunner Eddy Kitsis said of Victoria's final sacrifice, "We see that [Rapunzel] originally was trapped in the tower and kind of became this villain... The relationship between Ivy and her was a tough mother-daughter relationship, but when it really came down to it, she wasn't willing to sacrifice it. At the end of the day, she was able to reclaim who she was."

Unfortunately, hers won't be the only death before this season it out.

Given that there's a new killer in town, it seems like the death count may just be starting. Whoever killed the doctor for learning the secret of Lucy's parentage has only just gotten started. According to Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, there will "absolutely" be more deaths before the end.

"Someone is, we will find, out killing witches," Kitsis said. "So while Gothel is trying to assemble a coven, someone is trying to knock them off, and that is kind of what we're going to be seeing for the next little bit."

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"The identity of the gloved perpetrator is a mystery," Horowitz added. "It gets revealed probably sooner than you expect, but it's opening a new story."

Killing off witches doesn't sound like a awful thing when a coven of them is up to no good. But then again, there are more than just evil witches in Hyperion Heights. Regina (Lana Parrilla) and Zelena (Rebecca Mader) are witches, and even Drizella, who we've really begun to like despite all her terrible tendencies, qualifies.

These ladies better watch their backs!

Once Upon a Time airs Fridays at 8/7c on ABC.