How Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid (1975) Should Have Ended:
As the sun rises over the sea, it’s revealed that instead of turning into foam; Marina has become a transparent spirit, clad in nothing but a simple white dress and her hair, and is obviously barefoot. She looks around and gasps- she is alive, and to her amazement, there are ethereal beings like her- pastel hair (Most of them blonde like her), white dresses, invisible, and spirit like. They then tell her that she is now one of them- the daughters of the air. And if she does enough good deeds in 300 years (And maybe even sooner, since every good deed takes off a year of being a spirit), she will gain a soul and live forever. Smiling at the sun she loves so much, Marina flies down to the ship and smiles at a remorseful Prince Fjord, who is being comforted by his princess. She bids the newlyweds farewell (Kissing the princess on the forehead and smiling upon the Prince, all the while saying “Farewell, Princess. Farewell, my Prince. Live long and happy now!”) before flying off, making the prince feel a bit better and tell his new wife all about his special friend. As Marina looks down at the sea, she sees her sisters and Fritz (The Dolphin). One (The purple haired one) says “She’s gone now, turned to Seafoam.”, while another (The red haired one in a ponytail) replies “What are we going to tell father?”, and the other (The one with indigo hair in pigtails) follows up with “Or grandmother?”. The silence is broken by Marina, now a daughter of the air, as she flies down next to them, and simply replies “Tell them to not worry”. One of the sisters (The one with green hair) replies, “Marina!”, while another (The one with straight blue hair) goes “You’re alive!”, and Marina just smiles. She then responds with “I am- just not in the way you expected. But I must go- there are good deeds to be done by me, and I promise to visit when I can. And Fritz… tell everyone stories of me. Farewell, my sisters. Farewell, Fritz. Live long, and happily now!”, she says as the others wave goodbye (And Fritz promises to tell everyone on land AND sea her story- the first people he tells are the sea king and the grandmother) and she and her other air spirit sisters soar towards the sun kissed horizon.
THIS is how you do a faithful ending! (I removed the confusing part about the whole good kids help air spirits, bad kids make them suffer longer because almost nobody would understand it, which is for the best)
