'The Unknown' is the best part of the disastrous Willy Wonka house
- A crummy "Willy Wonka experience" event in Glasgow went viral for how laughable and disappointing it was.
- Amid the cheap decorations and actors in cheap costumes, one thing stood out: "The Unknown," a fake villain they made up.
In our modern world of entertainment, it's become an accepted and welcome practice to reimagine and add to original works and source material. Adding to the canon, in fandom parlance.
There are multiple adaptions of "Charlie and Chocolate Factory" — the 2023 movie "Wonka" is a prequel that invents a backstory for the quirky chocolatier, after all.
And it is for this reason that we must now accept that "The Unknown" is officially part of the Willy Wonka canon.
Here's the backstory:
This past weekend, an event was held in Glasgow, Scotland, that was advertised as a "Willy Wonka experience." In reality, it was a largely empty warehouse with some cheap decorations and a few local actors hired to dress as Oompa Loompas or Willy Wonka.
Parents who paid good money (£35, or about $44 per person) to take their kids posted photos and videos of how sad the event was — Fyre Festival or DashCon depths of bleakness. The event went viral.
Who is "The Unknown?"
One video that was going viral on TikTok and X shows the character "The Unknown" emerging from behind a mirror with a silver mask and black hair (unclear if real or a wig). "What is that? It's The Unknown!" says the actor playing Willy Wonka.
You can immediately hear the cries of a small child.
The Independent interviewed Paul Connell, the local actor who played Willy Wonka, who described the new, terrifying character:
Is The Unknown scary?
Look at it. It's scary as hell.
Josie Robertson, who attended the event with her two kids and posted a video about it to TikTok, told Business Insider that, indeed, it was scary. "Some kids were scared and crying," she said. "But mine were laughing, and my youngest just scared him back."
Why do people love The Unknown?
Along with "meth Oompa Loompa," who was interviewed by New York Magazine, The Unknown has become something of a fan favorite (if you can consider people who discovered this a few days ago "fans"). The strange hair — is it a wig? Real? The way he (she? they? Is it even human???) moves. The chaotic element of actual horror that scares children. The fact that the name is an eponym: It's an unknown character, so it's called "The Unknown"!
There's even someone who is selling greeting cards on Etsy of The Unknown.
Why should The Unknown be part of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?"
Sure, you could just ignore The Unknown and write it off as merely a cheap addition to a bootleg event, unaffiliated with Warner Bros. or the estate of Roald Dahl.
But it's 2024, and we've evolved our ideas about "IP."
The Unknown is now officially part of the Wonkaverse. No more questions.