Sidney Glass

> I can grant your wish.
>       —Sidney to Emma Swan

**Sidney Glass** is a character on ABC's *Once Upon a Time*. He débuts in the second episode of the first season. He is portrayed by guest star Giancarlo Esposito, and is the Storybrooke counterpart of the **Magic Mirror**.

Sidney is based on the Magic Mirror from the fairytale, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" as well as the Troll Mirror from the fairytale, "The Snow Queen".

## History

*For events occurring before the casting of the first curse, see Magic Mirror.*

### During First Curse

After the casting of the curse, Sidney Glass becomes a reporter in the town of Storybrooke for the local newspaper *Daily Mirror*. He becomes an associate of the mayor, Regina, and receives a phone call from her asking him to look into a Boston adoption agency to find the name of her infant son's birth mother. Though hesitant to break the rules, he is willing to do anything for Regina. Sidney reaches a dead end at the agency, but manages to sneak his way into the health department records and faxes the information over to her. *("Save Henry")*
Ten years later, Sidney assists Regina by gathering information on the town newcomer, Emma Swan, who is also her son's birth mother. He manages to get Emma's previous arrest record on the front page newspaper, but Regina doesn't find it scandalous enough and is disappointed with his work. *("The Thing You Love Most")*
During one late night at the diner, Sidney watches Sheriff Graham, while off duty, getting drunk and throwing darts. He bets him against the odds of continuing to have such good aiming accuracy. Following Graham's sudden death, Sidney is appointed the new sheriff by Regina. However, Emma challenges this and the two begin competing for the same position. He makes an electoral speech that impresses the crowd of townspeople, but it is Emma's valiant honesty about Mr. Gold's scheme in starting a fire at the mayor's office that wins her the sheriff badge. This causes Regina to fire him from his newspaper job. *("The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter", "Desperate Souls")*
Many days after the election, Sidney offers to help Emma expose Regina for who she really is. In actuality, he is working under Regina's orders to get close to Emma. She is skeptical at first, but he hands her a card with his number in case things change. Emma later accepts his assistance and together they raid Regina's office and discover the mayor has stolen fifty-thousand dollars from the town treasury. Additionally, Regina has bought land from Mr. Gold using the stolen money. They confront her at the town meeting, yet Regina reveals what she is building is a modern playground for the children of Storybrooke. Sidney feigns embarrassment and retreats to the diner to have a drink. Emma joins him there, and the two pledge to be allies against Regina. The next morning, Sidney gives photos he took of Emma and Henry to Regina. She praises him for his good work, to which he remains silent. *("Fruit of the Poisonous Tree")*
The day after Kathryn's disappearance, Sidney arrives at the scene of the crime in order to get the scoop on the story in the hopes he will get rehired by the *Daily Mirror*. He offers to get some phone records for Emma, to which she agrees. However, the phone records are actually falsified by Regina in order to incriminate David, Kathryn's husband, and Mary Margaret, who have been having an affair. At the Miner's Day festival, Sidney tries his hand at Dopey's ring toss while Emma is shocked he is playing around when they have a missing person's case going on. Noticing Mary Margaret rush off to sell candles door-to-door with Leroy and voices his suspicions to Emma about the schoolteacher, who may be a suspect in Kathryn's disappearance and murder, but the blonde jumps to her friend's defense, which ends the conversation. At the sheriff department, he brings her the phone records with an eight-minute long conversation between David and Kathryn. When Emma tries to defend David, he gives her a liable argument, leaving her stumped. His influence later causes Emma to take David to the station, to the shock of all the townspeople. *("Dreamy")*
After Emma begins having suspicions Regina is framing Mary Margaret for murder, she enlists Sidney to sleuth for evidence. Still pretending to be on her side, Sidney comes to drop off flowers for Emma as an apology for not finding anything substantial to link Regina to the crime. Secretly, the flowers are bugged with an audio spying device, which Emma finds out about just before Kathryn is found alive and well. She confronts him at the diner about it as he tries to deny everything. When pressed further, Sidney gives admission to being in love with Regina. Emma gives him an ultimatum to either go down with Regina or help her bring the madam mayor down. *("The Stable Boy")*
Relaying this information back to Regina, she commands him to give a confession to Emma. He does just that, admitting to being driven by a desire to earn his job back through kidnapping Kathryn and falsifying evidence of her death. Emma doesn't buy a word he says and is onto Regina's schemes. Later, Sidney is imprisoned in the basement of the hospital in one of the cell rooms. *("The Return", "A Land Without Magic")*

### After Second Curse

Still locked up in the psychiatric ward, Sidney receives an unexpected visit from Regina, who states someone is in the way of her happiness, and she needs his help to be rid of this person. Regrouping at the vault, she explains the circumstances of her current relationship with Robin Hood, which is now ruined because Emma brought his deceased wife, Marian, into the present from a past timeline. Regina suspects the storybook influenced the couple's "happy ending", but also believes she herself is more powerful than the book. Fascinated by Regina's plans, Sidney gushes about having a hunch that there was a reason why she kept him imprisoned in the ward and hadn't forgotten about him. Awkwardly, she agrees with his remarks, though that is far from the truth. However, Regina doesn't want Sidney to murder Marian, as the crime will lead right back to her. Instead, she rewrite history by traveling to the past to kill Marian before Emma has a chance to save her. Regina reveals that, she, as Emma claims, had sentenced Marian to death. Nonetheless, Regina does not remember capturing Marian, so she needs Sidney to show her the exact moment this occurred. Sidney is confused about how he can help accomplish this, but soon, he understands when Regina reverts him into the Magic Mirror. Horrified, he begins shouting and hitting the inside of the mirror until she assures him that this form will be temporary. Next, Sidney manifests, in his mirror, the past event when Regina took Marian as prisoner after she refused to disclose Snow White's hideout. In it, Marian condemns Regina's cruelty because she has no family or love in her life. Having a change of heart, Regina does not go through with her plans. After a talk with Emma, Regina shares a theory with Sidney, in which the book, and not Marian, is the source of her suffering. Regina suggests that they find the book's author and only then she can force the writer to give her a happy ending. *("A Tale of Two Sisters")*
After Marian is afflicted by a freezing spell due to the Snow Queen's magic, Regina takes out her heart to halt the effects and she vows to find a cure. Having no luck with research, she summons Sidney into manifesting in his mirror. Regina asks if he found the Snow Queen yet, and Sidney attests he hasn't yet, so she pushes him to do so. Sometime before or after this, he betrays Regina to the Snow Queen. When Sidney "discovers" the Snow Queen's lair, he reports this to Regina. Before revealing the location, he asks to be made human again. She informs him that that'll be decided on whether his information is worth it. Sidney tries to force Regina's hand by withholding knowledge, but she threatens to lock him up at the psychiatric ward after he is changed back. Abandoning his tactics, he reappears in Regina's pocket mirror and leads her to the Snow Queen's lair. On her way there, Regina is joined by Emma, who is looking for a missing Elsa. The two reach an ice bridge, evidently built with Elsa's magic, and as they go across, the structure shakes due to the Snow Queen's influence. Realizing Sidney's trickery, Regina opens the mirror and gives him an earful about being a traitor. He establishes that she should look at her own reflection and contemplate her actions. Sidney also reveals the Snow Queen has a "present" for her, which he believes is well deserved. Moments later, the women discover the "present" is an armored snow monster, which they defeat. For his assistance, the Snow Queen restores Sidney to human. He prepares to serve her as a loyal subject, but she dismisses him. She admits her aim was to gain the pocket mirror, which contains an essence of Sidney's soul and is infused with dark magic. When he questions what it's for, the Snow Queen remains tight-lipped; saying it's for something she's been without for a long time. After the Snow Queen opens the lair exit, he leaves, but not before she cautions him to get a warmer coat since Storybrooke will soon become colder. *("Breaking Glass")*

## Trivia

* The name "Sidney" is of Old English origin derived from various names of England and itself derived from the words "sid" and "eg" that respectively mean "wide" and "island".
* The surname "Glass" is of Scottish Gaelic origin derived from the word "glas" that means "gray". The surname is also an allusion to Sidney's past life as the Magic Mirror.
* He often speaks in mirror-related puns and indirectly references his former life as a genie.
* Has access to various electronic wiretapping and surveillance equipment used to spy on people for Regina.

## Appearances

Note: "Archive" denotes archive footage.

* Sidney is featured in *Once Upon a Time'*s Season One novelization, *Reawakened: A Once Upon a Time Tale*.

* The name "S. Glass" appears on a name plate outside a room in the psychiatric ward of Storybrooke General Hospital in "A Land Without Magic" and "The Doctor".

## References

1. ↑ http://surnames.behindthename.com/name/sidney
2. ↑ http://www.houseofnames.com/glass-family-crest