What happens at the end of Charlotte's Web
E.B. White's Charlotte's Web has been making children cry since 1952, and it's the ending that does it.
A spider spends the whole book saving a pig's life, then quietly reaches the end of her own. If you're bracing yourself before reading it aloud — or just want to remember exactly how it goes — here's how Charlotte's Web finishes.
Gentle spoilers ahead.
How Charlotte's Web ends
By the county fair, Charlotte the barn spider has already done what she set out to do: she's saved Wilbur from slaughter. At the fairground she spins one last creation — an egg sac holding 514 unborn spiders — but the effort finishes her. Worn out from laying her eggs and spinning her words, she tells Wilbur she hasn't the strength to go home. She stays behind at the fair to die, alone, but content that Wilbur will live.
The words that saved Wilbur
Charlotte's whole plan was to convince the farmer that Wilbur was too remarkable to kill, one woven message at a time:
- SOME PIG — the first words in the web, and the ones that turn Wilbur into a local marvel.
- TERRIFIC — spun after the first message is damaged, with a nudge from the goose.
- RADIANT — a word Templeton the rat tears from a soap-flakes box at the dump.
- HUMBLE — the last of them, and the one that seals Wilbur's fame at the fair.
Charlotte's egg sac
Wilbur can't bear to leave her children behind. He persuades Templeton to climb up and retrieve the precious egg sac, and carries it home to the Zuckerman barn. It's the one thing he can do for the friend who did everything for him. Charlotte dies at the fairgrounds shortly after they leave.
The spring after
Wilbur guards the egg sac all through winter. When spring comes, the sac bursts open and Charlotte's 514 babies hatch — then, one by one, most of them balloon away on strands of silk, drifting off on the breeze. Wilbur is heartbroken all over again. But three tiny spiders stay behind in the barn doorway, and he names them Joy, Aranea and Nellie.
Generation after generation of Charlotte's descendants keep Wilbur company for the rest of his days. None of them ever take her place.
For the record: the story keeps finding new life. After the 1973 animated film and the 2006 version with Julia Roberts voicing Charlotte, a new animated series arrived on HBO Max in October 2025, with Elijah Wood as Wilbur.