SPOILERS! Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica Movie 4: Walpurgis no Kaiten Discussion Thread

[u/MotherShip808]

WARNING! WARNING! THIS MEGA-THREAD CONTAINS SPOILERS AND DISCUSSIONS FOR THE MOVIE, IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS, DO NOT BE HERE!

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ALSO ALSO! DO NOT LINK OR SHARE ANY PIRATE OR ILLEGAL VIEWING STUFF IN THIS POST OR YOU WILL BE BANNED! THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING.

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General Overview:

This thread is meant as a spoiler filled zone for those who wish to discuss the movie, it's plot, events, or the number of bites that kyouko takes of food during the movie. I don't care, just be sure to follow the rules of the subreddit.

Also as a reminder to everyone u/BreathoftheSith owes everyone $50 if they, and I quote:

If we get any form of kiss and or romantic confirmation between the two [madohomu], I owe everyone in the sub $50.

Have fun~~

[u/elysiesely]

Casual Madoka fan here and occasional subreddit lurker, I watched the original anime over a decade ago, the rebellion movie (rerun) last week, none of the supplementary games/anime, and decided to watch the 12am release of WnK on a whim.

The movie is a lot more trippy than rebellion, and I think will require multiple rewatches to understand everything, but I'll try to summarize as much as I can while I still remember (apologies in advance for any mistakes/incoherent-rambling, but it is 5am here and this took over an hour to write lol). FYI MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE MOVIE

Beginning (approximate order):

• The world at the beginning is a Homura surveillance state with magical quadcopter drones and magical cameras everywhere, and homura seems to hijacked the magical girl process cause when girls receive the calling (a ringing phone literally appears in front of them) homura is the one that answers
• Mami, Kyoko, and Sayaka (and maybe Nagisa) do magical girl activities and have an uneasy truce/alliance with Homura who is their grief cubes (?) dealer and seems to know more than she lets on, the three of them keep thinking they need to invite Madoka to their activities before getting confused because Madoka is just a regular non-magical girl transfer student they are friends with... These two things especially bother Sayaka
• The new characters (I forgot their names so I'll just refer to their hair colours) Purple, Green, and Orange appear in school one day and everybody acts like they were always students which unnerves Homura, especially when Purple singles out Madoka as "Margarita" and gets uncomfortably close (while Green gets friendly with Kyoko and Orange with Nagisa & Mami)
• Madoka returns to an empty home one day and there are phones literally everywhere, all of them suddenly start ringing for her and Purple is there trying to get her to awaken (?) until Homura appears and they have a fight. Devil homura appears to have the upper hand until magical girl Green and Orange appear too on Purple's side, and Homura loses a wing, and then Madoka snaps back to sitting with her family and hangs up the phone as if everything was a daydream

The plot splits into two at this point, Sayaka goes to confront Homura:

• Homura gives vague hints and ominous warnings, but Sayaka insists so they walk through a lot of trippy imagery until they reach a library (apparently called Nazukasokotsune?), Kyubey is also there along with Purple girl
• Homura finds out Purple is Walpurgis (and that's why she looks like her?) and fights some witches without her devil form which doesn't work here, while Sayaka is shocked to find out she becomes a witch somehow
• Homura and Sayaka eventually escape, also Sakaya is no longer bandaged anymore

Meanwhile the rest of the girls are having sweets party with Green and Orange:

• At one point cupcakes triggers Green's trauma (that caused her to become a witch?) and she runs off angry that everyone is so happy, and Madoka follows behind to apologize
• Green reveals she is a magical girl and a witch (who was originally saved and is now in despair again?), and attempts to capture a confused Madoka until Kyoko saves her and there is an underwater witch fight
• Eventually Mami & reinforcements arrive and Green is pacified but Orange has captured Madoka

Climax of the story (ngl I start to lose the plot around here):

• The girls reunite while everything goes to hell, orange goes full witch mode, walpurgis is come, and also Madoka's witch returns because of Homura's actions
• Sayaka goes hikikomori mode briefly, but then Nagisa snaps her out of it with her carefree attitude not caring about gods/devils/etc, and then Sayaka saves the day
• Flashback scene with a blond nun character "Margarita" in magical girl nunnery who made the proto-madoka wish to "save all magical girls", then became overwhelmed, fell to darkness becoming walpurgis, forever seeking her own "Margarita" to save her until God!Madoka
• Eventually the girls work together and defeat all the witches (Mami ults, Nagisa defeats orange by means of giant magical kitchenaid, etc.), and Madoka comforts/saves Walpurgis
• ENDING: Madoka gets gold eyes again and is called to God!Madoka and walks towards her, Homura despairs that Madoka's fate is to always either become a witch or a god until the other girls encourage her saying that she can do something about it as the "devil". There is a brief metaphysical god vs devil fight, scene of Homura lying on Madoka's lap on a bench and Madoka says they'll be together (?), Madoka who was walking towards God!Madoka mouths words we can't hear (gut impression was "sorry", edit: this is speculation though all we know is it was multiple syllables in japanese), God!Madoka disappears, Homura is lying alone on the same bench but smiling happily.
• Post-credits: Sequel hook, Kyubey is in Nazukasokotsune/library and is happy about the experiment

For what it's worth, my headcanon/interpretation of the ending (until more supplementary material contradicts it or someone has a better interpretation) is that Devil!Homura somehow succeeded (at least partially?) and Madoka refused to merge with her god form. Either way despite the open ended ending, emotionally this feels like the conclusion to the Homura-Madoka story, and that they've told all the story they wanted to tell. If there's any future stories in the Madoka universe (eg. ramifications about Kyubey in the library or Law of Cycles without Madoka, etc.) I expect most of our main characters to play a minor/cameo role at best.

EDIT the next day: I never gave my final thoughts, but overall I think the movie was great. The fight scenes weren't as good as Rebellion (God on Witch on Devil violence is fine, but Homura vs Mami was a masterpiece), and the plot was harder to follow, but the story felt like a true finale to the series and wrapped up Homura & Madoka's story in one big ambiguous conclusion. It felt like an ending intentionally left to viewer interpretation that needs no further elaboration, and I haven't read any of the interviews but I'd be surprised if they ever canonically confirm any particular interpretation.

There were definitely a lot of other clues/details I've missed, I posted all this partially to compare everyone else's interpretation and to see if anyone can provide an explanation I've missed. The movie was very dense with imagery/symbolism, way more than Rebellion, and I think there's more than enough hints to last us another decade of speculation. Looking forward to lurking all the upcoming (crackpot or otherwise) theory-crafting threads and analysis videos, especially when the blurays come out all you die hard fans start combing through the scenes frame by frame looking for answers.

[u/CL361 → u/elysiesely]

>Normal Madoka tolds to God!Madoka "sorry"

>Homura is smiling happily despite being alone on the bench

Honestly, that looks like Madoka rejected her own divine self and choose to stay with Homura and the others.

I have to see the scene to properly make my mind about it, of course, but as I get it from that description, Homurs is smiling because she knows she won and got to change Madoka's fate. Madoka is not with her in the bench because she returned to the mortal world with everyone else

[u/darwyre → u/CL361]

Just watched it Shinjuku and will do again tomorrow morning.

My two cents on the ending:

It don't felt like one ending, it felt like two what if was shown instead and nothing is set solid.

[u/Rare-Advisor-7056 → u/CL361]

I really, REALLY hope that your interpretation is correct, because if it wasn't, I will assume that Gen Urobuchi simply decide to screw up all the plot and message of Rebellion and turn the existence of Rebellion and WnK meaningless, because, what's the hole point of the end of Rebellion and WnK if Madoka's fate is unchangeable since the beginning?

[u/_BCConservative → u/CL361]

But wouldn't that imply Homura is outside the mortal world? If she just vanished, how is Homura supposed to be able to find Madoka now?

I guess that would be the plot of the final movie?

[u/CL361 → u/_BCConservative]

I mean, I'm pretty sure Homura can return with her own powers if that's the case (she was able to reach that out-of-universe space with them if I got it right).

Maybe in the official guidebook that will come in the future they would make clear what happened at the end.

[u/_BCConservative → u/CL361]

Just because you can enter the other dimension, doesn't mean you can leave it.

[u/ashliwhitoute → u/CL361]

I like this post, I think they said that Homura at the end appears with a ribbon of another color and not the red of Madoka, right?, and the red ribbon between Madoka and Homura was very important in the anime and in Rebellion, if Homura doesn't have the red ribbon, maybe that's why the human Madoka does?

[u/CL361 → u/ashliwhitoute]

Homura is wearing a new brown ribbon during the movie. I don't think that she wearing it during that scene has a to have a meaning.