Summary

• Willy Wonka's solitary and peculiar nature has led to a fan theory that he is a serial killer who intentionally chose his victims for the tour of his factory.
• The nonchalant reactions of Wonka and the Oompa Loompas to the dangerous situations the children face support the theory of Wonka being a serial killer.
• Even if Willy Wonka doesn't actually kill the children, his eccentricities and creepy demeanor in the movies make him unsettling and potentially evil.

A popular Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory fan theory poses that Wonka is a child serial killer, purposefully inviting children to his factory so he can murder them. Charlie Bucket, a poor boy whose biggest luxury is a Wonka Bar, miraculously finds a Golden Ticket in his chocolate bar and joins four kids on a tour of the Wonka Factory. The five families explore the secret factory and its fantastic candy world, while every misadventure is cleaned up by the singing Oompa Loompas. The children almost die during their visit, and his callous reaction in all versions of the story has caused many to wonder is Willy Wonka evil.

Willy Wonka is one of the most memorable characters in modern history, leading the popular 1971 film to change the title from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Wonka has lived in isolation since closing his factory to the public after competitors tried to steal his recipes, fueling the eccentricity seen in his encounters with his guests. Wonka is wary of human nature, and his invitation to tour his factory is his way of testing his theory of human selfishness and greed. Plenty of bizarre hypotheses exist about Willy Wonka himself, thanks to the cult following that Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory amassed over the years.

Was Willy Wonka Really A Serial Killer?

Many Of His Mannerisms Hint That Willy Wonka Is Evil

Willy Wonka’s solitary and peculiar nature, including his attitude in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's tunnel scene, inspired a fan theory that Wonka is a serial killer. The theory is based on the idea that Wonka intentionally chose his victims for the tour and tempted them with a weakness he knew they would succumb to, leading to their deaths. Augustus Gloop is sucked into the chocolate river, Veruca Salt is sent down a garbage shoot, Violet Beauregarde is turned into a blueberry, and Mike Teevee is shrunk to 3 inches. The original movie never details exactly what happened to these four spoiled kids, but their fates seem grim.

The four kids who “die” throughout the Roald Dahl-inspired Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie aren’t sympathetic characters. They are the antitheses to Charlie’s kind nature, so Wonka may (wrongly) believe that murdering them is a way to rid society of greedy people. Augustus is a gluttonous boy whose only desire is to eat, at whatever cost. He may have been notable at the factory for consuming high quantities of Wonka Bars, gaining the attention of Wonka himself.

Veruca is a spoiled, rude brat whose vast wealth and bad manners are noticed by anyone who comes into contact with her. Wonka likely heard of her family’s selfish and extravagant tactic for finding one of the Wonka Golden Tickets, making sure she got one. Violet is self-obsessed, arrogant, and impulsive, which makes her the easiest for Wonka to dupe into eating an unfinished product. Mike is a technology-obsessed know-it-all, an easy target for Wonka’s new technology laboratory.

Another hint at Willy Wonka’s serial killer nature is his nonchalant, apathetic reactions to the life-or-death situations of the antagonistic children. It seems as if their demise was assumed, since Wonka had no concern for their well-being. This perspective is corroborated by the Oompa Loompas' clean-up, who tend to the deformed or transported children and exit the scenes singing songs about the immorality of each child. Just like Wonka, the Oompa Loompas in the borderline-horror-centric Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie are unfazed by the kid's plight, as if their job is more to clean up after their boss’s murders than to maintain the factory.

If the other children were all spoiled and greedy, purposefully brought in to be killed by Wonka, one might wonder why Charlie, a gentle poor boy, was also chosen. Wonka may have wanted to see if poor children could be just as greedy as wealthy children, originally intending for Charlie to die. Charlie was almost killed when he and Grandpa Joe drank some of the Fizzy Lifting Drinks, so he nearly fell in with Wonka’s supposed hypothesis. Since Charlie survived and ends up inheriting Wonka's factory, it’s theorized Charlie will be groomed by Wonka into also becoming a serial killer of perceived terrible children.

Willy Wonka Didn’t Kill The Kids - But That Doesn’t Matter

Even If Willy Wonka Isn't A Serial Killer He May Still Be A Sociopath

While the movies might not offer up all the details about what happens to the kids visiting Willy Wonka’s factory, the Roald Dahl book and its sequel do. In the end, Charlie gets to see each of them leaving the factory, hopefully with lessons learned. The truth is that whether Willy Wonka kills the kids doesn’t matter. Willy Wonka doesn’t have to be a proven serial killer to still be the epitome of creepy. His eccentricities are made clear in the novel, but the eccentricities are creepy, even outright terrifying, in the movies. That’s not just in his apathy about the potential for serious injuries or death to his guests. That’s also in his demeanor in other key scenes.

A key moment that's led to questions of is Willy Wonka evil is the infamous tunnel scene from the Gene Wilder version of the story. The tunnel scene, with its changing color pallet, flickering images, and ominous music, in addition to Wonka gleefully scaring the children about the unknown, is often pointed out as the scariest point in the Gene Wilder movie by those who saw it as kids.

The scene is like a teaser from a horror movie. There’s no reason for Willy Wonka to keep intentionally scaring the people on the tour. Explaining to them that they’re too selfish to take over, or not grateful enough for the opportunity, would have sufficed. Instead, he takes exceptional glee in creeping out his guests and bringing them close to harm. That’s enough to keep viewers theorizing about who he is in new and terrifying ways.

Other Completely Strange Willy Wonka Fan Theories

The Question Of Is Willy Wonka Evil Isn't The Only Theory About Him And His Chocolate Factory

In line with the concept that Willy Wonka grooms Charlie into a new maniacal murderer, there's a wild theory that Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer movie is a Willy Wonka sequel in which Charlie ends the world. Surprisingly, many aspects of this bizarre theory hold up rather well. In a scenario in which Wilford is a grown-up Charlie Bucket, his knowledge of how to build a whimsical, self-sustaining mechanical world like the Snowpiercer train could logically have come from Willy Wonka, whose factory operated on similar principles.

Likewise, Wilford, a.k.a. Charlie, uses a similar method for finding a successor to Willy Wonka, hiding messages in food for Curtis to find. This theory also coincides well with the idea of Willy Wonka being a serial killer, as he would have surely passed a total disregard for human life onto Charlie — a disregard that Wilford displays. If this theory is taken as fact in the headcanon of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory fans, then whether Willy Wonka is evil or not becomes much easier to answer.

• 

  Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

  Summary:

  A poor but hopeful boy seeks one of the five coveted golden tickets that will send him on a tour of Willy Wonka's mysterious chocolate factory.

  Release Date:

  1971-06-30

  Budget:

  $3 million

  Cast:

  Jack Albertson, Gene Wilder, Peter Ostrum, Denise Nickerson, Julie Dawn Cole

  Director:

  Mel Stuart

  Genres:

  Family, Musical, Fantasy

  Rating:

  G

  Runtime:

  100 minutes

  Writers:

  Roald Dahl

  Studio(s):

  Paramount Pictures

  Distributor(s):

  Paramount Pictures