The Magician’s Nephew Trailer Explained: Aslan, Jadis and the Birth of Narnia

By Ahaqir Ishaq
October 14, 2026

Netflix’s first trailer for Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew introduces an adventure about the beginning of C. S. Lewis’s fantasy world. Released October 13, the preview connects magical journeys, the future White Witch and a cosmic vision of Aslan.

The key to understanding this story is its place in the series: The Magician’s Nephew happens before The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Its characters witness a world coming into existence rather than entering an established kingdom.

Spoiler warning: This article discusses trailer scenes and their significance in the novel, including the wardrobe’s origins. Film interpretations remain provisional.

Watch the Official Trailer

You can watch Netflix’s official The Magician’s Nephew trailer before reading the breakdown.

Who Are Digory and Polly?

David McKenna plays Digory Kirke, while Beatrice Campbell plays Polly Plummer. Daniel Craig portrays Digory’s Uncle Andrew, whose experiments send the children beyond their familiar surroundings.

Digory is also the nephew named in the title. Understanding his situation matters: in Lewis’s novel, his mother is seriously ill. The publisher’s opening excerpt establishes that anxiety early, giving the adventure a personal stake beyond discovering magical places.

For me, that is the story’s most compelling ingredient. A journey through impossible worlds becomes more meaningful when a child has something painfully ordinary to lose.

What Do the Magical Rings Do?

The rings are the mechanism that sets the journey in motion. In the book, yellow and green rings have different functions: they allow movement between our world, the Wood Between the Worlds and the worlds accessible through its pools.

The forest is therefore a connecting space rather than Narnia itself. That distinction helps explain why the trailer moves between environments that look so different.

The children’s ability to travel also creates the central danger. Crossing a boundary does not guarantee that everything encountered on the other side will stay there.

Who Is Jadis, and What Is Charn?

Emma Mackey plays Jadis, the character readers know as the White Witch. The trailer introduces her in Charn and includes the bell associated with her awakening. It also shows her amid destruction in London and later in a wintry setting.

In the novel, Charn is a ruined world. Its importance goes beyond supplying a threatening location: it offers a warning about power used without restraint.

My reading of the contrast is that Charn and the birth of Narnia represent opposite possibilities. One world bears the consequences of destruction; another begins with the possibility of life.

The icy imagery points toward Jadis’s familiar identity, but it does not establish exactly how the finished film will arrange that transformation.

Why Is There a Flying Horse?

The winged horse connects the preview to one of the novel’s memorable adventures. Readers will recognize Fledge, originally a London horse named Strawberry.

His transformation gives the story a particularly appealing kind of magic: something ordinary becomes extraordinary.

That is also a useful way to understand Narnia’s appeal. Wonder does not require characters to begin as chosen warriors or experienced magicians. It can arrive in the lives of children, working people and even a horse.

What Does the Cosmic Aslan Imagery Mean?

The trailer depicts Aslan through luminous, cosmic imagery as Narnia takes shape. This connects to the novel’s creation sequence, in which Aslan sings the world into existence.

My interpretation is that the imagery emphasizes the scale of that act. Aslan is being introduced through creation, giving his arrival a different purpose from an entrance into an existing conflict.

Meryl Streep voices Aslan. Her casting should not be treated as confirmation that the character has been rewritten as female; the performer’s identity alone does not establish such a change.

Why Does the Trailer Show the Wardrobe?

The wardrobe connects this origin story to the Narnia entrance many viewers already recognize.

Book spoiler: Lewis ultimately links its construction to a tree grown from a Narnian apple brought into our world. The novel explains how an apparently ordinary piece of furniture becomes a doorway.

Its inclusion in the preview signals that connection. It does not, by itself, confirm whether the film uses a framing scene, a flash-forward or another approach.

What Is the Trailer’s Song?

The trailer uses Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” Its presence gives the preview a distinctive musical identity, but a trailer song does not establish how every scene in the finished film will sound.

Netflix separately confirms that Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt composed the original score.

When Does The Magician’s Nephew Come Out?

Netflix confirms the following release schedule:

For broader production coverage, see our Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew movie guide.

Should You Read the Book Before the Movie?

Reading the novel first will help you recognize the rings, Charn and the connections to the wardrobe. It also reveals the story’s emotional stakes beyond the trailer’s spectacle.

The book was published sixth in the series but takes place first chronologically. For this particular adaptation, reading The Magician’s Nephew is a direct way to become familiar with the source material.

Affiliate disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, Books of Brilliance earns from qualifying purchases.

Read before watching: Find The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis on Amazon.

The question I find most interesting is whether the film can preserve the intimacy of Digory’s story within its enormous visual scale. The creation of Narnia is the spectacle; his reasons for caring about what happens there give that spectacle its emotional weight.

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