The Last Unicorn Was Darker Than You Remember: The Real Mythology of Unicorns Explained

Ajouté : 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Today, I want to talk about The Last Unicorn, perhaps one of the most hauntingly disturbing children's films of all time. And that's saying a lot considering it came out in 1981. Just a few years before this, children were watching animals dying in films like Watership Down. And just a year later, a lot of them would be watching dark movies like The Secret of NIMH. But despite their main characters being animals, those two films were very relatable to human children. What made them dark and scary was the idea of death and with that, losing the opportunity to be human. What made The Last Unicorn so haunting, however, was it left children with the idea that maybe they are in a prison, that their human body is a trap meant to take away their innocence and to make them suffer.

[00:00:44]As the title of the film suggests, The Last Unicorn is a story about a unicorn who believes that there are no others of her kind because she and the humans have not seen another unicorn in quite some time. This sends this supposed last unicorn on a journey to try and find any of the others only to learn that all of the unicorns are disappearing because they're being herded away by a mysterious spirit known as the Red Bull.

[00:01:08]In order to avoid being hunted down by this Red Bull herself, The Last Unicorn is turned into a human woman. But this isn't like The Little Mermaid where Ariel looks at her legs and smiles and then gets to practice walking around and is happy to explore this life as a human girl. And instead, in this human form, The Last Unicorn can feel herself now dying and experiencing all of the horrible emotions that humans have to go through every day. This caused a lot of young people, especially young girls in the audience to think that maybe the real horror wasn't dying. Maybe the real horror was being forced to continue living as a human. A lot of this narrative echoes the real-life themes surrounding the stories of unicorns. And those stories themselves are very mythic retellings of what we would initially call the story of the fallen angels. So today, I want to talk about the film, the novel it's based on, the real-life history of unicorns, and the dark, sad story of the fallen angel known as Sophia that helped inspire them both.

[00:02:08]The story of The Last Unicorn and unicorns in general can be said to be inspired by the innocence of children, especially young girls. Originally, the accounts of unicorns were just accounts of exotic beasts from other lands that happened to have one horn. These animals would often be described as horse-like, even though it was likely that these descriptions were of creatures like the rhinoceros, much bulkier and a lot less graceful-looking. But, over time, the idea of a unicorn would become associated very specifically with the body of a horse, [music] a creature that was seen as graceful and beautiful, or even angelic when it came in this pure white form. Children in general, of course, take an interest in horses, but something about the young girl's mind would become infatuated with the idea of this big, beautiful, elegant horse with longer legs and horn. And it's because of this that the unicorn would go from an account of some sort of exotic animal to some sort of mystic animal inspired by the minds of the young girls who loved them.

[00:03:06]According to our real-life folklore, unicorns are beings that are completely innocent and immortal. They are not born, they do not die, and they live forever without knowing the terrible things that humans have to experience throughout their lives. Because of their history originally as some sort of foreign animal, the accounts of unicorns are that they are very hard to find, or were even beginning to die out. Some accounts maintained that only an innocent young girl could actually see a unicorn, while others said that adults and men could see unicorns in the distance, but that a unicorn would only ever come up to a young, innocent girl and lay its head on her lap. But, as a young girl grew up and began to understand things like love and even regret, she would lose her ability to see unicorns or for a unicorn to approach her as anything that isn't as innocent as the unicorn drives it away.

[00:03:57]These were the themes that inspired The Last Unicorn, which wasn't just a 1981 film, but also a novel written back in 1968. Interestingly, the film was actually adapted by the author of the original book, Peter S. Beagle, who was even known for helping to write other fantasy films at the time and even adapted The Lord of the Rings to its animated format. It's because of this that a lot of the original themes from the book are still present in the movie, even if the first half tries to make it a little bit more child-friendly. The story opens with two men going through the beautiful woods and talking about the legend of the unicorn that lives there. The young boy has lived in a time where unicorns have not been seen in so long that he doesn't think unicorns really exist. But the older man was from a time when many more people had seen them. With the older man insisting that the last of the unicorns must be living in this forest because of how magical and spring-like it always is, eternal and innocent just like the unicorn. Now, our unicorn, the supposed last unicorn, wants to believe that there are many other unicorns out there, they're just hiding. [music] And this makes sense as in this world not everyone who looks at the last unicorn actually sees a unicorn. Most people who look at the last unicorn just see a white mare, still very beautiful and majestic, but definitely not a fantasy creature with one horn. In the film and, of course, the novel it's based upon, some people can see that she truly is a unicorn. And because of that, they can even speak with her. But this isn't based off of innocence, especially not a childlike innocence, at least to a degree. A major theme in The Last Unicorn as a story is what you choose to believe. It's about a unicorn who becomes a woman, but then begins to lose her memories. And after a while, she doesn't want to even believe that she was a unicorn. And because of that, a big part of what makes someone able to see a unicorn in The Last Unicorn is whether or not they believe they truly exist. It's because of this that The Last Unicorn is able to round up a group of human companions before making it to where she believes the other unicorns are being held captive.

[00:05:57]First is Schmendrick. Schmendrick is a magician, and because of that he doesn't just believe in magic, but even magical creatures, even if all of the other magical creatures at his little circus are fake. Originally, Schmendrick's talents were being wasted working for Lady Fortuna, who used her own magic of illusion to trick people into thinking that they were actually seeing magical creatures. The only other magical creature that she had captured was a harpy, but because she truly did believe in unicorns, she was able to notice The Last Unicorn when she was sleeping.

[00:06:27]Schmendrick, thankfully, helps set The Last Unicorn and then all of the other animals free with her help. And then from here, they would go on to meet another believer named Molly. Molly is a really interesting character in a children's film as she's just an older woman who begins following Schmendrick and The Last Unicorn after abandoning the man she had been living with for so long. She's portrayed at first as a ruthless and grumpy old woman, doing her best to take care of a failing group of men who saw themselves as a sort of Robin Hood and his merry men. It becomes clear that the reason Molly ended up with this group is she believed in the beautiful ideas of Robin Hood and his merry men, people who would rob from the rich in order to feed the poor, but these people could barely feed themselves. It's because of this that when Schmendrick and The Last Unicorn arrive, she doesn't want them to be anywhere near her group. But when Schmendrick uses power to bring about the image of Robin Hood, this makes Molly remember everything from her innocence and youth, what made her run away to be with this group of merry men to begin with. And it's because of that she also remembers her belief in unicorns, and she's able to see The Last Unicorn. This is where the film plays with the idea that a unicorn only comes to a young girl in her youth. With Molly having this very emotional crying scene where she blames the unicorn for not coming to her when she was a young girl, when that was supposed to mean something to her, when she needed the idea of magic and something good in the world because she was innocent and that's what [music] she deserved. But the beauty of the story at this point of it is that Molly still is that innocent little girl. She's older, she's wiser, she's even more mature and perhaps even some ways more immature, but that innocence still lived within inside her and the unicorn simply was able to bring it out with the way that she crossed into Molly's life. But it's not innocence that made Molly see the unicorn, it's belief. And while that was tied to her innocence, that's not the case for everyone. After having her unicorn leave her forest, meet a butterfly, and then Schmendrick and even Molly, the film turns its attention to the primary antagonist of the story, King Haggard and his mysterious Red Bull. According to the butterfly that our last unicorn first met, all of the unicorns were being herded in a specific direction by a mysterious Red Bull. This Red Bull is something of a ghostly entity that doesn't have much of an explanation in the film or apparently even in the book.

[00:08:43]There are a lot of theories about this Red Bull and his strange relation to a king of the land known as King Haggard.

[00:08:49]And it's because of that that the last unicorn and her companions head out to King Haggard's castle to try and discover what happened to the other unicorns. Before they get to the castle, however, they end up running into the Red Bull themselves. The Red Bull doesn't try to kill the last unicorn, but as the stories before said, it simply tried to herd the last unicorn in the direction of the castle. While that is where they are trying to get, they didn't want the last unicorn to also become a prisoner. So, Schmendrick uses the power of magic to turn the last unicorn into another form. With this, of course, being a human woman. This causes the Red Bull to return to the castle, but what's terrifying in this scene is the last unicorn losing her sanity immediately and starting to cry about the pains of being a human and all of the new emotions that they're feeling.

[00:09:35]In this human form, however, the gang is able to go to Haggard's castle and request to be his servants in order to try and discover where any of the other unicorns might be hidden. But, the castle and the people there are very strange and not what you'd expect from royalty. At the castle, they meet two guards and request to see King Haggard.

[00:09:53][music] The two guards take them up the long staircases into a throne room, which Schmendrick points out is very dark, more like a tomb, not a place that a royal should want to be sitting all day. One of the guards takes off their helmets to reveal that he himself is King Haggard. And instead of having a lot of guards and a lot of people around him, he instead chooses to live in near isolation because of how unhappy other people make him. King Haggard does, however, have an eye for beautiful things. And it makes sense that he would want to keep the most beautiful thing in the world, the unicorns, for himself.

[00:10:26]Now that she's taken on human form, the last unicorn is given the fake identity of Lady Amalthea, with Schmendrick claiming that she is his niece. But, it's very obvious to the king that Lady Amalthea isn't just something beautiful, but is in particular a unicorn or someone who understands something about unicorns. When they first enter this room, Lady Amalthea finds herself coming over to the window where she looks out at the ocean, drawn to its hypnotizing and beautiful view. King Haggard explains that he likes to look at the ocean a lot, or really more so that he feels compelled to look at the ocean when he can't handle looking at everything else around him. The ocean, of course, is itself a very beautiful thing. But, as we would eventually find out, the ocean is actually the prison of the unicorns, with the Red Bull herding them there and trapping them in the waves. This is what King Haggard sees every time he looks out the window, not because he has any sense of innocence, but because he does believe in unicorns to an obsessive degree. As king, he could have anything and he could even hoard it for himself, but the hardest thing in the world to get would be the unicorns. And somehow, through magic or some weird cosmic sense of spirituality, he ends up in control of this red bull who herds all of the unicorns to his [music] castle for him. In her human form, however, Lady Amalthea is already forgetting that she was once a unicorn, and she herself can't see all of the unicorns that are just right below her in the ocean. King Haggard knows that Lady Amalthea is a unicorn, so he decides to let the group stay at his castle as long as they want to, claiming that Lady Amalthea is free to come and go as she chooses, but ultimately knowing that she's trapped there for the same reason all of the other unicorns are trapped there as well. It's at this time that Lady Amalthea has this kind of cosmic craziness set over her, where she's clearly in a lot of pain from being human and can't stop looking out at the ocean every day, but also begins to fall in love with the adopted son of the king. This is something unicorns don't feel in their natural form.

[00:12:22]Anything that might make a unicorn feel love or regret or any complex emotion causes them to run away. This is why The Last Unicorn was able to live alone so long in the forest, and even when others talked about how she might be the last unicorn, she refused to reveal herself to them. When she starts to fall in love with the prince, however, she wants to reject the idea that she ever was a unicorn or could possibly become one again. She talks about how taking this form has caused her to feel something she never felt before, which is lonely, and that causes a yearning for the prince that's so intense as her first ever love that she doesn't want to return to what she was before. With the help of the prince, Amalthea, Molly, and Schmendrick are eventually able to find the secret entrance to the Red Bull's den under the castle, leading out to the ocean where all of the other unicorns are already being held captive. At this point, Prince Lír realizes that Lady Amalthea really is a unicorn, but she herself wants to reject that identity even as she starts to believe it again herself because she doesn't want to return to what she was. Despite all of the pain she's feeling, she knows she will feel even more pain having to leave it behind because that is the human experience. Once they make it to the water, however, the Red Bull puts them in a situation where they have to decide to sacrifice themselves in order to try and save each other. At first, Lady Amalthea is returned to her unicorn state where the Red Bull is able to try and herd her into the ocean. And in an attempt to save her, Prince Lir jumps in the way and is killed. It's because of this that The Last Unicorn is finally able to try for herself to fight the Red Bull. Wanting to be able to get past him in order to help Prince Lir. It's because of this that the unicorn realizes that she or any of the unicorns could have stopped the Red Bull at any time. But as creatures of innocence, they never had a reason to fight before.

[00:14:09]This is based somewhat on the nature of horses who aren't much for fighting and instead will generally flee if they feel they are threatened or even just at risk. The flighty nature of horses is what inspired the idea that unicorns were so hard to see. They were just horses who were able to escape a little bit easier because of the added bonus of magic. And this is the other end of the relationship of why a unicorn is able to approach a young girl, not just because young girls were very interested in horses and thus later in the story of unicorns, but because it takes a very small and unthreatening creature like a young girl in order to not scare a horse away. Even today, all of us find it heartwarming when an animal senses the safety that it has around a young person, especially a young child. And so much of our culture of what a fairy tale princess is comes from characters like Snow White who were so innocent that animals would simply approach and even help her. But just as a child would flee from something that feels dangerous and not innocent to them, so too does a horse flee or a unicorn flee when they can sense that you do not have innocent intentions. If a unicorn were to approach a man, he would want to capture it, but a young girl is innocent enough to just take what the unicorn gives them and then move on with their life inspired by the experience. It's after becoming a human, however, that Lady Amalthea, the last unicorn, now has a reason to fight instead of flee. Until now, none of the unicorns really knew if they could defeat the bull because they were all too afraid to try. And perhaps the thing that takes your innocence away the quickest is realizing that someone else could be hurt and you could have done something to prevent it. So, by experiencing humanity and coming back with the feeling of love that no unicorn has ever had before, the last unicorn has a reason to turn against the Red Bull and finally drive him away. This leads to all of the unicorns being set free and Hagsgate with his castle falling into the ocean for that to be their prison and tomb. But, unfortunately, the last unicorn is forever changed by this experience.

[00:16:09]Using her magic, she's able to approach Prince Lir and bring him back from the dead. But, the two unfortunately can never be together. Prince Lir would love to get on his own horse and just travel after unicorn, always trying to catch little glimpses of her as she runs away.

[00:16:24]But, he's convinced that his role with his much shorter lifespan is to undo the damage that King Haggard had done as an unjust ruler. Now that she'd returned to her original state, the last unicorn also realizes that she has a duty as a unicorn. That there needs to be many unicorns in the world because, even though they are flighty and they run away, their job is to be this sort of symbol for peace that young girls like Molly and other people all over the world need in their lives. This is something we saw even earlier in the film when The Last Unicorn was being held captive by Lady Fortuna. Here, most people still couldn't actually see that she was a unicorn, but because of the magical disguise that Lady Fortuna gave her, the people were able to believe that unicorns existed and that gave them something they desperately needed. But, our last unicorn returns with the others in a state that they will never understand. Schmendrick feels terrible that turning her into a human caused her to feel things that no unicorn should ever have to feel. But even the regret that she carries for not staying a human and marrying Prince Lír is something that she says she's now grateful for.

[00:17:31]Even if among these many innocent unicorns, she may now be the one sad unicorn. Now, in the bare bones of this story, you can already see what we might call the graceful fallen angel narrative. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, these angels are just divine beings who are supposed to be subservient to the one true God. And outside of the Judeo-Christian culture, these figures are what the polytheistic religions call the gods themselves. Most cultures with these figures will have examples of good and evil versions of them, with some of these not really being good or evil, but the focus being more so on them being in a fallen state in one way or another. The most well-known version of a graceful fallen angel story, if you will, is of course the story of Jesus Christ, [music] the divine son of God who came down to Earth and took human form, entering a fallen state, in order to rescue all of the souls that were said to be trapped on the Earth, setting them free by sacrificing himself on the cross in this human form in order for him and all of these souls to ascend to a divine state again. It's because of this that by medieval times, the unicorn itself was often seen as a symbol for Jesus Christ.

[00:18:40]And a lot of that symbolism does exist in the movie as well as the book. As a unicorn, The Last Unicorn is essentially what we would think of as an angel, a ghostly mirage that only some can see and seemingly only those who had already believed. It's entering her human form that's the real death for her. And while she doesn't experience some sort of sacrificial death, it's becoming human itself that's the sacrifice she makes in order to set all of the unicorns free.

[00:19:07]And of course, that death and resurrection motif is paralleled with the unicorn bringing Prince Lír back to life after he sacrifices himself trying to save her. And the parallels don't end there. In the New Testament, in the fourth chapter of both the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, Jesus Christ is offered the entire world by Satan to give up his spiritual destiny and ascent. [music] Jesus often refers to his greatest adversary, the Satan, as the prince of the world or the prince of this earth. What's really interesting is that in the film, Lady Amalthea isn't offered anything by King Haggard. And yet in her conversations with him, she still insists that nothing in his kingdom or all of the earth could never get her to forget what she came to this castle for, even if she has such a hard time remembering it. And this is why King Haggard's symbolism is so important with the red bull. The red bull is essentially what we would imagine for the devil, something animalistic and evil and of course red. And part of the reason we think of the devil as red is because of the New Testament story in the book of Revelation. Here in Revelation 12, it says, "And another sign appeared in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon with seven heads and 10 horns, and on his head seven diadems."

[00:20:21]But what's important here isn't just the description of the devil as a red dragon, similar to the red bull in The Last Unicorn, but it also describes him standing before a woman who is about to give birth so that when she bears her child, he might devour it. Revelation 12 goes on to tell the story of this woman fleeing this red dragon wherever she goes. With this being a metaphor for Christ and his ministry, with her giving birth to Christ's final form being a parallel to Christ's death on the cross bringing humanity to its spiritual next level. And of course, in The Last Unicorn, as Lady Amalthea returning to her unicorn form in order to bring Prince Lir back to life. The story of this woman in Revelation doesn't end in Revelation, however. And while While of this imagery did seem to directly inspire The Last Unicorn, you could say that its fallen angel motif was much more inspired by the Gnostic stories of the divine angel or emanation known as Sophia. While the unicorn has long been considered a symbol to represent Jesus Christ, the story of The Last Unicorn in particular more closely resembles the story of the Gnostic Sophia. Gnosticism was a movement from the early centuries of Christianity that tried to rewrite Old Testament stories as well as write new stories, re-explaining the history and the mythology surrounding the Bible based on what Jesus had said in the New Testament and how that related to what was understood about Judaism and the polytheistic pantheons at that time. As they were all seen as being the same shared world history just told with different symbols. In the New Testament, Jesus is sent to the earth in order to be the gateway to heaven, but until then that meant that humans were trapped here in material form. In Gnosticism, instead of treating each of our souls as individual characters, however, they're instead treated as all being shattered aspects of a divine figure known as Sophia, Greek for wisdom. This is in part due to the many instances in the New Testament such as John 17:16, where Jesus describes his followers as not being of this world, but instead as coming from the same place he did, which would be heaven. In Gnosticism, the story of Jesus coming to rescue humanity is told in many different ways, but Sophia was inserted as a symbol that represented all of humanity. Already, you can see how this is an even more fitting parallel to the story of The Last Unicorn. Sophia isn't just The Last Unicorn, but her shattered aspects are represented by the many unicorns who are being held captive by King Haggard. In Gnosticism, it's often Jesus who comes down into material form to rescue Sophia from being trapped in human flesh, but in some cases even after aspects of herself fall into the material world, it's the higher version of Sophia, the female spiritual principle, that has to come down and rescue them. Just as The Last Unicorn has to be the one that descends into material form and takes on suffering in order to set all of the other unicorns free. You could say that the story of Sophia and the story of The Last Unicorn are essentially the same if you swap out the symbol of the unicorn for a divine angel. But the thing that really makes the Sophia parallel stick is just how much we see our unicorn experience suffering within the movie.

[00:23:28]The story of Sophia is generally one of an angel who has a very elevated position, but who falls because of their own naivety and even pride or arrogance.

[00:23:38]This is reflected in our real-life folklore where unicorns are said, for instance, to have been invited onto Noah's Ark before the great flood, but had ended up drowning because they believed their magical wings would stop them from ever going into the water. And apparently, this was a much bigger part of the original Last Unicorn novel. In the film, it had to be sanitized a bit for children and in its much smaller narrative, be a character that audiences would find endearing instead of aggravating. Over the course of a novel, it's much more interesting to take a character who is imperfect and slowly get them to realize what their problems are. But you don't have as much time to build that relationship with your audience in an actual movie. It's because of this that Sophia is treated as a character who experiences great shame and even defilement because of her fall, but who is eventually restored to her place being different than she was before, changed by the fact that she had become human despite becoming an angel again. The thing about these Gnostic texts, however, is that they're part of a greater tradition known as the mystery schools. [music] These were groups found all over the world with a shared ritual format dating all the way back to ancient Egypt. In each of these stories, the initiate would play the role of a character like Sophia who experiences a great fall or even a death before eventually having a great rise or resurrection. With that death and resurrection always being symbolic of a spiritual ascension. The thing about these stories and acting them out over and over again as part of the ritual was that it made a person really think about their nature and whether or not they actually wanted to continue existing as a human body. A lot of people don't think too deeply about it and tend to just go with the idea that they either go to heaven or reincarnate or simply stop existing once they die. But these rituals and the constant repetition of them was meant to make you start thinking about not being a human. Taking you from someone who says, I think that I'm going to go to heaven to someone who says, I believe that I'm not meant to be in this physical form and that I am supposed to be in the spiritual realm above. It's easy to imagine that once this entered the VHS market, a lot of children were watching this on repeat just as we watched a lot of tapes on repeat when we were young and playing in our rooms. But just like those who participate regularly in these rituals and their various mystery schools, a lot of young children, especially young girls, would be watching The Last Unicorn and experience the very intense performance of Lady Amalthea. They wouldn't just be watching this movie, they would play out the story with imaginative play over and over and over again. Sometimes while the tape's playing alone in the room, sometimes when they're out at a park and a boy's willing to play pretend and be the prince. And I would say it's at least part of the reason why by the time we got to the age of the internet, a lot of people found themselves going online and venting about how they feel like they're not something that's meant to be in a human body. That there's something otherworldly that has fallen into this mundane form. Something like a fairy or an angel or even a unicorn. Out of all these different mystery traditions, however, I believe the one that best parallels The Last Unicorn might be hermeticism. Or at the very least, it's the most beautiful parallel to end this video on. Hermeticism grew up alongside Gnosticism with less of a focus on the actual history of the world and how it's presented through the world mythologies, and instead focused more on using that ritual system and mythic imagery to focus on the human relationship with the divine. In Hermeticism, the origin of the cosmos is that the great father god creates the one child modeled perfectly after him. With this child generally being presented as male in the Hermetic tradition, but who for this video is better to imagine I think as a woman.

[00:27:15]According to the Hermetic tradition, this woman was given every blessing that her father had such as his immortality and his authority over all things.

[00:27:23]Together, the father and daughter work to make all of creation including our great planet Earth. But when the daughter looked into the Earth and its great seas, she saw her reflection and fell in love with it. And because the daughter was given all of the free will that the father had as well, the father couldn't stop the daughter from falling into the Earth and embracing her reflection within it. Eventually, the daughter longed to return home and she began her ascent again. But because the Earth did love her so, he tried to keep her close to her. While this slows the ascent of the daughter, she does eventually remove all of the bindings that the Earth has put on her and returns to where her father is waiting.

[00:28:01]And so, the daughter returns to the station where she belongs, but she's forever changed by what she had experienced. Perhaps not better and perhaps not worse, but still forever changed. And that is why The Last Unicorn is such a hauntingly disturbing film. If you made it this far into the video, please leave a comment with three exclamation points letting me know so that I can thank you personally. Whether that's with a reply to your comment or just a heart react if I don't have the time. A special thanks as always to Haro, our editor, for putting together these big videos for us. Please do thank him, too. And if you want more videos like this, we do have an entire playlist for other films from the 1980s. We've already done a very big deep dive on The Dark Crystal, which I highly recommend you check out even if you haven't seen the movie. As what we mostly do is explain the Jewish Kabbalistic tradition and how it relates to this symbol here, the Tree of Life. But, if you like modern cartoons, we also have esoteric videos like this for [music] Adventure Time and Gravity Falls or even later Disney films like Atlantis and its sequel Atlantis, too. We even talk about anime from a mythological context such as Magical Girl Madoka and Serial Experiments Lain over on our side channel Random Universe. Links to both of these should be popping up on screen for you to click on or just check out the full playlist in the pinned comment down below, and I'll see you guys next time.