Discussion YMMV / Labyrinth

Ok - When I was not far off Sarah's age, I went through a very difficult time in my life when the outside world seemed threatening and impossible to deal with. (I was later, as an adult, diagnosed with high-functioning autism.) I have a vivid and detailed imagination, and I withdrew into it almost to a disturbing degree. I could see what I was picturing so clearly that it could override my actual vision in my brain. I reached a point where I had to either tame my imagination or let it take over and actually withdraw to a point of psychological/mental health disturbance. (No, there were no actual goblins involved.)

The Goblin World seems to me to be this for Sarah. Jareth has an interesting way of describing his behavior towards her, such as "You cowered before me; I was frightening." Not that she cowered because he was frightening, but that he was frightening because she cowered. He confronted her with the truth that he was everything she made him be, and did everything she made him do.

When she finally remembered the arc words, "You have no power over me," she regained agency over her imagination and realized that none of what she was dealing with had to be real. That's what broke the world and brought her and Toby both back. Jareth tried to entice her to stay - as long as she loves him, he still exists. But she had to be stronger than that.

It's always kind of hard to tell whether something like that is meant to be a dream in the literal sense, an actual reality, or somewhere in the middle, because fantasy movies are not meant to be entirely literal. But I think it was meant to be a moment when she realized that she could use her imagination as a coping skill, but not as a full-on retreat from reality. That's why it was not wrong for her to still need them every now and then, and the movie thusly ended in a nice cheery goblin party.