the tragedy of white lily cookie and the merits of her sacrifice
before i write anything further, i'd like to preface this with saying that what i have written here is my own personal interpretation of the story. of course, if you do not wish to have someone try to change your opinion, or delve into the topic any more, please do not continue reading this. i respect other people's opinions and haven't written this to talk down to others or debate with anyone who doesn't want to.
one of the most tragic characters in the cookie run saga is white lily cookie, who has always carried the burden of her own transgressions as well as the sins and pains of others. beyond anything else, she was driven by her love for the cookie world and the well-being of cookiekind as a whole. ever since her days as a student at blueberry yogurt academy, she relentlessly pursued how she could help create the ideal cookie world, where all cookies are equal in strength and meaning.
there's been a lot of debate about her death at the end of beast-yeast episode 15, with many people believing it to have come out of nowhere or claiming it promotes the idea of suicidal idealization, but i personally find these statements to be far from the truth.
there have been many hints throughout the beginning of the series that white lily cookie's past and future fate were always tied to tragedy and sacrifice. in fact, the greatest tragedy to have befallen her was the unintentional sacrifice of her own self to become dark enchantress on the night of the witches' banquet, after her discovery that cookies were created to be nothing more than the food and playthings of sadistic witches, far from the benevolent creators they had hoped for.
it was because white lily fell into the ultimate dough that she unknowingly sacrificed her own life as white lily cookie to become dark enchantress cookie. as such, dark enchantress considers herself to be a "reborn" entity, created from white lily's dough and spirit, and formed against both her own will and white lily's as well.
during beast-yeast episode 1, pure vanilla remembers that white lily told him that her plan to uncover the truth about cookiekind is such an important mission to her that the loss of her own life would be worth the risks and dangers.
in a sense, we can think of the birth of dark enchantress cookie as an unwanted sacrifice, forced upon both white lily and enchantress, which is a twisted vision of how white lily wanted to be able use her life to save cookiekind.
and as a result of dark enchantress' creation, the real white lily is now barely holding onto her life, thanks to the fact that she was technically what could be thought of as a "memory ghost" of the last shards of her own consciousness, separate from dark enchantress, that came to life after pure vanilla froze dark enchantress in moonstone (which we see in crispia episode 8).
in the first episode of beast-yeast, elder faerie told pure vanilla that all that remains of white lily's original body was lifeless dough. in order to awaken her, a cookie must give half of their life force to bring her back into existence. he also says, "as long as both [dark enchantress cookie & white lily cookie] live, neither shall become whole" thus indicating white lily will still only have half a life.
inexplicably tied together, dark enchantress and white lily share a cruel and inescapable fate: the fact that neither will ever fully be whole cookies on their own. their lives (and deaths) are linked by what happened during the night of the witches' banquet.
only the remnants of her light of freedom and the sacrifice of a cookie's life powder will be enough to give life to white lily's empty body, and bring what little remains of her back. elder faerie describes this as "a life for a life, a fair exchange… magic so sinister, and yet so just."
white lily was willing to sacrifice her own life for the good of cookiekind in her mission to uncover the secret of cookie creation, a sentiment that pure vanilla is willing to reciprocate as he offers his own life powder to be used to awaken white lily.
but ultimately, elder faerie turns pure vanilla's offer down, saying pure vanilla needs to remain strong to help white lily when she returns. instead, elder faerie explains that it is his fate to sacrifice his life powder for the benefit of white lily and as his role as a silver tree guardian.
much like how white lily cookie was willing to sacrifice her safety and well-being for her mission, elder faerie is also willing to go to that extreme length, because he too is deeply devoted to the cookie world. just like her, his love for cookiekind has never faltered or wavered, despite all the tragedy and sacrifice it has faced.
his trust in white lily cookie, and his firm belief in the benefit of his sacrifice, also comes from the fact that he has seen all of this happen before. for it was elder faerie cookie who was the one to help bind the beasts in the silver tree alongside silent salt, a cookie who shares all too many similarities with white lily's own story and fate.
before his corruption, silent salt was a cookie with high aspirations to better the cookie world, and just like white lily he wanted to pave the way for a world where all cookies had equal strength and worth.
working with elder faerie, they planted the silver tree whose fruits were meant to transform the power of the pre-corruption beasts' virtues into a means that would give more strength to other cookies. but while working on the project together, silent salt's kingdom was brutally razed in a genocide at the hands of the other beasts' emissaries. elder faerie realizes that the other beasts have all been corrupted, and that silent salt too has fallen during the aftermath of his rage against the betrayers and genociders of his kingdom.
after seeing the damage of his own rampage and the corruption of his fellow beasts, silent salt says he has no gifts left to give the cookie world. instead of using the tree to distribute power to all cookies, he requests that elder faerie use the tree to help him bind himself and the rest of the beasts, sacrificing his own soul and body for the ritual.
here, we see a direct contrast between silent salt's sacrifice for the binding ritual, elder faerie's sacrifice of his power and life powder to revive white lily, and white lily's own unwanted sacrifice in the creation of dark enchantress.
both silent salt and white lily were driven by the same ambitions, and encountered dark truths that shattered their faiths and led to them taking on darker identities and philosophies. elder faerie knew of both of their corruptions, but instead of fearing or hating them, he acknowledges that all of their dark actions came from a place of deep love and care for the cookie world. in contrast to both white lily and silent salt's bitter sacrifices, his own sacrifice is done with so much hope and faith in the both of them. he entrusts white lily with his powers, and trusted silent salt even after seeing him come back covered in blood and wracked with despair.
when white lily and silent salt finally meet, salt was still full of bitterness and rage towards the events that led to his corruption, and did not trust white lily. he forced her to merge both body and soul, briefly causing her to become a version of herself that is both dark enchantress and white lily.
i find it really interesting here that silent salt is clearly talking to himself as much as he is to white lily, as he too is a broken version of the idealistic and hopeful self he once was.
while talking to her merged self and the light of freedom, white lily confronts her that they have been essentially running away from their problems. as she said back in episode 8 of crispia, "to remember means to embrace great pain." the light of freedom inside of her has remained quiet this whole time because white lily let the despair and hopelessness overtake her much like silent salt did, trying to shut out the painful memories of her past and ignore the sympathy she felt for her dark enchantress self.
as she told elder faerie, she often wished to die rather than be reborn as dark enchantress. her suicidal thoughts were in regards to her wishing that she never fell into the ultimate dough, wishing for death rather than the responsibilities of an event she never wanted to incite or the tragedy and suffering it caused countless others.
ultimately, what brings her back to herself and clears her head is remembering how much she badly wanted to fix the injustice of the cookie world. she describes how she finds the cookie world beautiful and monstrous at the same time, and recalls how it's a world that requires sacrifice and strength to survive.
one of the driving factors for a cookie's descent into madness or tragedy in the series has been the persistent existence of needless, futile suffering. the undeniable truth that the cookie world is full of meaningless pain and despair is what led to shadow milk corrupting, is what drove mystic flour into seeing greed and desire as pointless catalysts for such ruin and what made her embrace apathy, is the reason for eternal sugar's deep distrust and fear of the world outside her garden and her belief that she alone knows what's good for cookies (pure bliss and complacency), is what inspired burning spice cookie to realize the inherent cruelty and boring mindlessness of the cycle they were all trapped in and to seek destruction as a form of inevitable entertainment, and is in the end what corrupted silent salt and made him give up on his hopeful dreams for peace.
white lily realizes that dark enchantress is a version of herself that was also corrupted, that no longer believes in equalizing the strength and worth of individual cookies but instead craves to create a power that is strong enough to take on the witches herself. the price of such power comes with war and pain, with dark enchantress making sacrifices out of others, willing or not, to aid her cause.
i think a lot of people in this fandom forget that white lily is not entirely innocent. she is by no means evil, and always has had pure and noble intentions at heart, but it was her curiosity and refusal to stop that made her continue to carry out risky and forbidden experiments during her time at blueberry yogurt academy. even pure vanilla, her conspirator and closest friend at the time, could sense that she was stubborn and sometimes unstable, which led to him ultimately failing to understand her or prevent her from doing what she did.
despite pure vanilla trying to talk her out of conducting experiments with forbidden magic - or elder faerie warning her away from the banquet - white lily persisted each time, resulting in the opening of a spirit portal that led to the destruction of the school and many of its members ... - and to her "rebirth" as dark enchantress.
remembering what gingerbrave said about making your own meaning out of life and realizing that it was a noble sacrifice which allowed her to come back to life, white lily finally understands the true meaning of freedom: protecting what you believe in and embracing your fate.
without elder faerie's sacrifice to bring her back from her lifeless body, white lily would never have been given that "precious second chance" as her light of freedom called it. the death of elder faerie was not for nothing. he did so with trust and hope in her to do the right thing and make amends. and much like elder faerie's sacrifice, silent salt's loss also is what allowed him to bind the other beasts before they could bring the rest of the world to devastation.
after white lily realizes these truths, she finally confronts silent salt and makes him concede to seeing her worth. he finally realizes that she is what has given him hope again, what has set him free from his own shame and bitterness, setting him back onto the path of fighting for what he believes in.
recognizing her willingness to finally give her all again one last time to fight dark enchantress, he swears himself to her side.
their plan is to use the avatar of destiny to battle against dark enchantress, with silent salt carrying out his end of the deal to keep the beasts subdued while white lily and dark enchantress face off.
while i agree that the writing was rushed and that there should have been a lot more build up to white lily learning about the existence of the avatar of destiny and how she connected with it, i must admit it was still such an unexpected and fascinating plot twist that could not really have been pulled off the same if we had seen white lily planning something in episode 13.
i think it is very fitting that the avatar of destiny manifested in a way similar to dark enchantress and the ultimate cookie. all three were created in response to the dark truth of the helpless suffering of cookiekind. but while the avatar of destiny seems to be more of an interdimensional being that formed either naturally or from the magic of witches, ultimate cookie was created by a cookie with an express intent to use its power for her own gain, and dark enchantress cookie was accidental and unwanted. (apologies for the side tangent here, i just found it an interesting contrast.)
dark enchantress turning herself into the very thing she claims to hate - a witch - lends to just how much of a threat she is also.
dark enchantress cookie refused to give in, claiming that white lily cookie was a part of her. it seems ironic at first, considering how it was the dough and spirit of white lily that was rebaked into dark enchantress, but considering that the white lily we meet in crispia was a sort of phantom that came from dark enchantress when she was frozen, it makes it even more clear that white lily really is living on borrowed life.
she technically doesn't exist after the creation of dark enchantress. only the sacrifice of elder faerie is what allowed her to come to life. but even now she is still tied far too deeply with dark enchantress. if one dies, so does the other. it was inevitable from the start.
the theme of sacrifice has always been integral to white lily's character.
during her time as a student, she was willing to sacrifice her reputation and take big risks for the sake of her goals. even after the calamity at the academy, she never stopped her mission, firmly believing she would even sacrifice her own life for the good of cookiekind. the creation of dark enchantress came at the unwilling sacrifice of her own dough and soul, while dark enchantress' philosophy made enchantress feel entitled to sacrificing the lives of others (and even herself in becoming a witch, the very thing she hates) just for the sake of her revenge plans. at the intersection of every one of these, white lily still never once gave up her love for cookiekind.
despite the misery and pain of the cookie world, white lily still held such a love and devotion to it. and ultimately fulfilling her desire to protect it set her truly free.
i find these two scenes from episode 12 and episode 14, respectively, to be very reminiscent of each other. i really like that that when white lily cookie refers to her dark enchantress self the i becomes red, which emphasizes that white lily and dark enchantress are deeply connected, even if they are ultimately separate beings at heart.
dark enchantress believes only her reign and her powers can grant cookies freedom, by creating a world where there is no such concept as "eat or be eaten." but her idea of "freedom" was forcing and torturing others to obey her, sacrificing countless lives for her own plans, and creating tragedy and bloodshed where none needed to be.
only after going through all she did in silent salt's fallen kingdom did white lily realize that she has been in a sense running away from the truth of herself, that she and dark enchantress are destined to destroy everything or each other. if she does not confront dark enchantress, which is something she told pure vanilla in the second episode of beast-yeast that only she can do, than enchantress will cause a war between witches and cookies that can only result in more genocide and suffering.
white lily was stubborn once more, both her and dark enchantress believing only they could bring freedom to cookies. but neither one of them understood what freedom truly meant until silent salt's experiences and gingerbrave's mindset opened white lily's eyes.
white lily cookies also learned from both silent salt and elder faerie that sacrifice can bring meaning to endless despair. to quote an unrelated movie that is somehow relevant to what i mean: "What is more human than dying for a good cause?" all four of these cookies bound by fate - dark enchantress, white lily, silent salt, and elder faerie - were united by their love for the cookie world, were willing to go to great lengths to protect what visions they had for cookiekind. and all of them are united by shared bonds in tragedy and sacrifice.
in short, in order to prove that the existence of cookies is not futile, sacrifice is necessary. silent salt, even during the hour of intense pain and hopelessness, still did not give in and let the beasts remain free. he gave his everything to hold them and himself back before they would ruin the world. in another hour of need, elder faerie also did not run away from his responsibilities as the guardian of the silver tree, and instead placed his faith and hope in white lily cookie's promise to carry on all their love for earthbread even after his death.
i've seen a lot of people claiming that white lily's death was suicide, that her learning to love small moments in life and to embrace the meaning and purpose herself as an individual was all ruined during this episode. but i personally find white lily's sacrifice to be the exact opposite of all that.
she is not dying because she wants to escape her fate. she is dying to embrace it. she is not dying because her life has no meaning or worth - she is dying to save the countless individual lives of other cookies just like her, including her beloved friends who have convinced her to recognize her own worth and forgive herself as well.
and her death was not for nothing. even though the threat of shadow milk is worse than ever before, she was able to stop dark enchantress cookie from interfering any further, and also to stop a second dark flour war from happening.
as she told silent salt back in episode 12, true freedom comes when cookies are able to recognize and embrace their destiny. she can truly only be at peace with herself when she puts a stop to the two warring sides of herself, and felt that freedom fully when she entrusted cookies to find their own individual freedoms, much like gingerbrave told her.
white lily cookie is a very beautiful character who deserves to be treated with the level of nuance and complexity her story merits. whether or not you liked the way the story was handled, i personally find her willing sacrifice to have been an integral part of her character growth. war is not something that is to be taken lightly, and i feel like an ending where such a grave and dire threat was subverted through the simple power of friendship would have been the actually bad writing.
white lily is a character deeply linked to sacrifice and tragedy, but in her final moments she was finally not suffering or tormenting herself. she was at peace, finally free for once as she proved dark enchantress wrong and fulfilled her purpose as the carrier of the light of freedom.
i have many thoughts on how her sacrifice related to shadow milk's worsening villainy, and his full descent into madness, but perhaps that can be part two of this post for anyone who might be interested.
i hope what i said here was at least a little bit coherent and might have made some of you reconsider certain elements of the ending in a more positive light. could it have been much better paced and executed? definitely. but ultimately, i believe the ending did exactly what it set out to do: end the dark enchantress and white lily story line with the gravity and nuance it deserved.
i'd also like to finish this up with saying that not all stories are meant to be taken as applications to real life. i've seen a persistent argument that white lily's death teaches kids to kill themselves instead of facing their problems. while i understand people relating to white lily a lot and trying to find moral messages in stories, i argue that a story about literal war, with an evil cookie trying to become close to something like a god, the situation is vastly different from many everyday real-life situations that most people go through. white lily's sacrifice is reminiscent of something you would read in a historical epic, and not everyday life. you cannot apply everything you see in literal fiction to the real world, or translate very serious, grave topics and themes into something that is not happening the exact same in real life.
feel free all you like to dislike the ending or find it distasteful, but please let's not encourage people to treat something absolutely fiction like it's reality or an instruction manual on how to live life. some things are done for entertainment or purely to tell a story, and this is one of those cases.
thank you for reading this far if you have. i hope the next update is met with better reception so that everyone can have fun again.
