C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia as one of the most direct works of Christian allegory in twentieth-century fiction. Aslan the Great Lion isn’t loosely inspired by Christ. He is Christ, in Lewis’s own stated intent: dying willingly on the Stone Table to save a traitor, rising again, breathing new life into a world of stone statues. Every major Narnia scholar and every serious adaptation for seventy years has treated that fact as the foundation the entire series stands on. Lewis was explicit about it in his own letters. This wasn’t subtext he left room to reinterpret. It was the point.
That’s the character Netflix and Greta Gerwig just revealed to the world this week, and the reveal tells you everything about where this project has been heading since it was first announced.
