Cinderella's Prince is a Time Lord.
Hear me out.The Wolf and Cinderella's Prince are often played by the same actor. This is because they are in fact the same person. We meet The Wolf, who is killed before we meet the Cinderella's Prince. They are both very womanizing and, most importantly, have repeated lyrics. "...so many worth exploring / Just one would be so boring." How else would they both have known those words? Everyone thought the Wolf had been killed, but instead he regenerated when no one was looking. He then returned to the castle and attend the festival. Due to a freak accident his mouth is the door to his TARDIS, which is how he fit two whole people, totally alive, in his belly.
The Witch didn't die.
She simply placed the curse upon herself again, her beauty gone but her powers restored. All that smoke? The curse taking effect. She then promptly magicked herself away. "Give me claws and a hunch, just get me away from this bunch."- Most versions, though, give her a lengthy scream as she disappears, implying her fate is far from pleasant.
- Having your body aged and twisted could well be incredibly painful.
- In many versions, it's more of a stereotypical witch cackle.
The Witch and the Baker's Father had a fling.
It was brief and lasted while the Baker's Mother was pregnant; the Baker's Father had fallen out of love with his wife and liked the Witch's exoticness. The Witch went along with it for a lark until the beans were stolen. Besides, just listen to the dialogue between the Witch and The Mysterious Man - don't they sound like a pair of warring exes? Also, it's nice irony against the Baker, whose Wife (briefly) fell out of love with him.- Gives a new meaning to the line "He was robbing me! Raping me!", that's for sure...
- Then why did he steal the beans in the first place, if not for his wife's yearning? Of course, one response could be the Baker's Mother was going to leave with the Baker unless the father proved he loved her by taking the beans. He decided to break off the fling and take the beans after one final time.
Jack's dad isn't dead.
He left his family when Jack was very small to seek his fortune, and is now the hero of another fairytale somewhere far away— probably, given the world they live in, a fairytale that involves realising how callous it was to leave his wife and child for twenty years without sending back word, and discovering that he can't find his way back.Somehow, this (or a vaguer version of it, anyhow) is how Jack's Mother's line "Your mother's getting older, your father's not back" always read to me as a kid— at least in the American Playhouse taped version, her delivery sounds more like resignation to the fact that he's not returning than that he's dead but she doesn't want to tell Jack.
If the Narrator had lived, the Giantess would have forgiven Jack after he turned himself over to her.
The Narrator wanted to tell a story with a moral about facing responsibility and reconciliation, something that would take a little nudging from him and wouldn't easily be possible in "real life". However, killing him meant no one could direct the story toward a theme or moral like he could do, albeit just one about life's unpredictability and harshness. Some elements, like the Baker's wife learning to stay with her family after her fling with the Prince continued as planned after his death, but it too was messed up by the fact that the Giantess wasn't supposed to be on the rampage then, hence killing her. Little Red Riding Hood's Grandmother was a hunter.
She taught Little Red how to skin a wolf, and not everyone knows how to properly skin an animal. And she gave Red a little hunting knife for protection. Also, the way she asked the baker "What kind of hunter are you?" sounded like she was really saying "You're a disgrace to us all!" The Witch turned into dust.
When the beans are misplaced, she does turn back to an old crone. However, she ages so much she turns into dust. This would be because she lost the beans twice, so it is a final punishment. Jack's father is the Mysterious Man OR the Mysterious Man and Jack's Mom had an affair.
In the script, the two never meet. The closest we get is the end of Act I, when Jack's mom runs in yelling about the dead giant. The stage directions say:- The MYSTERIOUS MAN takes one look at her and ducks behind a tree
- Another possibility is that Jack is younger than Rapunzel, meaning that the Mysterious Man fathered Jack after his wife had died, but ran off because he was still too grief stricken/guilt ridden to deal with having a family again.
- Although, considering how his entire family tree was cursed to be barren, this is unlikely.
"Baking Accident" is a Stealth Pun and/or Bowdlerization for the mother dying in childbirth.
Pregnancy is often referred to as "having a bun in the oven," which is obviously a baking analogy. The Baker's mother died shortly after giving birth to Rapunzel. So it could be said that there was a problem with the oven when the bun came out, causing the father to die a little inside because he had lost his wife and given the "bun" to the Witch. So, how do you tell the young future-Baker why his parents are gone? Bowdlerize it to Baking Accident.- Another possibility is someone used the "Bun came out of the oven, oven broke, broke the baker" explanation to the young future-Baker and his young mind merely interpreted it as a Baking Accident.
The Witch was only twelve or thirteen when she placed a curse on the Baker's parents and stole Rapunzel
This would just explain so much about her parenting of Rapunzel - she got the child when she was too young to know how to take care of one. That's why she does so much to be the perfect parent and her love of Rapunzel is expressed in bizarre ways. She wants to be the perfect mother for Rapunzel, but the only way she knows how is to lock her up and provide everything for her. The baby's name is Alfie, (or Stormageddon: Dark Lord of All)
The baker and Craig Owens from "The Lodger" share the same actor (this needs a "hey it's that guy" addition, too). I had to. Cinderella's mother was a fairy.
This is how she is able to grant wishes from beyond the grave via magical tree. This makes Cinderella half fairy with some supernatural abilities, such as her ability to talk to birds. Milky White is Jack's father.
The witch got mad at Jack's dad at some point and, as punishment, turned him into an ugly old female cow. The cow, on instinct, ran home and Jack's mom took it in since it might provide milk for the family. Some part of Jack knows what Milky White is, which is why he always refers to the cow as a he. (Film Only) The Witch is one of a Mage Species who Comes from the Moon
This particular Mage Species appears human, but with blue hair, lunar magic, and Immortality, so their age is purely cosmetic. All fairy tales are in the same canon.
There are so many similarities, that you could piece them all together into 1 canon! For example, the Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood could know the Big Bad Wolf from 3 Little Pigs! This movie is only a small piece of the giant canon! Cinderella is a witch
She talks to birds, can summon and instruct them. Waters a tree with her tears, talks to the spirit of said tree and summon a golden dress out of nowhere with said tree spirit. Freezes time.- Maybe she's a fairy, if witches have to be ugly like The Witch was.
- The Witch was once beautiful, until she was punished, so that rule might not be universal.
Giants can make themselves invisible
Giants are so tall that you have to be either a bird or sitting in a tree to be able to hit them on the head. And yet, after the Baker's home is destroyed in the Second Act, he never sees what did it. The Witch says she "was thrown to the ground [and] saw nothing" when her garden was trampled. And why would the Royal Family be so skeptical of news of a giant when they should be able to spot it from the castle? It would even explain why Little Red Riding Hood thinks a "great wind" destroyed her own home. Maleficent is the Witch's mother and the Greater-Scope Villain of the story
Cinderella's Prince eventually falls for Sleeping Beauty, however he mentions that she is still asleep in an even higher tower and guarded by briar thorns "100 feet deep". Now, who is infamous for cursing her to sleep and growing thorns out of dark magic? Plus, earlier, Rapunzel's Prince tried to visit her but the Witch banished her and threw him into a patch of thorns. Where might she have learned to grow those thorns from? Additionally, her mother had access to curses even the Witch couldn't (or wouldn't) cast, and was clearly very evil and abusive, since losing those beans caused her mom's curse to activate and turn her old, plus losing them a second time caused Maleficent to curse her daughter once more and this time either cause her to get Dragged Off to Hell (assuming Maleficent is a ghost) or get teleported to Maleficent herself for punishment (assuming she's alive). Even if there is arguably no Big Bad (neither the Witch nor Giantess are completely evil nor are they the main villain and the Wolf didn't last long enough), the Mother (Maleficent) counts as the Greater-Scope Villain because she owned the beans in the first place, and her daughter losing them caused the entire story. Plus, the Witch knew that a dragon didn't destroy the garden (the Giantess did), stating that there weren't any scorch marks (implying she'd seen the wrath of a dragon before, probably when her mom was infuriated with her). Finally, it's possible that Maleficent also cursed Snow White with the same sleep magic as Sleeping Beauty. This would make her a Composite Character of herself and the Evil Queen, which may also be why she had a spell to curse her daughter with age. The Princes are dead by the end of the stage play.
After the Giantess is killed. The cast come out to say what they've learned. The characters that appear are, Jacks Mother, The Bakers Father, The Royal Family, The Steward, Red Riding Hoods Grandmother, Rapunzel and the Princes with the Witch and The Bakers Wife entering not long after. Out of all of those characters. The Princes are the only ones who aren't dead. So why are they with a bunch of ghosts? They actually did die off screen like the Royal Family. It is unknown how they died, it's likely they simply died as a part of the giants rampage because they appear with Snow White and Sleeping Beauty who are likely also dead. In the end, the Princes did not escape karma. Into the Woods includes the original stories of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.
As we see throughout Into the Woods, Sondheim follows the original fairytales as opposed to the Disney version. We see this in Cinderella's story, with the birds pecking out the eyes of the stepsisters at the royal wedding. We also see this in Rapunzel's story, where Rapunzel gets pregnant, banished to a faraway land where she bore twins and her Prince is blinded by thorns, and she then fixes them with her magic tears. There's no reason to think that Snow White and Sleeping Beauty would be any different.
- This would make things between Rapunzel's Prince and Snow White much creepier, considering he is "in love" with a 7 year old girl who is presumed dead, which is even weirder considering that Snow White would most likely be younger than Jack and Little Red.
- This would make things even worse between Cinderella's Prince and Sleeping Beauty, however. The original story of Sleeping Beauty is that, after pricking her finger and falling asleep, Sleeping Beauty is raped by a King who impregnates her and she wakes up nine months later giving birth to twins. It is likely that Cinderella's Prince, therefore, is implied to have filled that role in the fairytale.
- This is hinted at multiple times, such as his infatuation with her corpse during "Agony (Reprise)."
- His blatant disregard to the Baker's Wife's protests about kissing him only strengthen this theory.
- He hasn't spoken of being in love with Sleeping Beauty, just of being in "agony" without being able to get close to her sleeping body (which could give agony a whole new meaning, if you know what I mean). He also says it's agony "not to know what you miss", so as someone who loves the chase, we can assume what he wanted to do immediately when he found his way into the tower, even if she didn't wake up.
- Arguably the most potent piece of evidence is his final line with his brother as they carry in their new brides, "the harder to wake, the better to have." Yeah, not sure how that one slipped by the first time.
