THE SECRET GARDEN

*CUT TO THE CHASE*

NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jeremy

India, 1947 – Mary Lennox (Dixie Egerickx) is left alone in a house after losing her parents to cholera. She is found wandering alone and eating whatever she can find before being sent to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven (Colin Firth), in a Yorkshire estate called Misselthwaite Manor. Mary is first sent to a temporary location with other children, who ignore her when she wants to share a story. Mary tells herself her own stories to entertain herself but has found herself less eager to continue given the circumstances.

Mary is picked up by Mrs. Medlock (Julie Walters), who basically tells her not to expect a conventional new home, as her uncle is a very strict man. Mary goes to her room and stays there, imagining herself running outside her old home. She tried to get the attention of her mother Alice (Maeve Dermody), but she never looked. At night, Mary hears what sounds like a crying sound. She goes out of her room to see, but finds nothing.

Craven is shown to have a hunchback, and he gets rid of anything that reminds him of his late wife Grace (Jemma Powell), who was Alice’s sister. Mary meets the maid, Martha (Isis Davis), but Mary treats her rudely. Afterward, she goes out into the field to have lunch. A small dog sees her, and although Mary tries to shoo the dog away, she changes her mind and follows it, but loses it in the woods. When Mary returns home, she remembers playing outside her old home trying to get her mother’s attention, but she just told their maid to take care of Mary so she won’t bother her.

Mary asks Martha if soldiers lived in the house because she thinks she saw spirits outside. She later returns outside the next day to find the dog. Assuming it’s a girl, she names the dog Jemima. She chases the dog around for fun until she is called to go back to the house.

Later that night, Mary hears the crying sound again and goes to investigate. She meets Craven’s son Colin (Edan Hayhurst), who is sick, but the two realize they are cousins since their mothers were sisters. Mary returns to her room and dreams about how she played with her father.

Mary talks to Martha again and says she saw Martha’s brother Dickon (Amir Wilson) in the garden, despite Martha denying it. Mrs. Medlock then gets Mary to talk to Craven, since he is none too pleased with Mary going about the house, nor that she seems to remind him too much of Grace. He tells her that if she continues to cause trouble, he will send her away to a boarding school.

Mary goes back to find Jemima to play together until they lose each other in a fog, and Mary finds the dog’s paw caught in a bear trap. She frees Jemima, who then runs off with a wounded paw. Mary continues to wander around the garden until she sees Jemima again. She then encounters a robin that leads her to a statue that contains a key inside. She tells Jemima she will return the next day to tend to the leg.

After a bath, Mary visits Colin again and tries to encourage him to leave his room, but he claims that his condition is so bad that being outside almost killed him. She tries to talk up the garden as a magical place, but he is uninterested and just asks her to read him a story that his mother used to read him. Later, Mary goes into a room with some of Grace’s old dresses, which she plays around with before finding a portrait of Grace and Alice together. She also finds and takes a pearl necklace.

Mary asks Martha about Grace, stating that her mother never talked about life in England. Martha says that the two sisters were “thick as thieves”, and that the house used to host balls. Mary has another flashback to her old home where her father took her away after her mother was too ill to see her, and Mary snapped and wished that she would die already.

Mary runs back to the garden to look for Jemima and encounters Dickon, who informs Mary that Jemima is a boy dog. They find the dog (whom they rename Hector), and Dickon takes him to a lake and dips the paw in there, then lets Hector lie in the grass so that his paw can heal. Mary later tells Colin about it and suggests that he leave his bed. She wheels him into the room she found the night before, but Colin is overwhelmed by it and demands that she take him back to his room. She tries to get him to look closer, and they are sort of transported into the memory of their mothers, where they see themselves as kids playing, but Colin thinks it’s a trick that Mary came up with out of jealousy for his mother loving him more than hers did. After he falls out of his chair, Mary helps him back up and returns him to his room.

Mary plays with Dickon in the garden, where they imagine it growing large flowers. They then decide to visit Colin, and they hatch a plan to sneak him into the garden to heal him. Although he is nervous at first, Colin is enchanted when they go through the wall of the garden and see how beautiful it all looks. They have fun by the lake with Hector, but the fun is spoiled when Mrs. Medlock finds Mary and the pearl necklace. She is brought back to Craven, who declares that she will be sent away to the boarding school. Mary later finds letters written by Grace and shows them to Colin.

As Mary is prepared to be shipped off, she instead runs away into the garden with Colin and Dickon. In his office, Craven tries to light a candle but drops the flame. The children then see black smoke coming from the house and rush over. Mary runs into the house to find Craven, who is looking for Colin. She tells him that Colin is outside. As the flames grow stronger and the house starts to come down, Craven is guided by a vision of Grace, while Mary sees Alice and says she is sorry for not knowing how sick she was. Alice kisses her daughter as she and Craven make it out of the house safely. Mary takes Craven to Colin, who begins to walk on his own. Craven embraces his son.

Craven proceeds to rebuild the house, while Mary continues to spend time with Colin, Dickon, and Hector in the garden.

Mary Lennox is an orphaned girl who is sent to live with her uncle Archibald Craven at his estate in England, Misselthwaite. He is a cold and strict man, left despaired over the death of his wife Grace, who was Mary's mother's sister.

Mary discovers a garden outside the estate that appears to have healing powers. She finds a dog that gets its paw stuck in a bear trap, and a boy named Dickon, who is the brother of the estate's maid Martha, helps Mary heal the dog's paw, and they name the dog Hector. Mary also meets Craven's son Colin, who is ill and confined to his room. Mary and Dickon bring Colin out to see the garden to heal him.

After Craven sees that Mary has taken a pearl necklace that belonged to Grace, he plans to send her to boarding school. He ends up causing a fire that ravages the whole house, but Mary helps guide him out and shows him that Colin was healed.

Mary stays and continues to spend time with Colin and Dickon.