Wonka offers a brand new take on Roald Dahl's children's tale. Instead of retelling the story that we've seen in the 1971 Gene Wilder movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Tim Burton's 2005 retread, Paul King's musical Wonka movie recounts one of the chocolatier's very first adventures.
The film sees Timothée Chalamet playing the young chocolatier as he sets out to make a name for himself... drawing plenty of crowds, but also the ire of some local chocolatiers, who want nothing more than to get rid of him.
Need a recap of how this musical extravaganza played out? Read on to find our Wonka ending explained article.
Wonka ending explained: How Willy Wonka built his factory
For most of the movie, Willy Wonka is interested in realizing his childhood dream of setting up shop in the Galerie Gourmet to make his name (and his fortune). Unfortunately, after he arrives in town, he is swindled by Mrs Scrubbit and her henchman, Bleacher.
The Dickensian villains tricked him into signing a hotel room contract that left him liable for a huge bill made up of hidden fees; when he couldn't pay, they threw him down in their washhouse to work off his debt.
Despite the pressure from the so-called “Chocolate Cartel”, a group of chocolate magnates who enlist the town’s Chief of Police to thwart Wonka’s every effort at any cost, Wonka eventually gets his wish. With the help of the other washhouse workers, they break out and help him make enough money by selling his chocolates on the streets, using the sewers to navigate the town without being apprehended by the police.
Eventually, he manages to set up a shop. Wonka's magical creations quickly draw in a crowd… but things take a dark turn. It soon turns out that his sweet treats have been sabotaged by Scrubbit and Bleacher (on behalf of the Cartel) as his customers to start sprouting immense amounts of brightly colored hair.
Wonka’s misfortunes don’t end there. The furious shoppers start a riot and demand their money back; in the process, the shop is set on fire. Fickelgruber, Prodnose, and Slugworth (the Cartel members) drop by and offer Wonka the exact amount of money necessary to pay off his and his friends’ debts to Scrubbit and Bleacher… but the catch is that they want him to leave town for good, and stop making chocolate. Reluctantly, he agrees to the deal and boards a boat later on out of town.
Secretly, the Cartel rigged the boat to explode and planned to pay for the release of everyone except Noodle. Slugworth, as it turns out, is Noodle's uncle, and when his brother died, he threw her down Mrs Scrubbit's laundry shoot and told her mother the child had died.
After narrowly escaping the boat, Wonka sets out to reveal the Cartel’s misdeeds and recruits his friends from the washhouse for a new mission: break into the Cartel’s secret vault below the town’s cathedral and retrieve the ledger that details all their wrongdoings (he’d learned of the book’s existence as Abacus Crunch briefly worked for Arthur Slugworth).
The Cartel grew wise to Wonka’s plan and went to retrieve the ledger before their crimes were exposed. They also imprisoned Wonka and Noodle in a vat below the vault, which began to fill with liquid chocolate.
Although it looked like their fates were sealed, Lofty the Oompa Loompa came to their aid just in the nick of time. Wonka had given the final jar of chocolates which he owed Lofty to the Cartel, but they quickly devoured them in the lift back up to town.
With Wonka and Noodle freed after all, they return to the surface and hand over the ledger which finally reveals all the evil deeds that the Cartel had done. And since Scrubbit and Bleacher and the Chief of Police were also implicated, all six of them were eventually brought to justice.
As the town celebrates and enjoys the stolen chocolate, Wonka sits down and opens the chocolate bar his mother had made for him before she passed. Inside, she finds a note that reminds him that life isn’t about the chocolate, but it’s about who you share the chocolate with. He promptly stands up, snaps the bar into six segments, and dishes them out to his friends from the washhouse.
There’s a couple of extra treats in store before the credits roll. Wonka reveals that Lottie had managed to track down her mother, Dorothy, and the pair were joyfully reunited (Slugworth had dumped Noodle at Scrubbit’s and paid for her to be kept there indefinitely, and he told her mother she’d died).
The movie then ends with Wonka completely paying back his chocolate debt to Lofty the Oompa Loompa. But before he returns to Loompa land, Wonka offers him a different option: to stay behind and work at Wonka’s soon-to-be-built chocolate factory, which he dreams up before our eyes as he sings a version of “Pure Imagination” from the 1971 classic.
Wonka hits theaters on Friday, December 15 in the US, and is out now in UK cinemas.
Wonka hits theaters on Friday, December 15, and is now in UK cinemas.
