The Evil Queen is the main antagonist of Disney's 2025 live-action remake of Snow White. She is a vain and selfish sorceress who uses her beauty and magic abilities as a means to benefit herself and gain power over others. Upon marrying the widowed king of a prosperous kingdom, she usurped his throne and enslaved his daughter Snow White, turning her into a maid in her own palace. However, as Snow White's own beauty and kindness grow stronger over the years, the Queen resorts to trying to dispose of the princess in order to maintain both her political power and status as "the fairest of them all."
She is based on both the Queen from the 1812 fairy tale Schneewittchen by the Brothers Grimm and the character of the same name from the 1937 animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Background[]
The Evil Queen is a powerful and mysterious enchantress. After the death of Snow White's mother, this enchantress appears in the castle and takes advantage of the King's grief: first, dazzling him with her beauty, and then putting on a convincing act that she would be a good stepmother to Snow White, which ultimately led to his marrying her. However, the new Queen orchestrated his death and usurped control of the kingdom.
Personality[]
The Queen was an extremely vain, ruthless, and obsessive woman, who wants nothing more than to be "the fairest one of all". The Evil Queen was shown to be very charismatic and manipulative as she seduced the Good King and won his people and daughter's hearts with her beauty and magic powers so she can take over the kingdom. Despite marrying the King, she did not love him and only saw him as weak-willed man, looking down upon him for his kindness and nobility. She was even willing to orchestrate his own death so she can rule the kingdom all to herself where she kept the truth of the King's disappearance and death for many years until she spitefully confessed her role in murdering the King to Snow White.
The Queen has shown herself to be self-absorbed where she heavily taxes her subjects, leaving them to starve to death every day while she enjoys lavish, excessive feasts that she doesn't bother to share and pampers herself with buying gorgeous jewelry and fancy clothes. She does not care for the people of the kingdom and expects them to worship her as a strong and beautiful ruler by controlling them with fear and manipulation where she forced and threatened many villagers and guards to serve her. If she was met with disobedience, the Evil Queen would punish those who defy her by sentencing them to death via throwing them into the dungeon or through other methods.
Physical appearance[]
The Queen is a middle-aged woman of intoxicating beauty but with a cruel and apathetic gaze. She is also very tall, almost two heads taller than Snow White. She has long black hair, visible only at the beginning of the film and which she later hides under a hood covering her head and neck except for her face. She has brown eyes and wears blue eyeshadow on her eyes, brown eyebrows, as well as luscious red lipstick. Her outfit consists of a black dress, a large cape, a set of jewellery and her crown.
Under her old hag appearance, she has a lovingly wrinkled face and skin, a hunched back, gray hair and wears a black hooded cloak.
Powers and abilities[]
Like her animated counterpart, the Queen had possessed arcane knowledge and the ability to cast magic that is malevolent in nature, but in the remake, her powers were expanded. Examples of powers she derived from her magic were:
- Catoptromancy: Through her magic mirror, the Queen had the ability to always gain accurate insight into a question or situation, as well as to divine the exact locations of people or objects faraway from her. However, her powers and life-force were tied to the Magic Mirror, so if it got shattered, she would turn into a glass statue and get sucked into the mirror, which would lead to her death.
- Potion Brewing: The Queen had the ability to create potions or beverages that could cause magical effects - she brewed a potion that transformed her into an old hag. A weakness towards this ability is that it can't hide her true nature from animals, as evidenced by Snow White's forest friends easily recognizing who she really was and attempting to save Snow White by alerting the Seven Dwarfs. Another ability she derived from this province is:
- Poison Generation: The Queen had the ability to create poisons - after her transformation into a hag, she went on to brew a poison that would send its victims into "The Sleeping Death", the only known antidote of which was "True Love's Kiss".
- Wind Generation: The Queen had the ability to generate wind - However, in the remake, she summoned a dark wind whenever she consulted her Magic Mirror. While drinking her potion, she generated the dark wind.
- Conjuration: The Queen had the ability to conjure objects from thin air, as well as change and teleport them - She conjured a diamond to illustrate her metaphor to Snow White about the people needing a hard beautiful diamond to lead rather than a flower that wilts and dies. Later, she conjures both a rose and a diamond to reiterate this and dissuade the people from rising against her. She desiccated the rose before transforming the diamond into a dagger.
- Teleportation: The Queen had the ability to teleport herself to any place she wanted to be - After poisoning Snow White, lightning flashes and strikes where she’s standing. The Queen (disguised as the old hag) disappears, heavily implying that she’s magically transported herself back to her castle via the lightning, referencing her animated counterpart's demise in the 1937 film.
- Agrokinesis: The Queen had the ability to mentally manipulate plants and flowers - When she was taking advantage of the King's grief, she is shown demonstrating her powers to young Snow White by turning a rose from red to white. She also made two roses wither to black and die instantaneously.
Role in the film[]
The Queen before marrying Snow White's father.
A year after the death of the queen of an unnamed kingdom, a woman from a distant land arrives at the royal palace to present herself to the widowed king and his little daughter, Snow White. Entranced by her beauty, the King welcomes the woman to court and marries her within the week, unaware that his new wife is an evil sorceress who cares only about her beauty and the advantages it gives her. The new queen owned a magic mirror which always spoke the absolute truth, and for several times each day, the vain Queen would summon the otherworldly entity within the mirror and ask it the same question, "Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?". Each time, the Mirror would always assure her that it was her - "You, my Queen, of all women reckoned fair, your beauty is beyond compare." To gain full control of the kingdom, the Queen warns her new husband of an impending threat from the neighboring Southern Kingdom, and the King sets out to defend his lands, but never returns. With the King gone, the Queen turns the farmers into soldiers and robs the riches of the kingdom for herself, plunging the once prosperous land into poverty and despair. She also forces Snow White to become a servant in her own palace, locking her away behind its walls, and eventually the inhabitants of the kingdom forget about the existence of their princess.
The queen becomes evil
Years after the king's death, the Queen's hatred for her step-daughter has escalated and plans to kill her. Under the Evil Queen's rule, people are either left destitute due to heavy taxation or conscripted into the royal guard. Everyone presumes that Snow White is dead, unaware that she is confined to the palace as a scullery maid. The Queen gets a magical mirror, which talks to her and tells her that Snow White is the fairest of them all and always responds in the queen's favor, which pleases her.
Sometime later, the mirror claims that Snow is now the fairest woman in all the land, much to the queen's anger. When Snow meets Jonathan, a handsome bandit, she tries to get the queen to help the people in the kingdom, but she declines and Snow leaves. The Queen, jealous of Snow White's beauty, orders her huntsman to locate the princess and kill her, but he can't bring himself to do so and lets the queen know. Angry that the Huntsman disobeyed her, the Queen punishes the Huntsman after seeing that Snow has been warned of her stepmother's actions and that she has fled.
The queen's disguise
The Queen soon locates Snow White and disguises herself as an old hag, offering her an apple, which the queen has poisoned. Snow White bites into the apple and falls into a death sleep. As Snow White begins to fall into the curse, the Queen informs the princess that she killed the king years ago; Snow White is put into the cursed sleep and leaves the cottage, where the Seven Dwarfs find her. Snow White is soon awakened by Jonathan and together, unknown to the Queen, they have rallied the kingdom to stand up to the Queen. The heroes reach the castle, where Snow confronts her stepmother, who provokes her to take the throne by force. Snow tries to reason with the Queen, which leads to the guards to join her and the people to kick the queen out of the kingdom and dethrone her. The Magic Mirror tells the Queen that Snow White will always be fairer than her due to being kind and just. Snow White arrives to see the Queen destroying the Mirror, which is revealed to be the source of her powers. The queen then turns into a mirror, and the broken mirror pulls her into another mirror dimension, breaking her into pieces, repairing itself, and presumably locking the queen's soul inside the mirror. The official novelization confirms that the queen is actually dead, and Snow White wants to ensure that her death is not in vain. The fate of the repaired mirror and the queen's soul is unknown, but it is likely that she will return if the mirror is broken again.
Now with the Queen defeated, Snow White becomes queen of the kingdom and marries Jonathan.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The Queen meets a different fate than her animated counterpart. Instead of being straight up killed being crushed by a boulder in her hag form, she turns into glass after breaking her magic mirror and is sucked into it, similar to Mother Gothel from Tangled, after turning into dust. However, the Queen's remains were trapped in another dimension inside the mirror, making viewers doubt that she had died. However, the official novelization confirms that the queen is actually dead.[1]
- Gal Gadot, the Evil Queen's actress previously voiced Shank in Ralph Breaks the Internet.
- Gadot also reprised the role in the Hebrew dub by recording her translated lines in Los Angeles, with the Hebrew voice cast recording their lines in Israel.
- This version of the character has her own song in the film, unlike the animated character.
- Gal Gadot's portrayal of the Evil Queen in Snow White's live-action has sparked a divided response. Widespread criticism centered on the underwritten nature of her character and miscasting. Critics described her performance as lacking "grandiose, imposing nature" and undercut by uneven dialogue and singing Many noted her camp energy fell flat without the script’s support;
- "Ultimately… this villain falls flat because she’s underwritten and Gadot can't quite push her into full camp status" – Screen Rant / Business Insider
- "She embodies… a gleefully sinister figure, even if her singing and dialogue never measure up” – IGN / Business Insider
- ScreenDaily said she "relishes portraying someone so wicked", yet the "drab screenplay never delivers the witty quips or icy menace" she needed.
See also[]
- Evil Queen
- Regina Mills
- Evil Queen (Descendants)
- London Tipton (portrayed the Evil Queen in "Once Upon a Suite Life")
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Rudnick, Elizabeth (2025). Snow White Live Action Novelization. Random House, page 121. ISBN 9781368097697.
