Narnia: The Magician's Nephew Trailer: Easter Eggs and Details You May Have Missed

Greta Gerwig has done it. The trailer for Netflix's Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, written and directed by the filmmaker behind Barbie, Little Women and Lady Bird, is a nostalgic, psychedelic trip back to where Narnia began, and I'm obsessed with it. I want this glam rock, sci-fi, fantasy, mythical, whimsical 70s movie right now.

So let's go through the trailer shot for shot, from the Eagle and Child pub to a newspaper headline I still can't crack, and look at the Easter eggs and details you might have missed.

The Magician's Nephew moves Narnia from Victorian England to 1950s London

One important detail to establish right away is when the story takes place. C.S. Lewis's original novel is set in roughly Victorian era England, around 1900. Greta's adaptation shifts the timeline to 1950s London, so this is postwar England during the Cold War.

If you're unfamiliar with The Chronicles of Narnia, or you remember the movies but aren't sure where this one fits, this is a prequel to the main story you might already know. You don't have to do any homework. If this is all new to you, even better, because this book takes us all the way back to the very beginning of Narnia, Aslan and the witch. I'll try not to spoil too much of the book, but in my opinion the story is pretty simple and it isn't hard to guess what happens next. What draws me into this journey is the sense of fantasy and whimsy.

I'm also not getting religious or evangelical in this breakdown. That said, I'm sure you can already recognize the religious allegory in most of this. Stairway to Heaven is playing the entire time.

A familiar wardrobe and Stairway to Heaven open Gerwig's rock opera

The trailer opens with a very familiar wardrobe and a very different narration: "Sometimes one story is the beginning of all the others." This wardrobe looks a little different from the one you might remember, but it's still the same wardrobe that stretches back a very long time and was once a very special tree.

The narrator's role hasn't been confirmed yet. However, I suspect he's playing the older Digory Kirke, also known as Professor Digory, whose country home is where the wardrobe is eventually housed.

Things haven't been cranked up just yet at this point, but we're starting to recognize what Greta has described in recent interviews as a sort of rock opera, as we hear the opening notes of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven. How fitting: Led Zeppelin is an English band, and we're in England. We see Polly and Digory to the left and musty old London everywhere else.

Polly and Digory are tricked into traveling between worlds

In this book, we follow these two children, who are tricked into traveling between worlds. As the trailer shows, along the way they witness the creation of Narnia by Aslan himself. But the two young adventurers have to get through several treacherous challenges to find their way home, including an encounter with the woman who will one day become known as the White Witch.

The cast includes Carey Mulligan as Digory's mother and Emma Mackey as the future White Witch. Daniel Craig plays our foolish magician, there's a Frank the cabbie in the mix, and Meryl Streep is the voice of Aslan.

Daniel Craig's Uncle Andrew looks like the book illustrations

When we first see Daniel Craig's Uncle Andrew, our magician, he's reckless and a bit mad in my opinion. I do like how similar he looks to the illustration of him in the books. I imagined him a little more musty and crusty, but I think they did a good job.

When Polly asks Digory if he believes in magic, we see children playing and a very special horse. In the wider shot, the horse appears to be sprouting wings thanks to a removal truck. An image of him was released in a magazine not too long ago, and you can also spot him flying across Aslan's silhouette on the movie poster, hence the subtle nod here. But he's not Fledge yet. We'll see Fledge toward the end of the trailer, though.

The name on the truck is a nod to one of the film's executive producers

Behind the truck, we can spot a name that is a nod to an executive producer on this movie. He has also worked on Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park, and he co-founded Amblin with Steven Spielberg. He's married to Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy. So what I'm trying to say is this man has been around the block.

Then we cut to Digory and Polly exploring, which they do almost immediately after becoming friends. When they reach the attic, we enter the magician's study. I can already tell that unlike the book, where Uncle Andrew comes across as a bit of a scary figure, here he seems much more curious and almost a little too friendly when the children first enter his study.

Uncle Andrew's study is Willy Wonka meets Labyrinth

I love the color of this room and how everything feels like stars and glass. It's giving Willy Wonka meets Labyrinth meets A Series of Unfortunate Events. Production design is led by James Chinlund, whose work includes The Lion King, The Batman and The Avengers. Beyond film, he has also worked in fashion, designing runway sets for Louis Vuitton.

The reason I'm going into so much detail is that he and his team, alongside Greta, are adapting something that to me has always felt nearly impossible to visualize. The world of Narnia is vivid enough to spark imagination, but different enough that everyone can interpret it a little bit differently, and for me this movie needs to be driven by that visual storytelling. So I'm keeping track.

The yellow ring launches a psychedelic journey to the Wood between the Worlds

Polly immediately finds the magic rings, which allow you to travel through the worlds. Yellow takes you to the Wood between the Worlds and green takes you out. In the book, Uncle Andrew tricks Polly into putting on a yellow ring, then convinces Digory to put on another yellow ring to go after her and bring her back. That's the start of the story.

What I love about the next sequence is how it leans into a 60s and 70s sci-fi rock opera fantasy vibe. As soon as Digory puts on the yellow ring, the world around him begins to evaporate. We see water reflecting beneath his feet, endless stars stretching into the distance, and green and purple light swirling behind him. It's psychedelic and exactly the kind of visual storytelling I didn't know I wanted from this movie. In the book, the transport happens almost instantly, with the world around Digory seeming to vanish and blur, and the next thing he knows a soft green light is shining down on him from above, with darkness below, and he's in water.

Between cuts, we get little title sequences that I think are bits of Aslan creating Narnia. It's not just atmospheric psychedelic imagery, and it runs through the entire trailer. I love this.

A glimpse of what I think is the special tree

As the music swells, we're taken to the Wood between the Worlds. This is basically a nexus, a realm with access to other worlds, because remember, Narnia hasn't been created yet. We then get a sneak peek of what I think is the special tree in the distance. We get another look at a different apple tree later in the trailer, when the White Witch is there. The apple from this tree will protect Narnia and will grow another tree that will become the wardrobe. It all comes full circle.

Similar to how Digory leaves the magician's study with everything around him evaporating and lifting away, I suspect that when they travel to new worlds, the environment assembles itself around them. It feels a bit like looking through a spyglass as the scattered fragments of a puzzle fall into place.

Digory rings the bell in Charn and wakes Jadis

The kids then find themselves entering the city of Charn, and I believe we're in the Hall of Images, where a magnificent party seems to be taking place. But there's something strange about it all. Everyone has been enchanted, frozen in place as if time has stopped. You'll learn in the movie that this place was once beautiful and slowly lost its way.

In the next sequence, Polly warns Digory, but he doesn't listen and rings a bell. That bell awakens Jadis, the last queen of this land, also known as the White Witch. We also get glimpses of mountains and rivers streaming with neon chaos, with the cosmos and mountains rising from the earth in the background, and I suspect we're again seeing Narnia in the middle of its creation by Aslan.

Jadis in London and a newspaper headline I can't decode

We return to the aftermath of Jadis awakening as she escapes Charn with Polly and Digory. Once she's awake, the city begins to crumble, and we get one last look at Charn as it falls apart. Then she's speeding down London streets with the horse and Digory.

When Digory waves to a young girl on a bus, a man behind her is reading a newspaper, and I think it reads "fire at Dartmouth flames 10 ft over." At the bottom it says "Woman's body found secret grave." I couldn't really figure out what they're alluding to. It could be a big fire that happened in 1904 that we found. Honestly, I'm a bit fried by this trailer and too deep in the psychedelic haze to work it out.

Jadis is framed as an unyielding space goddess

As the song continues, Robert Plant sings "There walks a lady we all know," and with that we get our full Jadis. What I really like about this adaptation of her is that instead of a regal, beastly queen, she's framed much more as an unyielding space goddess, our future White Witch. I love her, and I love the contrast between the song and what we're seeing.

Greta told Variety that Stairway to Heaven is an epic song, narratively about a spiritual journey, a path of false idols and wrong roads you can go down. Robert Plant has spoken before about how the lady in the song can be whoever you want her to be. She's the main character of the song, and we're introduced to her on a misguided path, trying to buy her way into heaven. She's egotistical and arrogant, but self-aware enough to recognize she can't get there without finding another way.

There's a kind of poetic tragedy in that when it comes to Jadis. In my opinion, she represents nature and temptation, but she's also deliberately subjective. You can interpret her however you want, just like the lady we all know. Also, her wand looks amazing. I really love this 70s look.

The Eagle and Child pub, and yes, Jadis does magic on Earth

It looks great when Jadis blows up a car and shatters the pub windows. You can see the name The Eagle and Child, which was also the name of the pub where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and other authors met.

And yes, she's doing magic on Earth. In the book, she can't do magic when she's on Earth, but in this she clearly can. I don't think it's that big of a deal. This is an adaptation. We can love the book and we can love other things too.

A Bowie-inspired Aslan sings Narnia into being

Near the end, the narrator asks, "Have you ever seen a world born?" and we see Aslan as the cosmos creating Narnia with a song, like paint splatter blasting life into the world. Sadly, we don't get to hear Aslan, voiced by Little Women star Meryl Streep, which makes this a reunion for her and Greta. We do know that David Bowie was an inspiration for both the look and essence of Aslan, who will have multicolored eyes and a red striped face in this version.

Greta has described Narnia as a world made out of music, and Aslan literally sings life into it. So I'm expecting a lot from Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, who are co-composing the score after previously working with Greta on Barbie.

To me, this is what the adaptation is all about. Is it exactly like the book? Absolutely not. But isn't that the beauty of Narnia in the first place? It's open to interpretation, spiritual, whimsical, and whatever you want it to be. Jadis is chill, Uncle Andrew is all right, and I'm really excited for the Narnia creation sequence, Fledge, and all the other animals we're going to meet. Previously slated for Thanksgiving 2026, Narnia: The Magician's Nephew will open in theaters on February 12, 2027, before arriving on Netflix on April 2.

What do you think the newspaper headline in the trailer is alluding to?