Scroll no further unless you want Labyrinth to be ruined for you!
Okay fam! Labyrinth is one of my favourite films of all time and have watched it endlessly for nearly 15 years and I’ve just noticed something so insignificant yet so important.
At the end of the film, the goblin king as an owl flies towards the moon- there are no stars.
Jim Henson and his attention to detail did not put stars in the sky!
Doesn’t seem significant but let’s remember, Jim Henson found it important to show us that our disneyified view of mythology is wrong- look at Sarah and her innocence towards fairies and the idea that goblins are malicious rather than Childish and trickster like. Henson very clearly wants to explain that real mythological creatures are dangerous.
The Goblin King is very clearly based one the Erl Köng and the Green Man. In European legend, this creature seduces young women, offering them fruits and sexual favours. After nights of summoning them back to the forest, he manages to imprison these women and keep them as song birds in gilded cages. This is seen in the ballroom scene, all these beautiful people fawning and begging for the attention of the immortal Erl Köng. Sarah is able to see beyond this facade and is able to apparently free herself from this cage.
She’s still trapped in the Labyrinth.
She solves the Labyrinth, that was the only term that was set by the Goblin King. But as Hoggle says at the beginning, “even if you reach the castle, you’ll never be able to get out again”.
The Goblin King never said that both Toby and Sarah could leave, it was only an exchange of persons.
She ate the peach, the Goblin fruit, and now she is apart of the kingdom, therefore can never leave.
Fast forward to the end when Sarah is escorted back to her home by the Goblin King, Toby is lying in his crib as if nothing has changed.
That’s because nothing has changed for Toby, time has reordered itself so that the changeling was never there.
Sarah closes the door to Toby’s room- the reality where we are. The whole goblin Kingdom and it’s power are only shown when in Toby’s room, the thoughout way from the underground to the aboveground.
Sarah doesn’t say goodbye to her friends in the mirror, she joins them in their realm. The camera pans from the mirror to the bed, almost like we are now in the reflection.
Sarah says her goodbyes to her father and brother (visually to her brother and verbally to her father, who actually questions where she is and never responds to Sarah after her saying she was there)- the goblin kings true gift and is now stuck underground living out her fantasy.
There are no stars underground nor moon, the moon is now the new door way to the mortal plane that the Goblin King uses.
Sarah has been outmanuvered and is now stuck in her gilded golden bird cage.
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