Howl's Moving Castle ending explained: the scarecrow that follows Sophie around is the only one who can end the war

Miyazaki endings famously resolve on feeling rather than plot, and Howl's Moving Castle is the crown jewel of that tendency: curses lift in a cascade, a war stops apparently because a wizard fell in love. Except the mechanism is all there — it's just been hopping about on one leg the whole film, wearing a turnip for a head.

The prince on a pole

Turnip Head, the mute scarecrow Sophie rescues from a hedge in the first act, is the missing prince of the neighbouring kingdom, cursed into vegetable form. His disappearance is the war's entire pretext: each kingdom assumed the other had kidnapped him, nobody believed the denials, and the bombers took off. Which means that for the whole runtime, the one being who could stop the slaughter is trailing Sophie around doing odd jobs — fetching her a walking stick, hanging out laundry, saving the entire cast by wedging himself under a falling platform.

That last rescue earns him a thank-you kiss from Sophie, which breaks the spell — true love's kiss, awkwardly, since her heart's already spoken for. Restored to himself, the prince takes the loss with better grace than most Miyazaki villains take anything, promises to come back once the fighting's over, and heads home. Madame Suliman, watching through her crystal ball, sees him and calls the whole thing off with the film's driest line:

"Let's put an end to this idiotic war."

Note what the film is doing there: the war doesn't end because anyone won it. It ends because the excuse evaporated — which is Miyazaki's whole point about the thing. The film was made in open fury at the 2003 Iraq War), and its battles have no sides worth cheering, only burning cities and a prince-shaped pretext.

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What Miyazaki changed, and what stays unsolved

• The war is mostly his. Diana Wynne Jones's 1986 novel has court intrigue and a missing prince, but the apocalyptic bombing raids are Miyazaki's addition.
• The scarecrow got simpler. The book's scarecrow is part of a rather more baroque curse involving several blended people; the film streamlines him into one cursed royal.
• Sophie's curse never formally breaks. Her age drifts with her confidence all film, and even at the end her hair stays grey — or, if you take Howl's reading, "just like starlight."

The final shot leaves the war over, the prince homeward, and the castle — rebuilt, airborne, with a garden — flying off with everyone aboard, including the defanged Witch of the Waste, because Miyazaki doesn't do villains he can't invite to dinner.

Earlier we wrote: Godzilla Minus Zero's first reviews put it level with the 1954 original at 94%