Summary
The Lion, Tin Man, and Scarecrow all look at the castle from afar. The Lion frets, while the Tin Man begins to cry. They see the guards of the castle marching into the castle and chanting. The Scarecrow has a plan to get into the castle and tells the Lion that he's going to lead them.
Near the castle entrance, as they plot their next move, three guards come up behind them and attack. The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion get in a scuffle with the guards, managing to steal their uniforms. They emerge from behind a rock disguised as guards of the Witch's castle, and wander towards the other guards, who are still marching and chanting. They get into line with the other guards, marching into the castle just as the drawbridge closes.
Once inside, they try and decide where to go next, and Toto leads them up a set of stairs to the room where Dorothy is being kept. They call into the room, and Dorothy answers, telling them she's been locked in there. "Please hurry! The hourglass is almost empty!" she yells, and the Tin Man strikes the door with his axe and destroys it, just as the last sand in the hourglass is sifting through. The group is reunited and they run down the stairs hurriedly.
As they reach the door, it slams shut and they realize the Wicked Witch is sitting nearby, cackling. A group of guards rush in and corner them. The Scarecrow looks up and sees that the chandelier is being held up by a rope nearby. When the Witch throws the hourglass onto the ground below, the Scarecrow releases the chandelier, which falls on the guards. Dorothy and her friends run from the room, pursued by the Witch and her guards. They run through the cavernous halls of the castle, up and up, until they are cornered by the guards in a vestibule.
The Witch comes in shrieking, and tells the group that she's going to kill them all. She lights the tip of her broom on fire, and brings it towards the Scarecrow, lighting his arm on fire. Dorothy quickly grabs a bucket and throws water on the Scarecrow's arm, but some of it also gets on the Witch, who screams in agony. She begins to melt into the floor, and everyone watches in awe and horror. "Who would have thought that a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?" she moans, sinking into the floor in a smoky, wet mess.
Toto paws at her robe, as a guard notes that Dorothy has killed the Witch. "I didn't mean to kill her," Dorothy insists, and the guards celebrate the fact that Dorothy has freed them from their servitude. Dorothy takes the broom, excited to give it to the Wizard.
Back at the Emerald City, Dorothy presents the Wizard with the broom, but he tells her that he needs to give it some thought, that they ought to come back the next day. The group is disappointed at his procrastination, and they indignantly ask him to grant them their wishes that day.
As they fight back, Toto goes over to a nearby curtain and pulls it aside to reveal a man speaking into a microphone. The group turns and sees the man, who pulls the curtain shut and says into the microphone, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"
Dorothy goes over and asks the man who he is, and the man reveals that he is the Great and Powerful Oz. He tells them that he's a "very bad wizard," and when they fight back, angry that he has not given them the gifts he promised, he tells them that they each already possess what they're looking for. He tells the Scarecrow that he already has brains, before giving him a diploma. He tells the Lion that he has courage, before giving him a medal honoring his courage. He tells the Tin Man that he already has a heart, before giving him a testimonial, a small pocket watch shaped like a heart. He then says, "A heart isn't judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others."
"What about Dorothy?" Scarecrow asks. The Wizard informs Dorothy that he will take her back to Kansas in his hot air balloon, which delights her. He's from Kansas himself, he tells them, and he found himself in Oz after his hot air balloon did not return to a county fair and ended up in Oz, where he was acclaimed "Oz."
Oz makes an announcement to the crowd assembled in the Emerald City as they prepare to leave in the hot air balloon. The crowds cheer, as the Wizard appoints the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and the Lion to rule in his place while he is away. Suddenly, Toto begins growling at a cat in the crowd, and jumps from Dorothy's arms. Dorothy rushes after the dog, telling the Wizard not to leave without her, but the ropes have already been disengaged, and the balloon starts floating skyward, leaving Dorothy behind.
Dorothy is heartbroken, and her companions ask her to stay in Oz. When it seems like hope is lost, Glinda's bubble appears, and she approaches Dorothy to tell her how to get home. "You've always had the power to go back to Kansas," Glinda says. When she asks Dorothy what she's learned, Dorothy tells her, "If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with."
Glinda approves of Dorothy's assessment of what has happened, and tells Dorothy that the key to getting home is in her ruby slippers. Crying, Dorothy says goodbye to each of her companions, wiping Tin Man's tears, telling the Lion she'll miss his fearful howls, and telling the Scarecrow, "I think I'll miss you most of all." Glinda tells her to tap her heels together 3 times, and think to herself, "There's no place like home."
Sure enough, Dorothy is transported back to Kansas, waking up in her bed. Aunt Em is there putting a cold compress on her forehead and sitting on the side of her bed. Professor Marvel walks up to the window to check in on her, as Dorothy tries to tell them about Oz. "You just had a bad dream," Aunt Em says, and the three farmhands come and visit her. Dorothy recalls that all of them were in Oz, and that it was "a real, truly live place."
She then celebrates that she made it home, taking Toto in her arms, and telling the assembled group, "I'm not gonna leave here ever again, because I love you all, and oh, Auntie Em, there's no place like home!"
Analysis
In this section, the Tin Man, Scarecrow, Lion, and Toto must all work together to save Dorothy. Toto, clearly more cognizant of what's been going on than one would expect, leads the companions to find Dorothy in the Witch's castle. There, the usually bumbling, motley, and cowardly group manages to steal some guards' uniforms and sneak in unnoticed. For the first time in the film, the group is able to save Dorothy, to step up and work together to save the day and work for good.
In a brief lucky moment, Dorothy is able to defeat the Witch when she throws water on the Scarecrow's arm, and accidentally gets some on the Witch as well. Just a small amount of water and the Witch begins to melt into the floor, cursing her downfall as she goes. After a long buildup, it is an accident that ends up killing the Witch, and Dorothy does it unwittingly, trying to help her friend. This accidental act allows Dorothy to remain innocent; she does not knowingly murder the Witch, but just happens to defeat her in a moment of altruism.
The result is one of the most iconic moments in film history, as the Witch sinks into the floor, screaming "I'm melting." Indeed, the Wicked Witch of the West is often cited as one of the most terrifying villains of cinema, and her sudden destruction comes as a relief to Dorothy and to the viewer. Her hands curl in pain as she dissolves into a clump of black robe on the floor. This death, sudden and not especially violent, highlights the fact that the Witch is as vulnerable as she is aggressive, as terrified and weak as she is terrifying.
After so much fantastical magic and whimsy, the film takes a turn when it reveals the Wizard of Oz to be nothing more than a terrified and paranoid man operating a machine behind a curtain. The magic and power of Oz's ruler is nothing more than a magic trick, a smoke-and-mirrors stunt, and he is as clueless as the next man. Like Professor Marvel, his parallel in the real world, the Wizard of Oz is something of a hack, possessing no real magical powers. The contrast between the magical dimensions of Oz and the ordinariness of its ruler has a comedic effect, while also highlighting how magic is a kind of illusion, a flight of the imagination.
Indeed, the underlying moral of the story is that each of the characters already possess the things they want the Wizard to give them, that they already have the magical power to bestow themselves with the object of their own desires. The Wizard tells the Scarecrow that he is smart, tells the Tin Man that he has a heart, and tells the Lion that he is brave. Then, when he tries to bring Dorothy home, it is not until she realizes that getting home is as simple as clicking her heels together that she is able to travel back to Kansas. In each instance, the character realizes that they have powers at their disposal already, that they are alright just as they are. They need only imagine their hopes to be fulfilled in order to in fact realize them. The greatest magic of the film is each character's realization that magic resides within rather than without, that "there's no place like home."
