Lore Explained: Was the Labyrinth Real?

One of the most persistent questions about the 1986 movie Labyrinth is whether the Labyrinth itself actually existed, or whether everything Sarah experienced was simply a manifestation of her imagination.

It’s an easy conclusion to reach.

The film beginning centres around bedrooms/places of sleep, leans heavily into fantasy, and ends with a sense of emotional resolution that looks, on the surface, very much like waking up.

But according to the filmmakers themselves, that reading is wrong. The Labyrinth was real. Not symbolic. Not imaginary. Not a dream dressed up as a fairy tale. It is a genuine fairy realm with its own rules, its own ruler, and its own continued existence long after Sarah leaves it behind.

And once you accept that, the story becomes far more coherent — and far more unsettling.

Sarah Didn’t Cast a Spell

A lot of the confusion stems from the opening scene. Sarah is exhausted, angry, and overwhelmed. She rehearses dramatic lines, complains about her baby brother, and blurts out that she wishes the goblins would come and take him away. Then they do.

This often gets read as a moment of imagination tipping into fantasy, but that’s not how fairy lore works. In traditional folklore, fair folk don’t require spells, rituals, or belief. They don’t wait for candles or chanting or intention. They wait for careless words.

Sarah doesn’t summon the Labyrinth because she knows how. She summons it because the rules are designed to catch people in moments of frustration and surrender. She doesn’t need to mean it. She only needs to say it.

That’s the danger.

The Bargain Was Never Hers to Set

Another key detail people miss is that Sarah never sets the terms of the deal. She doesn’t know there’s a bargain at all. Jareth appears and formalises it for her. He explains the rules, the time limit, and the consequences. That’s how fairy law operates. Humans don’t need to understand it — they just need to stumble into it.

Once the wish is spoken, the system activates. Sarah isn’t a willing participant at this stage; she’s caught.

This is also why her shock matters. She clearly doesn’t expect the goblins to appear. She’s venting theatrically, not performing a ritual. The fact that it works anyway is the warning embedded in the story.

The Labyrinth Was Already in Her World

The film quietly reinforces this idea long before Sarah ever steps through the door. Her bedroom is full of echoes of the Labyrinth — the board game, the costumes, the masks, the book she’s rehearsing from. Later, we see those same figures reflected in the creatures she meets.

This isn’t because she imagined them into existence. It’s because fairy realms bleed into the human world through stories, myths, and cultural memory. You don’t need direct knowledge. You just need familiarity with the shape of the tale.

Fairy rules aren’t secret. They’re half remembered, poorly understood, and dangerously easy to trigger.

Why the Labyrinth Doesn’t Behave Like a Dream

Once Sarah is inside the Labyrinth, it doesn’t follow dream logic. Time passes. She gets hungry. She gets injured. Characters exist independently of her presence. Jareth manipulates events while she’s elsewhere. Creatures interact with each other when she’s not around.

This isn’t how imagination works. It is how a real place responding to a visitor works.

Jim Henson was clear on this point. If the Labyrinth were only in Sarah’s mind, then nothing that happened there would truly matter. Growth would be imaginary. Consequences would dissolve the moment she returned home. Instead, the film insists that fantasy can be real, dangerous, and transformative without replacing reality.

The Ending Only Works If the Labyrinth Is Real

The final confrontation with Jareth is the strongest evidence of all. Sarah doesn’t defeat him with magic or cleverness. She defeats him by withdrawing consent. “You have no power over me” is not a motivational phrase — within fairy law, it is binding.

Authority in fairy realms exists only while it is recognised. The moment Sarah understands that, Jareth’s control collapses. He isn’t destroyed. He doesn’t repent. He simply loses his claim over her.

That moment only works if Jareth is real. Otherwise, Sarah wouldn’t be rejecting an external authority — she’d be reassuring herself. And the film is far too deliberate to end on something that small.

Integration, Not Escape

When Sarah returns home, the Labyrinth doesn’t vanish. It recedes. Her friends appear in her bedroom not as a regression, but as a choice. Fantasy is no longer an escape from responsibility — it’s something she can access without surrendering herself to it.

The Labyrinth still exists. Jareth still rules it. Sarah simply no longer belongs to it.

And that’s the point.

The Labyrinth was real. The danger was real. The choice was real. And the film’s quiet warning lingers long after the credits roll: power doesn’t always arrive with ceremony. Sometimes it waits for you to be tired enough to say the wrong thing out loud.