Illustration by Rebekah Isaacs (Labyrinth: Under the Spell)
A while back a Labyrinth-related video crossed my path, this one by Cinemarionette which asked the question “Is the Dark Crystal Better than Labyrinth?”. It’s a not-uncommon question, I wouldn’t say there’s a rivalry between Labyrinth and Dark Crystal fans, but there is a line drawn in the sand and fans tend to pick a side and stick with it. As a result I have seen this question pop-up quite a few times in past discussions, so I had an answer to Cinemarionette’s question locked and loaded.
Readers of this blog will know that Labyrinth has obviously won my heart, and that it’s the movie that I personally find the more entertaining… but I will always concede that in terms of world-building Dark Crystal has Labyrinth beat hands down. The world of the Dark Crystal, Thra, feels like a world that could actually exist somewhere. Thra persists whether we the audience are paying attention to it or not, that the events of the Dark Crystal (And the prequel series) are just a small sample of the history of the world that we get to see.
You don’t really get that same sense with Labyrinth, that the world we see existed prior to and after the events of the film. But why? Why does the world of the Labyrinth seem far less ‘real’ then the world of the Dark Crystal?
That question warrants more elaboration than one Youtube comment could provide, and so this blog post started to take form. The logline of this post has changed a few times since I started writing it, but at the heart of it I think what I hope to successfully argue is this:
Nothing in the Labyrinth, from it’s scenery to the creatures that inhabit it, are real. Not in a “The adventure is just in Sarah’s head” way, it’s that the Labyrinth and everything in it is a creation from whatever entity is behind “Jareth”. Thus, the Labyrinth isn’t ‘real’.
If you are curious how I came to that conclusion, strap yourself in for a very long-winded rambling about my thoughts on the ‘realness’ of Jareth’s Labyrinth.
I think that the world in Labyrinth is, by design, a world that only exists thanks to Sarah. That the only ‘real’ things within the Labyrinth are Sarah and Jareth, and that how much of Jareth is actually ‘real’ is also up for debate (More on that in a bit).
The Labyrinth is a world that Jareth created specifically to trap Sarah, taking inspiration from people and things in her life to create characters and environments that she’ll encounter in the Labyrinth. Toys, games, books, stories, ideas… comforting things that Sarah has clung to in times of emotional turmoil become weapons in Jareth’s arsenal.
I want to emphasize that last point because it’s not just baseless speculation on my part, we know for certain that Sarah has been struggling with the complicated feelings surrounding her parents divorce. These feelings cause Sarah to idolise her absent mother and villainize her stepmother, treating her as though she was “A wicked Stepmother in a fairy story….”.
Sarah’s also dealing with some strange feelings around having a new baby brother, which is doubly complicated because not only is she going from being an only child to an older sister, she’s also dealing with the feelings of her Father having a new baby with her “Wicked” Stepmother. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that Sarah may feel replaced or abandoned now that Toby’s in the picture, especially given the reality that babies simply require more attention and care given to them.
She knew where she would find Launcelot. Toby already had everything that his baby heart could desire, had so much more than Sarah had ever had; yet more was given to him, every day, without question. She stormed into the nursery
Labyrinth: A Novelization by A.C.H. Smith
Sarah has spent ~15 years being an only child and having to share her parental figures with a sibling is a wholly new experience for her. This would only add to Sarah’s desire to be the centre of someone’s universe, to want to feel that she’s special, and to have someone prove how special she is.
At the risk of stating the obvious, Sarah’s coping mechanism for all the trouble’s in her life are to imagine herself as the protagonist in a fairy tale. For a brief time Sarah gets to pretend that she’s living her best life in a world inspired by her favourite books and stories, with herself firmly established as the main character in said world. She is the beautiful, beset upon protagonist who may be treated horribly by her wicked Stepmother, but little does she know she’s caught the eye of the powerful Goblin King, who waits in the shadows for Sarah to simply say the right words so he can happily fulfill her every wish! What better way for her to feel better about herself than to imagine someone like an all powerful King deciding that she is the worthy object of their affection? To have someone chomping at the bit to dote on her just like she sees other’s dote on Toby.
Labyrinth being a “Power Fantasy” both for Sarah and the audience is a topic that probably deserves it’s own blog post. But the main take away I am trying to hammer in here, is that Sarah has in-universe created her own power fantasy, where she envisions a world where she she has an all powerful being at her beck and call. A world where Sarah passively takes revenge against the people in her ‘real’ life by imagining them as obstacles or outright villains in her fairy tale story. And the fantasy all hinges on Sarah catching the attention of a mysterious and devoted Goblin King…
That is of course where Jareth comes in, and where it starts to feel like things are “too good to be true”, or in this case “Too coincidental to be real”. I think it’s far too much of a coincidence that Jareth appears to Sarah and that he fits into her imagined narrative ever so nicely. I mean really, what are the chances that Sarah has built up this fantasy of an unnamed Goblin King being in love with her and said Goblin King just so happens to show up on her doorstep? That the narrative she imagined and longed for is presented to her on a silver platter?
Personally I find that a little hard to believe. I think it’s way more likely that Jareth, instead of actually being a Goblin King from some mysterious labyrinthine land, is instead some kind of opportunistic entity that recognized Sarah as someone he could prey upon. It’s hard to say exactly how Jareth knew about Sarah’s desires, given how powerful Jareth appears to be, it’s possible he just ‘knows’ these things about a person. It’s either that, or he’s been watching Sarah for a lot longer than we know, studying her and figuring out what makes her tick. Has Sarah simply been failing to notice the mysterious barn owl that’s been watching over her for weeks on end? Regardless of how he got them, Jareth has the blueprints to Sarah’s deepest wishes and he’s used them to build a world he knows will tempt her.
But why am I convinced that Jareth built the entire Labyrinth from scratch? It’s because of that “Sarah is the centre of the universe” vibe that we get from the movie. How so much of the Labyrinth is inspired by her dreams and desires, her belongings and mementos, and how everything seems to revolve around her and the reality that… that’s just not how ‘real’ worlds work.
The 1998 film The Truman Show is an example we can use here. In The Truman Show a man named Truman has been unknowingly raised on a film lot, having been secretly recorded since birth for the entertainment of others. While all the various goings-on in his community feel very real to Truman (At least, until he starts realising the truth), we know that everything and everyone in his life are fake. Events and milestones in Truman’s life have all been carefully planned to maximize viewership, and every person in Truman’s life is someone hired to play a specific role in his world… even if that just ends up being “background character riding by on a bike”.
Part of what tips Truman off about the world being fake is that he slowly comes to the realization that this world seems to revolve around him. There’s large obvious things, like realising a radio channel is describing his exact movements, but there’s also smaller things like people he’s never met knowing his name without him introducing himself.
A reality of the world that we all will (hopefully) learn by the time we’re adults is that the world does not revolve around us. It would be lovely to wake up in the morning and feel secure in the knowledge that our wants and needs always came first, and as kids we can come to feel like that’s how things actually work! Some of us are lucky enough to have parents who will regularly make great sacrifices for the sake of their kids happiness. But eventually you grow up and you realise that everyone else around you, parents included, also have wants and needs, and part of the adult experience is trying to figure out how to balance your wants and needs with the wants and needs of others around you in a healthy way.
Sarah, being a young teen, doesn’t have a good grasp on this yet. She’s still in that phase of development where she hasn’t learned to manage the give and take of life. So when Jareth creates a Labyrinth around her, where everyone seems to know who she is and what her goal is, where all eyes are figuratively and literally on her at all times, it doesn’t trigger a realization from Sarah that “This isn’t how the world should work”. Though to be fair to her, Jareth’s realm being one of magic obviously does make it hard to get a sense of what’s real and what isn’t, and it’s not improbable for Sarah to assume that her appearance in the Labyrinth would be such a big deal that all the citizens know about it.
Regardless, I think the main thing to take away is how everything leads back to Sarah. Sarah’s experiences, desires, and dreams have shaped the Labyrinth. It couldn’t be built without Sarah acting as the blueprint. No Sarah, no Labyrinth as we know it.
But hey, maybe it doesn’t have be the entire Labyrinth that Jareth’s created. Perhaps some parts are real, maybe others have just been given a fresh coat of paint to appeal to Sarah. That’s a take we’ve seen in the Labyrinth: Coronation comic series, which makes some parts of the Labyrinth constant (A Labyrinth ruled by a single entity populated with goblin servants), while changing the flavour of the Labyrinth to one that suits the protagonist of the Coronation series (A venetian inspired setting instead of Sarah’s vaguely medieval European setting). I do really enjoy the Labyrinth: Coronation series and that take on the Labyrinth, but I do personally think that the world we see in the original film is indeed an entire world that Jareth has created… or at least, a large enough world to get the job done.
I think the Other Mother’s realm in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline is the best comparison here. The scene I’m gonna discus happens in both the Laika adaptation and the original novel, but I’m gonna cite the Laika version specifically. In Coraline the Other Mother creates a near-exact duplicate of Coraline’s home inside her mysterious realm. At one point Coraline attempts to escape by walking away from the Other Mother’s home, only to find out that after a certain point her realm just fades off into absolute nothingness. It becomes a white void where only she and her cat companion exist.
“Nothing out here… It’s the empty part of this world. She only made what she knew would impress you”
The Cat, Coraline
Eventually the emptiness fades back into the Other Mother’s home, as though her world exists as a small globe and Coraline has just walked around the entire surface. While the Other Mother’s realm seemed expanse at first, it’s actually very tiny. I can’t help but think of Jareth’s Labyrinth in the same way. Sure, the Labyrinth seems to also be a world that goes on for forever, but how do we know that for sure? How do we know that Jareth, just like the Other Mother, didn’t also just create the bare minimum he needed to try and impress Sarah? Sarah has a bad habit of accepting things at face value, so maybe if she had been a little more like Coraline and tested the boundaries of the Labyrinth, she would’ve found that it did actually have an end.
Regardless of just how big the Labyrinth actually is, acknowledging that idea that the Labyrinth was created expressly for Sarah means accepting that the Labyrinth we see in the film isn’t real, that the Labyrinth doesn’t exist in any permanent state. The Labyrinth isn’t like the real world, where the sun rises and sets regardless of if you open your blinds to see it happen. The Labyrinth is so tied to Sarah it’s hard to picture it as a place that ‘persists’ when she’s not physically in it. That is, after all, Jareth’s goal… Sarah wanted to be the centre of the universe, so Jareth made it so. But as previously discussed, that’s not how the real world works in the slightest.
So the Labyrinth itself isn’t real, but what about it’s citizens? Maybe Jareth changes up the setting of the Labyrinth to suit the whims of the adventurers within it’s walls, but it’s populace remains constant? Going back to the examples of Coraline and the Truman Show, the common thread between those two films is that there is a mastermind at work who is busy concocting a reality around the main character, including the citizens the main character interacts with. Perhaps Jareth is the same way, he has created not just the stage, but also the actors in the play. Although everyone seems very convincing in their role, how can we see things like Hoggle and his resemblance to Sarah’s bedroom bookend and assume that Hoggle just somehow always existed in the Labyrinth and it’s just pure luck that Sarah stumbled across him? It just feels like too much of a coincidence to be plausible.
That’s what makes me think Hoggle, and every other citizen of the Labyrinth, were created whole cloth by Jareth. That any personality or backstory they were given was imbued into them by Jareth, and that they only came into being when Jareth set his sights on Sarah and needed to fill a Labyrinth with obstacles to stop her.
Remember what I said earlier, about Truman being recognized by people he hasn’t introduced himself to? Sarah comes across Hoggle after setting off on her journey, like immediately after. So soon after that I doubt that Jareth had time to pop down and give Hoggle a heads up about what was going on and who Sarah was. And yet when Sarah catches his attention, Hoggle turns around and says “Oh, it’s you”. Even before Sarah introduces herself (To which Hoggle replies “That’s what I thought”), the way Hoggle says “It’s you” shows that he was expecting Sarah. Some fans have argued that this exchange suggests that Sarah isn’t the first visitor trapped in Jareth’s Labyrinth, that Jareth’s done this many times before and that Hoggle’s started to anticipate the new adventurers. Personally I think this scene is evidence that Hoggle, and the other citizens of the Labyrinth, were created just for Sarah to encounter. Jareth created Hoggle, filled him with knowledge of Sarah and what her goal was, and then left Hoggle to his own devices to play his part.
Though for the record, after Hoggle’s assumed creation he does seem to be ‘real’ in that we see him acting on his own independent desires for the rest of the film. We see him ‘existing’ even though Sarah isn’t around to witness it, like his private conversation with Jareth about the peach.
But I think that may also just establish how powerful Jareth as an entity must be, as once he creates a being, that being acts as though it’s a real, living creature. That’d also explain why Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus all end up on Sarah’s side during the events of the film. Jareth might’ve created them as part of his plan to trap Sarah, but once they were created they were left to express their own free will as they saw fit and as a result, had the opportunity to switch sides. I guess Jareth never really considered his own creations could possibly interfere with his plans in any way? Perhaps he is bound by some ill-defined ‘rules’ of the game… once it’s been set in motion, there’s only so much he can do to interfere. Regardless I have no doubt that Jareth still holds all the cards and could simply snap Hoggle and the others out of existence once he got tired of playing the role of Goblin King.
In regards to the big guy himself, I’m gonna dig my heels in the sand and say that at the very least, I’m pretty convinced that Jareth’s physical appearance is completely made up and is simply another way for him to entice Sarah. As most fans of Labyrinth are aware there is a small easter egg of David Bowie playing both Jareth and the boyfriend of Sarah’s mom.
For anyone who may be wondering what I’m talking about, in the establishing panning shot of Sarah’s room we get a very loving close-up of a scrapbook filled with pictures of Sarah’s Mom and a mystery man, played by David Bowie. This is Jeremy, who’s name is provided by the Labyrinth novelisation written by A.C.H. Smith which also concretely establishes Jeremy’s relationship with Sarah’s Mom (Named Linda, as we see from the newspaper clippings below).
Now I am gonna have to dig into the novelisation a bit here, which may not be completely fair as it could be argued that the book can’t be taken as canon. It’s just too hard not to bring up when discussing Jeremy, because the novelisation really reinforces that Jareth isn’t just a physical match for Jeremy, but that Jareth and Jeremy also share similar mannerisms and behaviours as well.
Jeremy like Linda is an actor, and from the brief snippets we get of him in the book he can be somewhat callous to people he judges to be beneath him, like his fellow performers. Now to be fair to Jeremy, he’s never shown to be saying anything outright hurtful, but there’s repeated mention of his gossiping and his general “I’m better than you” attitude, not to mention his immature disregard for the feelings of others. He’s not the worst person out there, but he doesn’t seem to be the healthiest influence on the impressionable Sarah, who views his cattiness as something to aspire to.
Why, she wondered for the trillionth time, does my stepmother always have to put on this performance when they go out in the evening? It was so hammy — that was one of Sarah’s favourite words, since she had heard her mother’s costar, Jeremy, use it to put down another actor in the play they were doing — “such a ragbag of over-the-top clichés”. She remembered how Jeremy had sounded French when he said clichés, thrilling her with his sophistication. Why couldn’t her stepmother find “a new way into the part?”. Oh she loved the way in which Jeremy talked about other actors. She was so determined to become an actress herself, so that she could talk like that all the time.
Labyrinth: A Novelization by A.C.H. Smith
Sadly the film doesn’t give us any explanation about who Jeremy is, which is a shame because I really like the concept of Sarah idolizing Jeremy, finding his snide remarks about his coworkers funny and a behaviour she wants to emulate… only to realise that, snide remarks aren’t all that fun when you’re on the receiving end of them. Jareth is basically Jeremy, but with his negative traits amped up to 11 and with Sarah now an acceptable target for that negativity.
What I’m getting at here is that Jareth as we know him is another example of how Sarah’s current desires were used against her. Sarah admired Jeremy, and now Jeremy, or rather someone very-much like Jeremy, has now become her tormentor. It’s like whatever entity that’s behind Jareth took a peek at Sarah’s memories, saw her adulation of Jeremy, and thought “Yes, this’ll do!”. It makes me wonder what the end goal is… is the entity behind Jareth trying to teach Sarah a lesson? Or does he just think that he’ll have a better chance at winning Sarah over if he appears to her in the form of someone she seeks validation from?
I might as well point out, there’s never a moment where Sarah connects the dots between Jareth and Jeremy. There’s no “You look just like Jeremy!” moment, even in the novelization which works very hard to establish the connection between the two characters. For the film at least, I think this was due in part to Jeremy not being a named presence in Sarah’s story. They would’ve had to awkwardly squeak a mention of him in there somewhere, where Sarah explains who the real Jeremy is for the audience and what his whole deal is. I think there’s also meant to be a bit of movie magic here as well, Sarah doesn’t comment on the likenesses of the other characters that should strike her memory, probably because it’d get pretty boring if she kept stopping the plot to say “This reminds me of…”, or “You look just like…”. All the audience needs are those quick shots of Bowie playing both Jeremy and Jareth, and the audience will understand that there’s a connection to be drawn between the two men, even if Sarah herself doesn’t clue in.
That said, Sarah does seem to eventually acknowledge the similarities between Jeremy and Jareth in some way, hence why she takes down photos that include him from her vanity and tucks them away in her drawer along with the music box and red book. Whether consciously or not, Jeremy reminds Sarah too much of Jareth, and it’s safe to assume she no longer idolizes him the same way she did before. It’s another example of Sarah’s growth in the film, though sadly it’s not as impactful unless you’ve read the novelization and know more about Jeremy and why Sarah would be singling his photos out like this.
All that to say, Jareth’s appearance and personality are heavily influenced by Sarah and her life. Jareth, whatever he may be, could sense Sarah’s attachment to Jeremy and decided to weaponize that against her. Based on that, I think if Jareth were to appear to another person he would take on the form of someone important to them. Potentially, even if Jareth appeared to Sarah again he might not take the same form, as Sarah putting away Jeremy’s photos suggests that his visage no longer holds any power over her. That does give the producers a handy out if they do want to try and recast Jareth’s role for that Labyrinth sequel that may or may not be coming to us one day.
This was originally where this blog post was going to end, I felt like I had said what I wanted to say about Labyrinth and in my usual fashion I would awkwardly try and come up with some kind of conclusion to this somewhat meandering blog post. But then it struck me… what about Labyrinth’s ending? That semi-infamous ending that blurs the realities of both worlds, and has the citizens of the Labyrinth join Sarah in her bedroom for an impromptu party. How the heck does that tie into my theory? The thought crossed my mind, if Sarah has dispelled Jareth’s power and the citizens of the Labyrinth are still around, doesn’t that suggest that he wasn’t responsible for their existence? It’s a trope commonly used in lots of other films, the magical villain is defeated and as a result all the spells they cast cease to be. But the creatures of the Labyrinth persisted, and if they persisted then maybe the Labyrinth itself did as well? Did I just write this whole blog post only to discover last-minute a big giant hole in my argument?
Perhaps, but I think I managed to come up with an explanation that saves everything. First some context: I ended up chatting with JD Hansel, a member of Tough Pig’s writing team who has previously produced a great video essay on Labyrinth.
I knew JD would be the perfect person to touch base with regarding this post, and so I gave him an early draft and asked if I could get his opinion on my premise. In return JD gave me an amazing 3000 word essay on his thoughts on how ‘real’ the world of the Labyrinth is. It was a really thought provoking read and I feel like I’m stealing his thunder a bit by posting choice excerpts here.
One thing JD wrote about that really sparked my imagination is his quick mention of Sarah’s experience in the junkyard, the “It’s all junk” moment where this realisation makes the walls in Sarah’s fake bedroom crumble, allowing Sarah to escape into the rest of the junkyard and reunite with her friends. I’m gonna include JD’s original wording to try and avoid paraphrasing (Least I accidentally change the meaning of what he was getting at with these paragraphs).
“The fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. Once we choose one answer or the other, we leave the fantastic for a neighboring genre, the uncanny or the marvelous. The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event.” – Tzvetan Todorov
In Todorov’s nomenclature, marvellous is when the supernatural or magical events actually happened, while uncanny, a term borrowed from Freud, is when it can all be explained away as the product of the character’s psyche. While these words are rarely used this way outside of this structuralist schema, it can be useful for categorization. We can easily place the 1939 Wizard of Oz film and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in the uncanny category, while Coraline, the Narnia stories, and Brigadoon are examples of the marvellous.
Then there’s Labyrinth, which seems designed specifically to break everything Todorov has built and defy classification. Sarah doesn’t have a hesitant period. She skips the fantastic. She immediately takes it for granted that it’s all real, then suddenly decides it was all a dream in the junk sequence, and then instantly returns to her original position.
JD Hansel
As highlighted in that excerpt I really latched onto that idea of Sarah having a brief moment of clarity, but not understanding that “It’s all junk” applied not only to the Junkyard but the rest of the Labyrinth too. It’s actually something that comes up in the Labyrinth: Coronation comic series as well. In Labyrinth: Coronation, the protagonist Maria catches on pretty quick that the Labyrinth she’s found herself trapped in is a reflection of herself. Maria realises that, if this place was born from her, maybe she has some level of control over it? And sure enough, she finds that she can change parts of the Labyrinth with enough willpower. Her adversary, the Owl King, ends up having to incorporate memories from Maria’s ex-husband into the Labyrinth to throw off her game.
That idea is so tantalizing, that Sarah was thisclose to understanding that nothing is real in the Labyrinth. Imagine if after escaping her fake bedroom she made the same realisation that Maria did, that the Labyrinth was made from her, and as a result Sarah is potentially the most powerful being in the Labyrinth. Because as JD points out in another part of the essay he shared with me:
… Sarah’s triumphant act during the film’s climax is one of rejecting [Jareth’s] authorship and reasserting her own, so I’m reluctant to treat him as the godlike creator he’d like everyone to think he is. That’s letting him win.
JD Hansel
Jareth may have taken Sarah’s dreams and desires and used them to create the Labyrinth… but the ideas were Sarah’s in the first place. She is the true creator of this world, and at the end of the film when she realises her will is as strong as Jareth’s, and that he has no power over her… I think that is not just Sarah coming into her own and recognizing her own strength and agency, but it is Sarah usurping control over the Labyrinth from Jareth, reclaiming what was rightfully hers all along. So in the grand finale when we see the Labyrinth start to crumble, that’s not because Sarah has realised the Labyrinth and it’s world are “All junk”, but because in the unconscious tug-of-war of authorship between Jareth and Sarah, Jareth is losing.
But while Sarah takes control, she still assumes that the Labyrinth is real. And that right there I think can be used to explain Labyrinth’s ending. Jareth brought Sarah’s intangible fantasy to tangible life, and now Sarah has ownership over it. Precisely because Sarah didn’t recognize that that the Labyrinth couldn’t be real, it becomes real thanks to the strength of her own will. So now the Labyrinth will persist, Sarah’s friends will persist, the goblin citizens will persist…all because Sarah believes everything should persist, and has no reason to believe otherwise.
It’s hard to say where things would go from here for Sarah. Does she now get to have her own “Adventures in Wonderland“-esque series where she can freely go between the ‘real’ world and the Labyrinth? Does she just resume her normal, everyday life, maybe just catching glimpses every so often of her friends in the mirror? After all, just because Sarah has taken control over the Labyrinth, it doesn’t mean she knows how to use that power to it’s full potential like Jareth does. Perhaps it’s another casualty of Sarah’s tendency to take things for granted, maybe she never fully recognizes the power she’s just claimed for herself.
But that’s all baseless speculation, there’s no way of knowing what happens beyond the end credits of the film. But hey, that ties in nicely to this final, most obvious point to make: Nothing in Labyrinth is real, because after all it is just a film. A film meant to entertain us, but also to get us thinking about messages of adolescence, imagination, maturity, and more. Or as JD says it:
What should go without saying is that the fantasy doesn’t really exist for the sake of Sarah’s insight, or for any of these characters. It’s for our insight. These worlds have been constructed around Sarah, and Sarah has been constructed for these worlds, by filmmakers who wanted to take us on a journey and encourage us to probe our own minds and unpack our own fears and desires. In a way, that’s what fiction is supposed to be about, and this film shows this by having Sarah’s “You have no power over me” monologue function differently at the story’s end than it does at the story’s beginning. When employed as fiction for escapism, it makes her distracted, tardy, and all wet. When treated as confrontational with one’s own mind, however, the monologue empowers her. Labyrinth teaches us how to approach fiction as Surrealists, taking every opportunity to explore ourselves, and that empowers all of us.
JD Hansel
Huge shout-out and thanks to JD, who really should’ve written this blog post instead of me, because the breadth of knowledge he’s able to bring to the discussion is absolutely incredible. I love seeing Labyrinth being discussed with this much intelligence, and if you want that as well please be sure to give JD’s video essay some love. I’m going to have to convince JD to post the full essay he wrote somewhere where he can get credit for it, it was a great read and there were lots of arguments and theorizing I didn’t get to share because it didn’t quite fit into the post I was trying to craft. But it was very much appreciated, and makes me hopeful that if I keep pestering JD to think about Labyrinth some more he’ll eventually wind up with enough material to do a sequel to his video essay.
So what do you all think? Do you agree with my assessment, or do you have your own take on just what the heck the Labyrinth’s deal is? Please feel free to share them in the comments below, I’d love to read your thoughts on the matter!
If nothing else, thanks to everyone for reading along!
KOMakesThings 