Labyrinth is a (year) film about a girl named Sarah who finds herself in a strange world ruled by a madman named Jareth, who has kidnapped her baby brother.
Multiple Sarahs Theory[]
The many questions left unanswered at the end of Labyrinth suggest the story began long before the beginning. Questions such as:
- Where did it come from?
- How was it created?
- Has the ruler always been off-kilter, or did some event push him into insanity?
- Why did he kidnap a baby and lure a teen girl through a hopeless maze?
- Is this a habit of his, or a standalone event?
- If it's the latter, then what triggered it? If the former, why did he form that habit?
This theory takes the position that he habitually kidnaps babies and lures teen girls. From there, it claims that the Sarah we see in the movie is not the first-- she is in fact one in a line of many "Sarahs". Who was the original Sarah, you may ask? And why would Jareth be kidnapping so many girls with that name?
Well, the story goes that when Jareth was much younger, he was in love with the original Sarah. They wanted to get married, but her parents wouldn't let her because they needed a babysitter for her baby brother. Enraged, Jareth kidnapped her brother. He was going to return for Sarah, but real-world time ran differently from fairy-world time. He found she had grown old and died waiting for him, though it hadn't been long from his perspective.
This tragedy drove him completely mad, and now he continually recreates those events by kidnapping the younger brothers of teen girls named Sarah so as to:
- lure them to his world
- get them to fall in love with him, and
- hopefully achieve a better outcome.
He will keep trying for eternity until he gets the ending he wanted.
If we assume that he was a normal human teen himself when this all began, then the question arises of when and how he gained his magical ability to create whole worlds. It could be that, just after his initial attempt to marry Sarah was shot down by her parents, he wandered off in despair and stumbled over some magical relic or a magical being that gave him the ability to create worlds. Or perhaps he just fell through a hole and found himself in the undiscovered world of pre-Labyrinth, where pure imagination allowed him to shape it as he liked, and from there gained magical powers that allowed him to return to the real world and spirit away people.
If true, this theory makes the movie very creepy. As if kidnapping alone isn't bad enough, Jareth definitely isn't a teen anymore, yet he's trying to woo a sixteen-year-old girl (though you could argue the sensual undercurrents many perceive in the movie, particularly in the ballroom scene, already made it creepy.) Even if he didn't intend to force her into anything, there is zero possibility for consent. He's essentially a sexual predator.
- https://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/elaborate-fan-theory-about-labyrinth-will-blow-your-min
- https://www.eonline.com/news/587461/labyrinth-might-get-a-sequel-so-you-have-to-read-this-mind-blowing-theory-about-jareth-s-origins
- https://io9.gizmodo.com/this-amazing-labyrinth-fan-created-backstory-just-blew-978028657
Sarah's Imagination Created Labyrinth[]
This theory claims that Sarah dreamed the whole thing. The elements of the dream were influenced by her real-world surrounding, and possibly even her subconscious fears and wishes. This is strongly supported by the film-- Sarah even declares at the end that Jareth has no power over her because he's just a figment of her imagination. Indeed the influences on her dream can be seen strewn throughout her room, including a veritable Bowie shrine on her dresser [1] [2].
It Doesn't Have A Happy Ending[]
Sarah was not as successful in stopping Jareth as she'd thought, either because it wasn't a dream or she doesn't have as much power over her dreams as she supposed.
Sarah Is An Insane Murderer[]
Sarah murdered her brother and the events in Labyrinth are all delusions taking place within her mind as she is kept in an insane asylum, having descended into madness after initially coming to her senses and realizing what she'd done [3].