The Evil Queen

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Storyline

In "another land, far away," "many, many years ago," about "the time of fairy-tales of castles, knights, fair maidens, romance, magic and witches," a mysterious and icily beautiful woman with magical powers has gained her royal position by marrying the widowed King, giving her rule over his kingdom before he died. The vain Queen owned a magical mirror with which she could look upon whatever she wished. The Magic Mirror shows a haunted, smokey face which replies to Queen's requests. She regularly asks the mirror who is the fairest in the realm and the mirror would always reply that she is. The Queen has magical power only over her own domain, which is the castle.

One day, however, the mirror tells her that there is a new fairest woman in the land, her stepdaughter, Princess Snow White. She became obsessively jealous of the princess' emerging beauty, therefore turning her into a scullery maid in her own home. After observing the handsome young prince named Florian from another kingdom singing a love song to Snow White, the proud Queen falls in a jealous rage. She commands her faithful Huntsman to take the princess deep into the woods and kill her. He is also ordered to bring back her heart in a box to prove that he had done so. But the Huntsman cannot bear to kill the young princess upon seeing her innocence, so he tells Snow White of Queen's plot and tells her to run away and never to come back. To escape the penalty, he comes back with a pig's heart and gives it to the Queen. When she questions her mirror, it again replies that Snow White is the fairest in the land, and that she lives at the remote cottage of the Seven Dwarfs, revealing that the box contains the heart of a pig. The Dwarfs, too, are frightened of the Queen's black magic and fear she would kill them all, but they decided to take in Snow White anyway.

Furious that the Huntsman tricked her, the Queen decides that Snow White shall die by her own hand and at any cost. She goes down the dungeon to her secret room where she practices her dark magic, and in desperation uses her spellbook and cauldron to make a potion that transforms her into a hag. The recipe calls it a peddler disguise as she gathers its ingredients like mummy dust to make her old, the black of night to shroud her clothes, the old hag's cackle to age her voice, the scream of fright to whiten her hair, a breath of wind to fan her hate, and a thunderbolt to mix it well. Her beauty is shrouded in ugliness and age upon ingesting the potion, though presumably reversible. She then conjures a poison apple, which will cause "the Sleeping Death", and leaves the castle. She is sure that no one would know or perform the counter-curse to her spell, and believes the Dwarfs would bury her rival alive, thinking her dead. The Queen comes to the cottage and finds Snow White baking a pie for Grumpy the dwarf as she passes herself off as a traveling peddler. Snow White's forest animal friends feel there is something wrong about this strange old woman. After an unsuccessful attempt to warn Snow White by attacking the Queen, they hurry to warn the Dwarfs of the Queen's arrival. Now alone, the Queen successfully tricks the princess into letting her inside the cottage and eating the bewitched apple, telling her that it is a magic wishing apple. Snow White takes a bite of the apple, which puts her in a deep sleep.

Conception, design and portrayal

Early concepts for the film called for a "fat, batty, cartoon type, self-satisfied" Evil Queen. However, Walt Disney became concerned that such an approach would make the character seem less plausible. Sensing that more time was needed for the development of the Queen, he advised that attention be paid exclusively to "scenes in which only Snow White, the Dwarfs, and their bird and animal friends appear." Disney further developed the main plot himself (Ollie Johnston said the film's story was based on the idea that the Queen's character was going to murder "another drawing" and Disney decided to make it appear believable), finding a dilemma in the characterization of the Queen, whom he envisioned as a mixture of Lady Macbeth and the Big Bad Wolf, and decided to set on "a high collar stately beautiful type" whose "beauty is sinister, mature, plenty of curves – she becomes ugly and menacing when scheming." According to a description in her card in the Disney Villains set, "the Witch's ugliness symbolises the evil disguised by the Queen's beauty."

The Queen was made to look like both a 1930s femme fatale and a medieval, magical villainess. Her appearance was inspired by Queen Ayesha ("She who must be obeyed"), an "ageless ice goddess" from the film She, played by Helen Gahagan. The Queen, who originally had the name Grimhilde (but would ultimately remain nameless in the film), was also modeled in part on Kriemhild in the film Die Nibelungen. Her face bears resemblance to two American actresses Joan Crawford and Gale Sondergaard. as well as two Hollywood stars from Europe, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. Her costume and figure may have been based on a column statue at the Naumburg Cathedral depicting Uta von Ballenstedt who was widely regarded as the most beautiful woman of Medieval Germany. Both the Queen and Snow White were refined by Grim Natwick and Norm Ferguson, who would often override Walt Disney's instructions. As in the case of other characters for the film, the Queen's appearance had to be approved by Albert Hurter before being finalised. One pre-final version of the queen had her wear a looser hood and a different crown and the edge of her cape was fur trimmed, as it can be seen in Gustaf Tenggren's pictures.

Unlike much of Disney's animation of human characters in the era, none of Art Babbitt's lead animation work on the character was rotoscoped. The animators were noted to prefer to draw the Queen over Snow White "because she was more real and complex as a woman, more erotic, and driven to desperate acts by her magic mirror." The character, however, turned out to be especially problematic for the animators, as she had to be "regally beautiful, with confined but graceful movements," and "the experiments on her lovely cruel mouth and eyes alone represent drawings enough to fill a paper house." The sequence of her transformation in particular was the film's toughest to visualise using trick effects, especially since Disney insisted on showing how the Queen felt as she changed.

Abandoned concepts

The original outline of the story featured another attempt by the Queen to kill Snow White, using a poisoned comb, an element taken from the Grimms' version of the tale (the Dwarfs would arrive in time to remove it). The Queen was originally intended to have seven black panthers guarding the entrance to her secret room with the Mirror; a concept art of the Queen walking a pet panther can be seen in The Walt Disney Family Museum and at Disney California Adventure. The tie-in books Snow White: Magic Mirror Book and The Complete Story of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs reveal that the Huntsman was afraid to disobey a command to kill Snow White because the Queen might feed him to her panthers or shrink him magically "to the size of a walnut". In one 1937 novelization, the Queen vows the Huntsman would pay dearly for allowing her stepdaughter to escape, but first she would deal with Snow White herself. In another version, the Huntsman would also be dragged to the dungeon when the Queen finds out that he has betrayed her, and the Queen might smash her own Mirror in anger.

The envious Queen would also decide to take possession of Snow White's attractive young suitor, the 18-year-old Prince (described in a press kit as "every woman's dream man") for herself, offering him an opportunity to share the throne with her through a marriage. With the Prince refusing to marry her, the Queen would have him captured by her guards and taken to her dungeon to be suspended in chains in a torture chamber. She would later visit him there and use her sorcery to taunt him by bringing the dungeon's skeletons (also chained to the walls) to life and making them dance, identifying one skeleton as "Prince Oswald" (the name was an inside joke reference to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit), only for the Prince to defy her again. She then has him given to the torturers, described as "the Nubians", and "exits with a dirty laugh." According to production story-meeting notes from October 1934, "Queen wants to marry Prince, but he refuses to acknowledge 'that she is the fairest in the land,' since he has seen Snow White." A story note states about their meeting in the dungeon: "This is a sequence of gruesome comedy ― of dancing skeletons ― fantastic shadows ― witchcraft and deviltry." Later, after transforming herself, she decides to punish the Prince for having scorned her. She informs the Prince of her plan to have the Dwarfs bury Snow White alive and then leaves him to his death, still chained and trapped in a subterranean chamber filling with water to slowly drown. She then makes her way to the Dwarfs' cottage with the poisoned apple, while birds and forest animals were to help the Prince escape the Queen's minions and find his horse as would race to try and save Snow White.

Other appearances

Disney theme park attractions

The Queen is a primary character in the Disneyland ride Snow White's Scary Adventures (first opened in 1955), where she was seen more than any other character in all four versions of the ride, recreating a number of scenes from the film, sometimes including the torture chamber from an abandoned concept, with "a few skeletons of her past victims." In one new scene, she turns into a hag while standing in front of the mirror (back to the visitors) and intoning: "Magic Mirror on the wall, with this disguise I'll fool them all!" In 2021, when the ride was redesigned to Snow White's Enchanted Wish, she appeared less often in order for guests to focus more on Snow White's story. She also appears in her hag form at the roller coaster Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, which first opened in 2014.

In the Disney Villains Mix and Mingle and Mickey's Boo-to-You Halloween Parade shows during Magic Kingdom's Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, the Queen is one of the villains led by Maleficent that appear during the Cinderella Castle Forecourt Stage. Susanne Blakeslee voiced the Queen at 2001's Share A Dream Come True Parade, where she could be seen transform herself into a hag. The Evil Queen is one of the "favourite" villains included in Magic Kingdom Park's special pre-parade procession "It's Good to be Bad" a night before the annual Main Street Electrical Parade. One event featured a giant interactive mirror and included the Queen and two other "Divas of Evil", Maleficent and Cruella de Vil. She also prominently appears at Villains Unleashed party, a separately ticketed event at Disney's Hollywood Studios that was introduced in 2014.

In the interactive gallery Walt Disney: One Man's Dream, the Queen appears alongside Maleficent and Judge Frollo in the villains' act of the show, where she seems to be the leader of the trio. On the cruise ship Disney Fantasy, the Queen, appearing with her raven, is one of the seven suspects (and sometimes the culprit) in the interactive gallery Midship Detective Agency's story "The Case of The Plundered Paintings".

Film and television

The Queen is featured in some Disney television specials like Our Unsung Villains (1956) and Disney's Greatest Villains (1977). Segments of the Queen's appearance are also shown in A Disney Halloween (1981) and Disney's Halloween Treat (1982). She makes small cameo appearances in the animated series House of Mouse, voiced by Susanne Blakeslee (where she is seen sitting with Lady Tremaine in her queen form, and with Madam Mim and Witch Hazel in her witch form) and in the films Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Runaway Brain (1995), shown there in her witch form.

In the television special Disney's Golden Anniversary of Snow White (1987), the Queen is played by Jane Curtin in a parodic scenario. She casts a spell on Grumpy in an attempt to get him to persuade the other Dwarfs to retire and destroy the original film after the 50 years. After the failure of this, her Mirror convinces her to finally quit "this whole curse business" and focus on her current career as a television horror host.

The Queen (voiced by Susanne Blakeslee) is the main villain in the 2005 animated film Once Upon a Halloween, but appears only in the Witch version despite misleading cover art (furthermore, only her shadow is shown). In it, the Queen plots to conquer Halloween and asks her cauldron to show several villains to which one of them helps her in her plan. The cauldron also explains its origins as it is one of the cauldrons formerly owned by the three witches from The Black Cauldron. Eventually, the cauldron turns against the Queen and makes her vanish into nothingness.

In Enchanted (2007), Susan Sarandon's Queen Narissa characteristics, powers, and physical features were inspired by the Queen as well as by Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. Hank Tucker's storyboard shows how Narissa would appear as just the Evil Queen in an early version of the film's animated opening. In a possibly related Mike Disa's and Evan Spiliotopoulos' abandoned pitch for the DisneyToons' Snow White prequel film The Seven Dwarfs, a beautiful girl similarly named Narcissa appears to aid the dwarfs against an evil wizard, who would be eventually revealed as her father whom she would betray and trap him inside a mirror. Narcissa steals the ancient magic secrets of the Olden Dwarfs, marries and then murders Snow White's father, and "begins her reign as the Evil Queen, with the damned soul of her own father forever encased in the Magic Mirror as her slave. Thus, the dwarfs must live in hiding to protect their families from the Queen's vengeance." Three animated sequels to The Seven Dwarfs "were to follow the title characters return home to families and friends after the Evil Queen's death in Snow White."

Theatrical shows

As in the film, the Queen character is featured in 1979 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs musical version, played by Anne Francine. In the Disney on Ice reenactment of the movie in 1986–1987, and then in 1994–1997 and again in 2000–2001, she was voiced by Louise Chamis and played by various skaters beginning with Melanie Scott in 1986–1987, and including Elena Koteneva, who was substituted by Davina Lee-Gooding in 1995. Francine also played her in the 1980 stage play and television program Snow White Live and Chamis voiced her in Disneyland's Snow White – An Enchanting Musical in 2004 and 2006. The Evil Queen was further featured in Disney Live's Three Classic Fairy Tales in the section based on the film.

In the night-time visual show Fantasmic!, first played in 1992, the Queen, voiced by Louise Chamis, is the main villain and the leader of all the Disney Villains. She is introduced in the second act, when her Magic Mirror (voiced by Tony Jay) tells her that there are now three princesses (Snow White, Ariel and Belle) fairer than her. Enraged, the Queen transforms herself into a hag and uses the Mirror and her cauldron to summon various "all the forces of evil" in the form of a collection of Disney villains to come to her aid. They include Maleficent, who transforms into a dragon. (In the Tokyo DisneySea version, she also traps Mickey inside her mirror.) At the climax of the show, Mickey is able to defeat the dragon and vanquish all the villains with a magic sword. The Witch is the last to die, transforming back into the Queen before she is destroyed.

In the Disney Dream cruise ship show Villains Tonight!, first played in 2010, Hades calls forth Disney's most powerful villains for help to regain his evil. The Queen, changing from the Witch form, denies his invitation since Hades also invited Maleficent, her rival for Hades' affections and for the status of "the most evil in the land". The Queen claims not to be Hades' girlfriend, but they just had "an interesting weekend" on Castaway Cay. In the end, the Queen and Maleficent put their differences aside as all villains should stick together and advise Hades to find evil within himself, and not from others.

Games

The Evil Queen is featured in a number of traditional games, albeit usually as a mere obstacle for the players. She is, however, playable in some of them, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Game in the Disneykins franchise and Disney Villains Collector's Edition Monopoly. In 2019, the Evil Queen was added to Disney Villainous as a playable character in the expansion set Wicked to the Core. Jim Razzi's 1985 children's gamebook Snow White in the Enchanted Forest (Choose Your Own Adventure: Walt Disney #1) features an alternate story starring the original character of the Prince's unnamed teenage squire trying to save Snow White in a series of non-canonical confrontations with Evil Queen as she is searches the Enchanted Forest for the princess hiding with the Dwarfs, as the goal is either to "put her, once and for all" before it is too late, or to lead the Prince to the sleeping Snow White.

The Queen serves as the antagonist in the unreleased Snow White game for the Atari 2600. In 2001's Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for the Game Boy Color, the players need first to solve a puzzle-mini game for the Queen to consult her mirror, and later to lead the Dwarfs in pursuit of the Witch before she can get back to her castle.

In the 1990 video game Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, an old witch named Mizrabel takes the form of the Evil Queen after draining the youth from Minnie Mouse. In 2012's Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion, the previously defeated Mizrabel returns to transform into various Disney villains, including the Queen, before setting on Maleficent. In 2013's HD remake of Castle of Illusion, Mizrabel looks like a cross between the Queen and Maleficent in her youthful form and professes her ambition to be "the fairest of them all".

The Evil Queen in person is one of the four Disney Villains that appear in 1999 video game Disney's Villains' Revenge, voiced by Louise Chamis. Jiminy Cricket and the player venture into the worlds of the stories to restore the happy endings. In the game's final story, it is shown that the Queen has a lair resembling her poisoned apple inside the forest, where she intends to put the Seven Dwarfs to eternal sleep. The player needs to correctly mix ingredients for several potions including the True Love Potion to magically summon the Prince so he can save Snow White with a kiss. It is followed by the fight with the Queen in which the player has to reflect her magic ball spells, until she retreats to her lair. There, while asking her mirror, she suddenly transforms into a hag and is frightened to death by her own reflection in the magic mirror that then breaks.

Literature

In the 1949 audiobook release, the Queen (voiced by Eleanor Audley) tells the Huntsman to take Snow White to the forest and leave her there to die. In the end of the book, after being chased by the dwarfs, the Queen dies when she slips while climbing the mountain and falls into the sea. The Queen's story from the film is itself subject of the 2018 storybook release Disney Villains: The Evil Queen.

One chapter in Todd Strasser's 1993 Disney's the Villains Collection/Stories from the Films is dedicated to Snow White and the Queen. She is also a subject of one of the illustrated books in the Disney Princess series My Side of the Story, titled Snow White/The Queen (2004), which portrays her as a misunderstood positive character.

The novel Fairest of All: A Tale of the Wicked Queen by Serena Valentino, published by Disney Press in 2009, tells a story much more sympathetic to the Queen than most other Disney media. The book shows how the Queen became the villain from the film, much in the style of The Killing Joke, with the Magic Mirror, here possessed by the spirit of her abusive father, having been a corrupting influence. According to the book, her mother was a witch and the King died in a war against another kingdom prior to the events of the film. After her husband's death, the Queen slowly descends into madness. By the end of the novel, Snow White gets the mirror and the Queen becomes the spirit inside the mirror after her death in the film.

The Queen is one of the Overtakers, villains of The Kingdom Keepers novel series. She was introduced in 2011 in the fourth book of the saga, Power Play, alongside Cruella De Vil. Like Maleficent, she is very powerful and is able to cast almost any spell with a flick of her finger; she can also transform herself and other characters. In Power Play, when Maleficent and Chernabog are captured by the Keepers, the Queen becomes the new leader of the Overtakers.

Melissa de la Cruz wrote the Descendants prequel novel Isle of the Lost. In that book, it is revealed that the Evil Queen once tried to overthrow Maleficent as the ruler of the Isle.

Comics

The 1937–1938 film tie-in serial comic strip "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" written by Merrill De Maris, one of the writers of the film, is centred primarily around the relationship between Snow White and the Queen. It further explores the source of the Queen's descent into a murderous envy, as she learns that the Prince came to her castle seeking the most beautiful woman in all the world and is shocked when he says he meant Snow White. Like in the abandoned film concept, the Queen (here actually named Grimhilde) has the Prince arrested. In her Witch form, she later tells the captive Prince that she is going to get rid of Snow White and make him hers, while the Prince is defiant and calls her a "miserable hag". This scene is followed by his escape from prison, in much less dramatic circumstances than the film's drowning concept. The film was further adapted into an other comics including in 1969, 1973, 1983, and 1991.

There are a number of sequel comics quasi-canonically set in the film's world. A 1939 Italian comic "Snow White and the Wizard Basilisk" (Biancaneve e il mago Basilisco) features the titular evil wizard who later lives in the castle that had belonged to the Queen, trying to hurt Snow White's and the Prince's son until he is too killed when the castle is destroyed. The Prince's imprisonment in the Queen's dungeon from the earlier comics is referenced in it. Another early sequel comic Pamuk Prenses ile Sevimli Prens (1942) tells of the further adventures of Snow White and Prince Charming, as the Witch returns to put a spell on the latter. In one American 1944 sequel, the dead Queen's castle is taken over by her brother, the Wicked Prince.

Later comics usually feature the Queen in her Witch incarnation, often with her still trying to eliminate either Snow White ("The Seven Dwarfs and Thumper", "No Ritmo Da Bruxa", "A Maçã Superenfeitiçada", "Kerstverhaal") or the dwarfs ("The Enchanted Mountain", "Halloween"). Such stories include Jack Bradbury's stand-alone 1958 comics Mystery of the Missing Magic and A New Adventure of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In the comic "The Seven Dwarfs and the Witch-Queen", the Witch shrinks all the dwarfs except of Dopey who manages to save his brothers. In "A Pirate's Tale" (aka "The Pirate"), the greedy old Witch transforms herself into a rat as she plans to steal a treasure and turn the dwarfs into cheese and eat them, but Dopey destroys her with a cat.

Usually under the guise (and alias) of the Witch, she often comes back to interact (usually to antagonize, but sometimes also to occasionally cooperating with protagonists) with other Disney characters. She has appeared in the comics of many characters, including Daisy Duck's nieces April, May and June, the Beagle Boys, Br'er Rabbit, Chip 'n' Dale, Donald Duck & Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, Jiminy Cricket, José Carioca, Mickey & Minnie Mouse, Li'l Bad Wolf, Tinker Bell, and the Three Little Pigs, as well as her fellow Disney witches such as Madam Mim from The Sword in the Stone, Witch Hazel from Trick or Treat, and Magica De Spell (especially in Brazilian comics). She also starred with the Big Bad Wolf in the 1970s-1980's comics series The Big Bad Wolf & The Wicked Witch, including "Mirror Mirror", "Witch Switch", "The Apple Caper", "The High-Hopping Wolf", "Double Trouble", and "Getting the Boot".

Merchandise

The character has been featured in a wide variety of Disney merchandise, such as in the Designer Villains series of limited edition dolls and make-up products, or the Wickedly Beautiful entry in the Beautifully Disney collection of cosmetic products. Various other such merchandise include many dolls and figurines/statuettes, costumes, clothing items, watches/clocks/mirrors, mugs, other tableware, bags/purses/suitcases, containers, key chains, prints/posters/cards/stickers, pins/buttons/magnets, plush toys, holiday ornaments, other beauty products, and so forth. In one issue of Disney Adventures in 1997, the Evil Queen appeared on the cover attempting to woo Will Smith.

One hand-made figure costing $2,000 was the most expensive out of 200,000 items being sold at the Disney World shopping village in 1985. During an auction in 1988, an animation cel from the iconic scene of the Queen holding her heart box sold for a record-setting price of $30,000. In 1997, another cel from the same scene sold for $21,275 and a cel of the Witch offering an apple to Snow White realized $13,800. Another cel showing the Queen reading her spellbook sold for $8,050 in an earlier in auction in 1995. In 2015, a Hag cel was sold on an auction for $48,000. Another record was made in 2016, when a cel of the Queen in front of her mirror was sold for $58,000.

Alternative versions

Order of the Seven

Order of the Seven, cancelled in 2012, was Disney's live-action martial arts retelling of the Snow White story set in the 19th-century China, where the Evil Queen figure would be an Asian empress. The project was also known under other working titles such as Snow White and the Seven.

Once Upon a Time

An almost entirely alternate take on the character of the Evil Queen is Regina Mills, the main antagonist of the first season of the 2011 ABC live-action television series Once Upon a Time, where she is played by Lana Parrilla. Regina is the mayor of the idyllic town of Storybrooke, Maine, but is secretly the Evil Queen of legend, having cursed many beloved fairy-tale characters to live in a dimension without magic, where they never have their happy endings and almost everyone but Regina has been given false memories. She is the adoptive mother of Henry Mills, a ten-year-old born in the real world outside Storybrooke, whom she genuinely loves but has a strained relationship with due to his discovery of the curse, which she tries to convince him is just a child's delusion. The first season revolves around Henry's attempts to prove to newcomer Emma Swan that she is the prophesied savior who can break Regina's curse.

The show is not directly based on the Disney animated films, but is inspired by them and makes many references to them. One of its episodes is titled "The Evil Queen". Regina's reason for hating Snow White is not, as in the fairy-tale and Disney film, jealousy of her beauty, but rather resentment over the fact that as a child, Snow unwittingly revealed Regina's romance with a stable boy named Daniel, which led to Daniel's death and Regina being trapped in a loveless marriage to Snow's father, King Leopold. Unlike her classic depiction, Regina does not die and ultimately redeems herself, becoming one of the main protagonists of the series.

Snow White

Gal Gadot portrays the character of the Evil Queen in Snow White, a 2025 live-action reimagination of the 1937 animated film. In April 2022, Gadot revealed that she sings and dances in the film, which is something that the character did not do in the original animated film. The following year, Gadot later added that playing the role of the first Disney villain ever was "fun and delicious", feeling that she was able to make a more dramatic role by changing her voice due to the film being a musical. In the film, the Evil Queen appeared after the death of Snow White's mother and showed off her magic. When she foresaw a threat to the kingdom, the Evil Queen had the King lead his army on a mission. Once the King was gone, the Evil Queen oppressed the kingdom by having most of the farmers recruited to the royal guard, some riches taken from the civilians, and had Snow White reduced to a scullery maid while having a servant cut off her pony tail. As long as the Magic Mirror kept telling the Evil Queen that she is the fairest in the land, Snow White was safe.

Years later, Snow White tries to defend a rebel bandit named Jonathan when the Huntsman catches him taking something from the kitchen. The Evil Queen has Jonathan tied to the gate without his coat and shoes so that he can die from the cold. After Snow White freed Jonathan and the Magic Mirror stated that Snow White is the fairest in the land, the Evil Queen had the Huntsman take Snow White to the apple orchard where he is to kill her and bring back his heart. Unfortunately, the Huntsman couldn't do the job and had Snow White flee while holding back the information on what the Evil Queen did to the King.

After asking the Magic Mirror again and learning that Snow White is alive and with seven magical beings, she finds the box that she provided the Huntsman with containing an apple instead. After having the Huntsman condemned to the dungeon, the Evil Queen sends the royal guards to find Snow White. They managed to catch Jonathan in their net and the Evil Queen has him condemned in the same dungeon that the Huntsman is in. Taking matters into her own hands, the Evil Queen enters her secret chamber and plans to take matters into her own hands by taking a potion that turns her into an elderly peddler. She proceeds to make the poisoned apple and leaves out the secret passageway near the moat.

After the miners head off to work, the Evil Queen's old peddler form visited Snow White stating that she is a friend of Jonathan and gives her the poisoned apple which she eats. Before teleporting away upon Snow White entering the Sleeping Death, the Evil Queen states to Snow White that she murdered her father, having been disgusted with his beliefs on goodness. Back at the castle, the Magic Mirror tells the Evil Queen that she is the fairest in the land as she goes to the balcony where the civilians are made to chant "Long live the Queen".

Reception and legacy

Critical reception and popularity

The Disney version of the character was very well received by film critics, even as some were disturbed (columnist Dorothy Kilgallen for instance urged Disney to not make future villains as scary as the Witch). According to Eric Smoodin of the British Film Institute, the Queen has been "perhaps then as now the real star of the film", as "the one significant character who does not sing – the Queen – stands out as the only really compelling personality in the film. She is driven by human emotions writ large: jealousy, hatred, narcissism, insecurity. She is also subject to an extraordinarily violent death when, as the old hag and pursued by the dwarfs, she plummets off a cliff. (...) At the very least, this [transformation] scene and others in which she appears make the Queen the most memorable character in the film, while the nuances of La Verne’s performance also, perhaps, make her the most sympathetic." Janet Maslin wrote the film's Snow White "exists only to be victimized by her wicked stepmother - a far more interesting character. The image of the wicked Queen (initially conceived as a raven-haired glamour girl, and the epitome of late-1930s sophistication) who drinks an aging potion and then shrivels, sprouting warts and claws, turning before our eyes from a sexy, voluptuous creature into a frightening old crone, must leave as powerful an impression on the audience as Snow White's chirpy femininity." Similarly, Roger Ebert wrote Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was "not so much about Snow White as it was about the Seven Dwarfs and the Evil Queen," opining this was the reason it has remained "the ultimate animated masterpiece" by 2001 instead of having been forgotten soon after its premiere in 1937.

Individualist feminist Camille Paglia said that she used to be transfixed by this "temperamental diva bitch", due to the contrast with the ideal of womanhood that she had been presented to as a child: "Mary, this silent mother; and here was the witch queen who has this weird dialogue in the mirror and it didn't have to be charitable and it didn't have to be nice. I thought she was fabulous." Likewise, Lana Parrilla, who later herself played the Evil Queen in Once Upon A Time, said that whenever she watched Disney's Snow White as a young girl she rooted for and "loved the evil queen―every time the evil queen came on, I was like 'OK!' She was just so fascinating to me." Author Deborah Lipp wrote: "As I've said before and will doubtless say again, given a choice of being Snow White (helpless, sweet, voiceless) and the Wicked Queen, with the cool castle and the magic and the minions, give me my Magic Mirror now!" Film director John Waters said he too rooted for the evil queen to win, and Chay Yew said that if he were a Disney character, he would be the evil queen from Snow White. Stephen Hunter included her being "cool" among the "wonderful truths about Snow White."

Cultural impact

According to Maria Tatar, an academic specializing in children's literature, the film turned "the evil queen into a figure of gripping narrative energy and makes Snow White [the character] so dull that she requires a supporting cast of seven to enliven her scenes. Ultimately it is the stepmother's disruptive, disturbing, and divisive presence that invests the film with a degree of fascination that has facilitated its widespread circulation and that has allowed it to take such powerful hold in our own culture." Alan Charles Kors and Edward Peter credited the Queen's character's influence in changing the popular visual image of witches in film and other fiction as specifically female, more often young and attractive than old and ugly, and dressed in a characteristically defining costume. A part of Maila Nurmi's inspiration for her character of Vampira came from Nurmi being fascinated by the Queen after watching Disney's Snow White at the age of 14. When she was cast for the 1939's The Wizard of Oz as the Wicked Witch of the West, Gale Sondergaard (who herself has earlier served as one of inspirations for Disney) insisted on playing a glamorous vision of the character, similar to the Disney's interpretation of the Queen from Snow White; when Sondergaard's idea was rejected by producers Mervyn LeRoy and Arthur Freed in favor of making the Wicked Witch ugly, she withdrew from the project and Margaret Hamilton was cast instead. Still, the similarities between the two films, including the portrayals on their respective witch characters, were such that The Wizard of Oz was at one point advertised as "Snow White with live actors."

An official Disney.com blog Oh My Disney stated the Evil Queen has been "the original Disney villain, and we’re really not exaggerating." According to The Daily Telegraph, La Verne's role as the Queen "was credited as the model for such future villains as Ursula in The Little Mermaid (1989) and Scar in The Lion King (1994)." Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty inherited a number of characteristics from the Evil Queen, including the cowl, high collar, billowing cloak, arched eyebrows, cruel lips, and raven familiar. An abandoned concept from Snow White was that the Queen kidnap the Prince and lock him in her dungeon; similarly, in Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent kidnaps Prince Philip. Lady Bane, a vain evil sorceress from Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears, too bears a similarity to the Evil Queen in her costume and character. Four wicked witches of the East, West, North and South, resembling the Witch from Disney's Snow White, are also the villains Mickey has to kill to save Disneyland in 1988's Mickey Mouse: The Computer Game. The first names for the magic-wielding antagonist couple The Glooms in Disney XD's own series The 7D (2014) ― set in a timeframe before the Seven Dwarfs first met Snow White ― might have been inspired by the Evil Queen character's alternate name "Grimhilde", with the bumbling warlock husband named "Grim" and the determined witch wife named "Hildy".

Homage cameos and parodies

The character has also made several parodic cameo and homage appearances in non-Disney media. In the 1945 radio program This Is My Best, the Queen uttered a curse so dreadful that the Magic Mirror shattered into a thousand pieces and where the Queen once stood was nothing but a heap of ashes from which black spiders crawled and scuffled off into the night. In Woody Allen's live-action film Annie Hall (1977), Alvy mentions that when he saw Disney's Snow White, he was attracted to the Queen while all the other children had a crush on Snow White. This is followed by an animated sequence of the Wicked Queen, resembling Annie and voiced by Diane Keaton, talking to the cartoon version of the daydreaming Alvy, but turns out that even the Queen scolds him; Alvy attributes it to her having her period mood, to which the Queen reminds him she is just a cartoon character.

The Queen was referenced when she appeared as a villain in an issue of Italian horror comic book series Dylan Dog in 1988. In The Simpsons episode "Four Great Women and a Manicure" (2009), the Queen escapes the dwarves after poisoning Snow White, only to be lynched by a mob of angry woodland creatures. In the short film Welcome to the Club (2022), the Queen appears in her witch form along with other Disney villains. She also appears in the following short films May the 12th Be with You and The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (both 2024). In the U.S. Acres two-part cartoon "Snow Wade and the 77 Dwarves", Lanolin appears as the Wicked Queen with a costume is based on the Disney version. In the Family Guy 2009 episode "Road to the Multiverse", Herbert appears as the disguised Queen. The Muppet Show character Miss Piggy is the Queen in the 2010 parody comic book miniseries Muppet Snow White. Cassie Scerbo played the Evil Queen in the 2013 YouTube parody music video Cell Block Tango. The Queen also appears in Counting Scars, Oh My Disney's Halloween 2014 parody music video of OneRepublic's "Counting Stars". Kimberly Cole played the Evil Queen in Todrick Hall's 2014 parody music video Snow White and the Seven Thugs. A clip of the Queen as the Witch is featured in the credits sequence of the 2024 Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) television Disney+ miniseries Agatha All Along (2024), with Jennifer "Jen" Kale (played by Sasheer Zamata) also dressed up as the Witch in the fourth witch trial in the episode "Death's Hand in Mine".