Once Upon a Time: Princess Tiana Is Here to Stay

Back in July, Mekia Cox joined the cast of Once Upon a Time Season 7 to play Princess Tiana in a recurring capacity, but now she's here to stay.

Accordingly toEntertainment Weekly Cox has officially been promoted to a series regular, meaning we'll be seeing a lot more of her than just a short arc at the top of the season. This can only mean good things about Cox's character and performance, since the powers that be obviously saw her initial work and decided they needed to lock her down for the rest of the year.

Once Upon a Time has had a bad habit of neglecting series regulars before, but here's hoping it learned its lesson and will make better use of Princess Tiana this year. Given the exciting changes to Tiana's backstory -- her mother has been described as a generous noblewoman, which was never part of the original film -- exciting things could be on the way for this Disney princess.

Once Upon a Time returns Friday, Oct. 6 at 8/7c on ABC.