Honestly, if you ask the average person about the Alice in Wonderland sequel, they usually picture Johnny Depp in orange pancake makeup or a CGI Jabberwocky. That’s the Tim Burton effect. But if we’re talking about the actual literary bones of the story, we have to go back to 1871. Lewis Carroll—or Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, if you want to be formal—didn't just write a "part two." He wrote Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. It’s a weirder, colder, and significantly more logical book than the first one. People forget that. They lump the two together into one big psychedelic fever dream, but the sequel is its own beast entirely.
It’s about chess.
The first book was a deck of cards. Random. Chaotic. The sequel? It’s a calculated game of chess where Alice starts as a White Pawn and has to reach the eighth square to become a Queen.
The Confusion Between the Book and the Movies
There’s a massive gap between what Carroll wrote and what Hollywood did with the Alice in Wonderland sequel. When Disney released the live-action Alice Through the Looking Glass in 2016, directed by James Bobin, it basically threw the book out the window. They kept the title and the characters, but the plot was a time-travel heist involving a "Chronosphere."
The book is different.
In the original text, Alice steps through a mirror in her drawing room. She finds a world that is a literal reflection, where you have to walk away from something to get closer to it. There is no "Time" character played by Sacha Baron Cohen in the book. Instead, there’s a heavy sense of melancholy. You’ve got the White Knight, who many scholars like Martin Gardner (author of The Annotated Alice) believe is a self-portrait of Carroll himself—fumbling, inventing useless things, and sadly saying goodbye to Alice as she grows up.
Why the Sequel is Smarter Than the Original
Most sequels are cash grabs. This wasn't. Carroll was obsessed with mathematical logic and linguistics.
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In Wonderland, the humor comes from the subversion of nursery rhymes and Victorian manners. In the Alice in Wonderland sequel, the humor comes from the subversion of language itself. Take the "Jabberwocky" poem. It’s the most famous piece of nonsense verse in the English language. It appears in the first chapter of the sequel. Alice finds a book she can't read until she holds it up to a mirror.
"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves..."
It sounds like a language you should know but don't. Humpty Dumpty eventually explains it to her, but even his explanations are layered in "portmanteau" words—a term Carroll actually coined.
The structure is also tighter. While Wonderland feels like a series of random vignettes, Looking-Glass follows the strict moves of a chess game. If you look at the preface of the book, Carroll actually lists the moves. White Pawn (Alice) to Q4. It’s brilliant. It's also a bit terrifying because it implies Alice has no real free will. She’s being moved by an invisible hand toward adulthood.
The Characters We Always Get Mixed Up
You know Tweedledum and Tweedledee? Most people think they’re from the first book. They aren’t. They are strictly Alice in Wonderland sequel characters. Same with the Walrus and the Carpenter.
These characters represent a specific type of Victorian satire. The Tweedles are an embodiment of "contrariwise" logic. They don't fight; they just talk about fighting. Then there’s the Red Queen. She is often confused with the Queen of Hearts from the first book.
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Here is the difference:
The Queen of Hearts is a blind, shouting fury. A "fat blind fury," as Carroll called her.
The Red Queen is different. She’s cold. She’s formal. She runs. She represents the "Red Queen Hypothesis" in evolutionary biology—the idea that you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place.
It’s a much more sophisticated type of villainy.
The Darker Undertones of the Looking Glass World
There is a sadness in the sequel that isn't in the first book. Carroll wrote it after his relationship with the real Alice Liddell had cooled. He was getting older. She was becoming a woman.
The poem at the end of the book is an acrostic. If you read the first letter of every line, it spells out Alice Pleasance Liddell. It ends with the line: "Life, what is it but a dream?"
Many readers miss the "Red King" theory. In the middle of the book, Alice finds the Red King snoring. Tweedledee tells her that she isn't real—that she is only a thing in the King's dream. It’s a heavy existential crisis for a "children's" book. If the King wakes up, Alice goes poof. It’s a meta-commentary on the nature of fictional characters that was decades ahead of its time.
Adaptations: What to Actually Watch
If you want the real experience of the Alice in Wonderland sequel, the 2016 movie isn't going to give it to you. It’s a fine spectacle, but it’s not Carroll.
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- The 1999 Hallmark Movie: This one actually tries to combine both books. Tina Majorino plays Alice. It’s probably the most faithful in terms of the "vibe" of the characters, even if the effects haven't aged perfectly.
- The 1985 Irwin Allen Miniseries: It’s weird. It has a star-studded cast (Carol Channing as the White Queen!). It captures the episodic, slightly unsettling nature of the chess game.
- The 1966 BBC Play: Directed by Jonathan Miller. No animal suits. Just humans acting like the animals they represent. It’s eerie and captures the Victorian stiffness perfectly.
Key Insights for Fans of the Franchise
If you’re looking to dive deeper into the lore of the Alice in Wonderland sequel, you should look into the "Wasp in a Wig" chapter.
For over a hundred years, people talked about a "lost chapter" that Carroll’s illustrator, John Tenniel, refused to draw. Tenniel told Carroll that a wasp in a wig was "beyond the appliances of art." Carroll cut the chapter. It was rediscovered in 1974. It shows a much more compassionate side of Alice, as she decides to stay and talk to an elderly, grumpy wasp instead of rushing off to become a Queen.
It changes the whole tone of the ending.
How to read the sequel like an expert:
- Watch the squares: Every time Alice crosses a brook, she’s moving to a new square on the chessboard.
- Look for the reflections: Characters often appear in pairs or have inverted personalities compared to the first book.
- Check the poetry: The poems in this book (The Lion and the Unicorn, The Walrus and the Carpenter) are actually political and social commentaries on 19th-century England.
The Alice in Wonderland sequel isn't just a "more of the same" story. It’s a transition from the childhood whimsy of the first book into the cold, logical, and sometimes lonely world of adulthood. Alice ends the book as a Queen, but she wakes up alone with her cats.
It’s a reminder that you can't stay in Wonderland—or behind the looking glass—forever.
To truly understand the legacy of this story, stop looking at the movie posters and pick up a copy of the 1871 text. Look at the Tenniel illustrations. Notice how the Red Queen is shaped like a literal chess piece. That’s where the real magic is. It’s not in the CGI; it’s in the math and the mirrors.
If you're looking for your next step in exploring this world, track down a copy of The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner. It explains every single 19th-century inside joke and mathematical theorem hidden in the text. It will completely change how you see Alice’s journey. After that, compare the "Wasp in a Wig" deleted segment to the final published version to see how Alice’s character arc was originally supposed to conclude with an act of simple kindness rather than just a royal promotion.