A clip from the new trailer for Netflix’s upcoming “Chronicles of Narnia” series has fans fearing what the real message of the adaptation will be.
Greta Gerwig, the director of the 2023 hit film “Barbie,” is helming the project, called “The Magician’s Nephew,” which is a prequel to “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”
Fans were already concerned when she cast Meryl Streep as the voice of Aslan, who is male in the books. Liam Neeson voiced the part in the film adaptations in the 2000s, which were produced by Walden Media and distributed by Disney.
In the trailer, Jadis, the witch (played by Emma Mackey), can be seen blowing up the English pub The Eagle & Child, which was the famous meeting place of the Inklings, an Oxford writers’ group made up of “Narnia” author C.S. Lewis, “Lord of the Rings” scribe J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and others.
By the way, Led Zeppelin’s menacing “Stairway to Heaven” scores the trailer.
In “The Magician’s Nephew” book, a young boy named Digory travels to a parallel world and accidentally brings Jadis back to life. She then forces him and his traveling companion, a little girl named Polly Plummer, to bring her to England.
The White Witch later travels to Narnia, where she usurps the throne and imposes a winter curse on the land, which is where “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” picks up.
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One user posted on X in response to the trailer, “Pretty fitting that this ‘adaptation’ is literally blowing up the Eagle & Child.”
Another wrote, “Jadis (The White Witch) is blowing up The Eagle & Child. This is the pub where Lewis, Tolkien and The Inklings, an all-male literary group, famously met. Greta Gerwig and @Netflix are quite possibly ‘blowing up the patriarchy’ here, and completely up-ending the world of Narnia here — and the legacy of the stories.”
Given the girl power message of Gerwig’s “Barbie” movie, that’s a pretty reasonable interpretation of the meaning of the scene.
Jadis (The White Witch) is blowing up The Eagle & Child. This is the pub where Lewis, Tolkien and The Inklings, an all-male literary group, famously met. Greta Gerwig and @Netflix are quite possibly “blowing up the patriarchy” here, and completely up-ending the world of Narnia here–and the legacy of the stories.
— Author Adam Bray (@authoradambray) October 14, 2026
Another pointed out that Uncle Andrew, played by Daniel Craig, comes off as a harmless trickster character in the trailer, but in the book, he is a conniving villain.
“I’m just waiting for the sympathetic ‘he’s not that bad, it’s because of him we accessed Narnia, and he kinda caused the creation… of Narnia when you think about it!’” the user wrote.
Do you think Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of ‘Narnia’ will honor the original themes?
Yes, it will stay true to the story
0% (0 votes)
No, it will change the core messages
100% (2 votes)
Not sure, need to see more
0% (0 votes)
“Narnia being created is not a result of Andrew’s evil actions, which would soften the impact of his evil. It’s that Aslan/Jesus will take any evil and turn it to good if he chooses to. The bigger lesson in all the Narnian books is that people do not make good from evil, Jesus does,” the user argued.
Can we talk about the role of Uncle Andrew in the Magician’s Nephew / Narnia?
I’m just waiting for the sympathetic “he’s not that bad, it’s because of him we accessed Narnia, and he kinda caused the creation of of Narnia when you think about it!”
In the books, Uncle Andrew is a scheming, cowardly man. In the trailers, he’s being set up as a handsome, curious man with good intentions that go wrong.
One of the lessons of Narnia is you can’t excuse a person for evil if it ended up good in the end. The person still did an evil thing, the end doesn’t justify the means. Plus Andrew never repents as Edmund does for his evil actions in The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe.
Narnia being created is not a result of Andrew’s evil actions, which would soften the impact of his evil. It’s that Aslan/Jesus will take any evil and turn it to good if he chooses to.
The bigger lesson in all the Narnian books is that people do not make good from evil, Jesus does.
— Matt Ragland (@mattragland) October 16, 2026
Gerwig says she is a fan of “The Chronicles of Narnia.”
“I would not be who I am without these books,” she told the Associated Press. “They created me.”
Perhaps God will use this latest adaptation of Narnia for good, but based on the trailer, fans have reason to be concerned.
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