What Godmothered Gets Right About Happily Ever After
Happiness doesn’t have to be attached to a white picket fence.
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The happily ever after (HEA) trope can often be seen as another tool of the patriarchy. Want to ensure your life will be filled with meaning, happiness, and hope, as a woman? Find the man of your dreams and watch the sparks fly. Hallmark movies are some of the worst culprits of this phenomenon, along with Disney movies. The fairy tale ending, girl meets boy, girl’s life is centered on catching said boy, getting married, having babies, and living happily ever after.
One of my favorite Disney movies turns this trope on its head. Frozen showed us that true love doesn’t have to come as romantic love, and that happily ever after can look like a single woman who runs her own country, living her best life.
Recently, I noticed a new movie being featured on Disney Plus, Godmothered. I sighed at the title, figuring this was going to be yet another traditional HEA story of girl meets boy and everything is perfect.
I can’t express how surprised and delighted I was to realize, Godmothered actually got it right in the end.
The remainder of this piece contains spoilers for Godmothered.
In a magical place called the Motherland, Fairy godmothers train so that they can help people’s wishes come true. Among them is the youngest, and only fairy who is not elderly, Eleanor Fay Bloomingbottom (played by Jillian Bell), who gleefully commits to the craft despite not being very good at it. The godmothers stick to a “formula” that many have grown bored with (e.g. true love, castle, etc.).
Eleanor learns from another godmother that the school is to be shut down, as nobody makes wishes anymore, and that they will have to learn to be tooth fairies instead. Determined, Eleanor checks the assignment room and discovers a letter from a 10 year old girl named Mackenzie Walsh (played by Isla Fisher) and decides to help her.
Eleanor ends up in the real world where a friendly trucker takes her to Boston, Massachusetts. To her shock, Mackenzie is a miserable 40 year old, single mom who works at a failing television station that reports on puff pieces. Eleanor manages to convince Mackenzie she…
