Headscratchers / Mary and The Witch's Flower

• I find silly Mary's easiness to fool Madame Mumblechook and Doctor Dee, at the begin. In the theoretical discussion, too: it appears too silly.
  • I think that's the point, it's supposed to be "silly" to highlight how "otherworldly" these people are, utter nonsense to us "normal" people makes sense to them. Plus, have you ever been part of a really off the wall/intense theoretical discussion? Depending on subject matter, any argument could make sense in some way if given the right support and audience. Mary just got lucky that Dr. Dee jumped on her reasoning.
• It is odd that Madame Mumblechook is not able to see the strong resemblance of Mary with the witch that found the flowers and later fled with them. This is stranger if you consider that Madame Mumblechook seems still obsessed by that experiment.
  • See Generation Xerox in the MainPage.
  • In alternative, perhaps is Mary's look so common for a witch? But we do not see other similar looking witches in the old picture in the witch's house or in the school.
    • I could be misremembering but Madame Mumblechook said that a red haired witch was rare.
  • If you ask me, beyond being two young girls with somewhat-messy red hair, Mary and Charlotte don't look too terribly alike, even when Mary's hair is down. (And for most of the time Madame is with her, she's wearing it up in pigtails.) The resemblance between them is just subtle enough that it could be dismissed as a coincidence.
• One thing that bugs me in particular: who/what on Earth is Flanagan? He is the only talking animal we ever meet (which is especially strange considering that animal characters in the movie are pretty important for the plot... yet we don't see any of them talk!), and he is also about the only member of school staff that does anything close to helping Mary and Peter. It would make sense to assume that he has been transformed for slighting the Headmistress and Dee in some way, but... from everything we've seen, that's not how transformation works...
  • He's a fox. We do see a couple of other anthropomorphic animals in the scene where Madame Mumblechook is showing Mary and dining hall. Perhaps Endor College employs anthropomorphic animals as support staff. Or they're the few transformation experiments that went right?
• At the end of the film how was the little broomstick working again? Did Flanagan find a way to repower it off-screen or something? Also, how was Mary able to pilot the broomstick without magic powers? I doubt it was with whatever power Peter had left from the magic flower since he got transformed into that creature and that was undone by the spell Mary and Peter cast, which would mean it got rid of any magic Peter had.
  • This troper can confirm that Peter was out of power. When, after Mary wakes up, Peter hands Mary her bag, then sheepishly admits he couldn't find her broom while rubbing the back of his head with his left hand, we clearly (if briefly) see that Peter's hands do not have the flower marks on them anymore. When Mary tosses away the witch's flower in the next scene, we also see that her hands have no flower marks on them. And we know it's her in control of the broom, because she warns Peter to hold on and then starts doing tricks. But this actually does make sense - if you put stock in the subtle implications throughout the movie. The answer is quite simple: Mary actually is a witch. She was just raised outside of magical society for some reason. This is supported by a couple of points:
    • Within the movie, magic is treated as an exclusive and inherent trait - likely hereditary, considering that it's the question of inherent magic, not just the ability to use magic, that makes someone a "real" or "fake" witch. Given that her great aunt is a witch, this likely means that at least one set of her grandparents, as well as possibly her parents, are witches. Also, given that the first year students look a bit older than her and given that Mary is referred to as a "prodigy" just based on her broom skills even before showing off advanced magic—implying this basic skill is still for students older than her—it's possible her family was waiting to tell her when she was older. This is also supported by the fact that Mumblechook references the strong association between Mary's physical traits and especially powerful witches.
    • Despite Tib being thought a "fake" familiar, Tib does not act like a normal cat. After finishing the film with the implication that Mary is a real witch, rewatching the scene where she first discovers the broom highlights Tib's abnormality: he is by far too familiar with magic, frequently guiding Mary in seemingly impossible ways—first seeking her out, out of everyone in the village, to lead to the broom and the Flower (despite Peter being just on the outskirts of the forest and just as capable of following) and then riding, perfectly poised, on her broom. While claiming him to be Mary's familiar in particular is a bit of a stretch, if Tib fits the label of familiar, then is it really that hard to believe that Flanagan was right in identifying Mary as a witch? Particularly since Tib sought her out whenever magical shenanigans were afoot.
    • Everyone in the cast (save perhaps Charlotte) assumed Mary wasn't a witch because she first encountered magic when enhanced by the Fly-by-Night, and when not under its effects, her inexperience is much more apparent and her abilities are much more limited. Case in point, the invisibility orbs: the other students had to concentrate to use their innate power efficiently. Mary just used her excess Fly-by-Night power to indelicately blast through it without understanding what she was doing, destroying the classroom (and the orb) in the process. Of course Mary assumed she couldn't do magic after coming off that high; she only knew how to throw magic at something until it worked, not how to actually use it effectively. But over the course of the film, she actually had to learn and adjust to riding the broom, because just throwing power at it wouldn't work. And so by the end of the movie, she genuinely has surpassed her age group by mastering flying without the aid of Fly-By-Night, hinting that she's every bit the prodigy Madam Mumblechook thought she was, just less of a powerhouse. While the reason for Mary not being told this part of her family history is still unclear, the implication stands that Mary is indeed a real witch, and thus, once repaired, the broom returned to activity when called to service.
• It seems like Mary was invisible when she went back to try and save Peter the second time. It turns out she was visible the whole time. Wouldn't they have wanted to restrain her? Try to stop her at all? Dr. D and Madam don't even seem to care that she's there until she's about to save him after they know it's a failed experiment.
  • At that point they're so distracted by their excitement that they don't care.
• Why did Charlotte's hair and clothes pale out once she reached the, for lack of a better term, "human realm"? You see that once she's falling into the forest and she goes limp that her red puffy hair becomes black and smooth, and her purple cloak turns white/light lavender. Even her shoes seem to go from bright warm brown to dark black. So? Did her magic run out or is that just the effect of the land? Or did she do it on purpose in order to hide better? She hadn't even gone back to her old home since taking the Fly-By-Night seeds in order to stay hidden.
  • I took it as the lab explosion from the Fly-by-night monster draining all of the magic from her. The same thing happens to Madame during the climax.
• Also,if you notice when Mary comes back from Endor College the first time, the leash she's given for Tib disintegrates. So was it an effect related to that or did Tib do it himself since he's obviously not an ordinary cat?

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