Jefferson's Hat

* Cora †
* Emma Swan
* Evil Queen/Regina Mills
* Hook
* Jefferson/Jefferson
* Mary Margaret Blanchard
* Valet †

> It's the Mad Hatter's hat. It's a portal between worlds.
>       —Henry to David

**Jefferson's Hat** is a magical item featured on ABC's *Once Upon a Time*. It first appears in the seventeenth episode of the first season.

## History

### Before First Curse

In the Enchanted Forest, a man named Jefferson owns a hat capable of opening portals and allowing him to travel between worlds for Rumplestiltskin, in exchange for gold or other kinds of payment. On one of these assignments, he procures a pair of red slippers and a crystal ball from Oz for Rumplestiltskin. Additionally, Jefferson helps a doctor from the Land Without Color named Victor travel to the Enchanted Forest to fulfill a deal with Regina when she requests his assistance in resurrecting her dead fiancé Daniel. Secretly, Victor is actually working under the instruction of Rumplestiltskin to fake a failed resurrection attempt in order to force Regina to stop thinking about her past love. Afterwards, Victor receives an enchanted heart as payment for his services, and Jefferson brings him home through the hat. *("The Doctor")*

Eventually, Jefferson retires from this life of portal jumping and stores the hat away in a box. The Evil Queen requests a favor from him to help her reach Wonderland and steal something back from the Queen of Hearts. In return, she will help bring him out of poverty. Initially, he refuses, but later agrees to her offer out of his own wish to be able to provide a happy childhood for his daughter Grace. Jefferson activates the hat to open a portal as he and the Evil Queen hold hands to jump in. After doing so, they reach a room inside the hat with many different colored doors leading to numerous worlds. Before they enter through one doorway to Wonderland, Jefferson warns that if two people go into a world, the same amount of people must come back. They arrive in Wonderland and wander into a maze, and at the very center is a vault with innumerable boxes. The Evil Queen takes the box she is looking for and they escape from the Queen of Hearts' guards to near the portal exit. Before leaving, she grabs a piece of a growth mushroom to place in the box. Out of it, a person grows to human size after consuming the mushroom, who is actually the Evil Queen's father, Henry. The Evil Queen entraps Jefferson while she leaves for the Enchanted Forest with her father. The Queen of Hearts' guards seize Jefferson, and he is beheaded, but remains alive. Since then, Jefferson becomes obsessed with making hats to find the one that will work so he can go back home to his daughter. *("Hat Trick")*

On the path of revenge, Hook tries to gain knowledge about a special dagger from the Evil Queen's prisoner, Belle, but she proves to be useless for information. As he prepares to kill her, the Evil Queen offers him a chance to kill the Queen of Hearts. She informs him of a curse that will be cast, which will take all Enchanted Forest inhabitants to magicless world, and make it all the more easier for Hook to kill Rumplestiltskin. Since the Evil Queen also wants him to bring back the Queen of Hearts' body as proof of death, she sends him to Wonderland via the hat along with the corpse of a deceased guard. Per the rules of the hat, the same number of people who go in have to come out. When Hook accomplishes the task in Wonderland, he leaves the guard there while bringing back the Queen of Hearts' body to the Enchanted Forest. *("Queen of Hearts")*

### During First Curse

Mayor Regina of Storybrooke desperately wishes to get rid of her adoptive son's birth mother Emma. However, she cannot simply kill her since Mr. Gold created the Dark Curse to have the capability of breaking if and when Emma, the savior, dies. As such, she seeks out Jefferson's help to make his old portal jumping hat work. He states that it won't work without magic, so Regina leads him down to her vault where she drops some leftover items from the Enchanted Forest into the hat. Nothing happens, so she takes out the last item, her engagement ring. She tearfully parts with it, to which the hat is powered up enough. When Regina reaches her hand into the portal, it allows her to take out the poisoned apple that Snow White once bit into. She later bakes it into an apple turnover intending for Emma to ingest it and fall under a Sleeping Curse. *("An Apple Red as Blood")*

### After First Curse

In the aftermath of the breaking of the Dark Curse, Regina finds herself the target of a Wraith that Mr. Gold sent to suck out her soul. While David Nolan is keen on letting her die, Emma objects because Regina's adoptive son Henry does not want his mother to be harmed. David, Emma and Mary Margaret decide to protect Regina, and do their best to defeat the Wraith. Their efforts are hampered because the Wraith cannot be killed. Regina thinks it is a good idea to send it to another place where it cannot harm anyone ever again. Upon seeing the hat, Emma recognizes it as Jefferson's hat, but Regina feigns ignorance. While attempting to open a portal from the hat, it is unsuccessful until Emma accidentally activates it. She pushes Regina out of the way as the Wraith is sucked in, but Emma herself is grabbed by the creature and sucked in. In horror, Mary Margaret jumps in to follow Emma. David tries to do the same, but the portal closes just in time. Afterwards, David demands to know where they went, but Regina claims she doesn't know. The hat takes the Wraith to the Enchanted Forest, where it invetibly brands and then kills Prince Phillip. Emma and Mary Margaret also arrive to this world unconscious and are blamed by Aurora and Mulan for Prince Phillip's death. *("Broken")*
David goes to Regina's house with the hat in hand and grills her for answers. Regina lies and says she does not remember how or where the hat came from. He leaves looking for Mother Superior in the hopes of finding fairy dust to use on the tree trunk Emma came through as a baby, but things get chaotic when it's discovered anyone attempting to leave town will lose their Enchanted Forest memories. Eventually, Henry tells him the hat belongs to the Mad Hatter, but doesn't know where he is. David heads to Mr. Gold's pawnshop for help. He keeps the hat a secret from Mr. Gold and only asks for something that can be used to find someone. Mr. Gold gives him a potion to pour on the person's belonging. After putting the liquid on the hat, it begins to move on its accord towards Jefferson, who David frees from an overturned car. David brings up the hat, but Jefferson can't make it work, but divulges knowledge about the Enchanted Forest's existence. David is stunned at the news as he was under the assumption their old world is already gone. *("We Are Both")*
After the discovery of the diamonds in the Storybrooke mines, Mother Superior asks David if he still has the remnants of Jefferson's hat. David reveals that he does, and Mother Superior tells him to take good care of it because with the fairy dust created from the diamonds, they should be able to create a portal to the Enchanted Forest. At some point after this, the hat is stolen by Albert, who burns it over a fire, to keep David from ever reuniting with Emma and Mary Margaret. *("Child of the Moon")*

### After Second Curse

As Henry searches through August's stuff, he finds a drawing of one of the hat's many doors, with an attached note that reads "Author?". *("Unforgiven")*

## Portal of Doors

The **Portal of Doors** is a room where portals to various other lands are located. It is accessible to anyone who jumps into the hat. The room is circular and rounded with red curtains containing at least seventeen different doors. Some of known doors are:

1. **Tan Door**
2. **Grey Door**
3. **Pink Brick Door**
4. **Green Door with a Hole**
5. **Brown Door with Trees**
6. **Blue Door with Four Holes**
7. **Medieval Brown and Grey Door**
8. **Light Red Door with Logograms on it**
9. **Reddish Door**
10. **Oriental Style Red Door with Golden Knobs**
11. **Green Curtain Door**: Oz; the door has two handles shaped like an O with a golden Z on them
12. **Looking Glass**: Wonderland
13. **Glass Elevator** *("Once Upon a Time: Secrets of Storybrooke")*
14. **Normal Door with a Keyhole**
15. **Pink Door**
16. **Greyish Door**
17. **Stone-like Door**

Moreover, some of the destinations to which these doors lead have been revealed, even if it remains unknown which door leads to which land:

* Victorian England *("Once Upon a Time: Secrets of Storybrooke")*

## Trivia

* On-screen Notes
* Production Notes
* Props Notes

### On-screen Notes

* According to the Mad Hatter, the number of people that go into the hat must come out. It seems to be a rule for the hat, not for a world. Otherwise, the circumstances of Jefferson, Dr. Frankenstein and Rumplestiltskin's travels from and to the Land Without Color have yet to be explored. *("Hat Trick")*
* It can be assumed that a door in the portal leads to the Land Without Color because the Mad Hatter sent Dr. Frankenstein home through the hat. *("The Doctor")*
* In "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", the Portal of Doors is found at the bottom of a rabbit hole. In *Once Upon a Time*, it is found in the hat.
* It is unknown if the Fairy Tale Land is behind one of the portal doors.
* Rumplestiltskin states the hat can only reach lands with magic. Therefore, travelling to the Land Without Magic via the hat is impossible. *("The Doctor")*
* The hat box is on a shelf in Mr. Gold's office in "The Return".

### Production Notes

* In the original "Hat Trick" script, an emerald brick door was supposed to be among the others. This might have been replaced by the pink brick door, or by the emerald curtains that lead to Oz. *("Once Upon a Time: Secrets of Storybrooke")*

### Props Notes

* For the episode, "Hat Trick", Canadian-based fine headwear maker Lucy Dunlap, also known as The Saucy Milliner, created several duplicates of Jefferson's hat. One for when the hat is opened into a portal to Wonderland, another that Emma made in Jefferson's house in Storybrooke, third which Jefferson was making while trapped in Wonderland and a fourth for Sebastian Stan's stunt double in the scene Jefferson is shoved out the window by Mary Margaret. Lucy made additional hats in various states of production as well as a hat that served as one Jefferson was working on in Storybrooke.
	+ In the second season, at the request of the show production team, Lucy fashioned more duplicates of Jefferson's hat. These hats were used for filming the episodes "Broken" and "We Are Both".

## Appearances

Note: "Archive" denotes archive footage.

* Jefferson's Hat is mentioned in *Once Upon a Time'*s Season One novelization, *Reawakened: A Once Upon a Time Tale*.

* Jefferson's Hat appears in Henry's storybook in "Hat Trick". It appears in a missing page in "Unforgiven" and "Enter the Dragon".

## References

1. ↑ http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/10/21/once-upon-jack-sparrow/
2. ↑ File:117Here.jpg
3. ↑ File:119August16.png
4. ↑ http://thesaucymilliner.com/2012/03/26/once-upon-a-hat-trick/
5. ↑ http://thesaucymilliner.com/2012/10/08/once-upon-a-millinery-part-two/