Into the Woods Cast and Characters

A baker and his wife wish for a child but suffer under a curse laid upon the baker's family by a Witch who found the baker's father robbing her garden when his mother was pregnant. Because the baker's father also stole some magic beans, the witch's own mother cursed her to be ugly. The witch is able to lift the curse and allow them to have a child, but only if the baker and his wife obtain four critical items for her to make a potion: a white cow, a red cape, a yellow strand of hair, and a golden slipper, none of which she is allowed to touch.

The witch's demands eventually bring the baker and his wife into contact with Jack, who is selling his beloved cow, Milky-White, and to whom the baker offers magic beans left to him by his father (which were stolen from the witch) which grow into a large beanstalk; with Red Riding Hood, whose red cape the couple noticed when she stopped by the bakery earlier to buy bread and sweets on her way to grandmother's house; with blonde-haired Rapunzel, whose tower the baker's wife passes in the woods; and with Cinderella, who also runs into the baker's wife while fleeing from the pursuing prince and whose ball outfit includes gold slippers.

After a series of failed attempts and misadventures, the baker and his wife are finally able to gather the items necessary to break the spell. Meanwhile, each of the other characters receives a "happy ending": Cinderella marries the prince; Rapunzel is freed from her guardian, the witch, by Cinderella's prince's brother and marries him; Jack provides for his mother by stealing riches from the Giant in the sky, and kills the pursuing giant by cutting down the beanstalk; Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are saved from the Big Bad Wolf; and the witch regains her youth and beauty after drinking the potion.

However, each of the characters learns that their endings don't remain happy: the baker is worried that he is a poor father to his newborn baby; the baker's wife is temporarily seduced by the prince; Cinderella is disenchanted by her cheating prince; and the witch learns that she has lost her magic powers. The growth of a second beanstalk from the last remaining magic bean allows the giant's wife to climb down and threaten the kingdom and its inhabitants if they do not deliver Jack in retribution for killing her husband. The characters attempt to find Jack, but debate the morality of handing Jack over. In the process, Red Riding Hood's mother and grandmother, Jack's mother, and the baker's wife are killed. The characters blame each other for their individual actions that led to the tragedy, ultimately blaming the witch for growing the beans in the first place. She curses them for their inability to accept responsibility for their individual actions. Casting all the remaining beans away, the witch begs her mother to punish her again, hoping to regain her powers, but instead she disappears into a large pit of boiling tar.

The remaining characters resolve to kill the threatening giant's wife though Cinderella and the baker try to explain to the distraught Red Riding Hood and Jack the complicated morality of retribution and revenge. The characters lure the giant's wife into stepping in the tar pit where she ultimately trips and falls to her death. With the giant's wife dead, the characters move forward with their ruined lives. The baker, thinking of his wife, is determined to be a good father. Cinderella decides to leave the prince and help the baker, and Jack and Red Riding Hood, now orphans, are living with the baker and Cinderella. The baker comforts his son after he begins to cry by telling the story of the film as the movie ends with the witch's moral, meaning that children can change due to the parent's actions and behaviors.