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This article is about the 2023 film character, you might be looking for the 1971 version or 2005 version.
"Mark my words, this is gonna be the greatest chocolate shop, the world has ever seen!"
— Wonka

Willy Wonka is the main protagonist of Wonka and its novelization.

Early Life[]

Due to being born in the early 20th century (presumably sometime in the 1920s), he never learned how to read. Willy Wonka grew up in near-poverty, making him similar to a boy named Charlie Bucket he would eventually meet in his later life.

Willy Wonka mother

Willy's deceased mother

As a child, he wanted to be a magician. His mother was a cook and they lived on a river on a long boathouse. Willy would constantly try to come up with new tricks to impress his mother.

Although he and his mother did not have a lot of money, once a week, she would give him a cocoa bean, meaning at on his birthdays, he would have saved enough to make a bar of chocolate. She claimed her chocolate had a secret that even gourmet chocolate makers don't know, and told him that she will reveal her secret to him when he is older. Willy told her the two of them should start their own shop; his mother replied that every good thing in the world started with a dream, but she promised she would support him. Willy never found out the secret to her chocolate, as she fell sick and died, and all he had left was her bar of chocolate.

Wonka[]

Sometime in the 1940s, aspiring magician, inventor and chocolatier Willy Wonka arrives at a European city to fulfill his dream of opening his chocolate shop at the Galeries Gourmet. While quickly burning through his meager savings, he decides to stay at a laundry/boarding house owned by the devious Mrs. Scrubitt and her henchman Bleacher. Despite Noodle, an orphan who stays at the house, warning him to read the fine print, Wonka is unable to read it due to being illiterate and signs the contract, which forces him to pay excessive charges during his stay. A confident Wonka goes to the Galeries Gourmet to sell his "hoverchocs", which make those who eat them fly. The Galeries' three main chocolatiers – Arthur Slugworth, Prodnose, and Fickelgruber – mock Wonka's chocolates and call the Chief of Police to confiscate his earnings.

Unable to pay his fees, Scrubitt forces Wonka to the launderette to work for 10,000 days to repay his debt. He works with others trapped by Scrubitt, including Noodle, accountant Abacus, plumber Piper, comedian Larry, and telephone operator Lottie. Abacus informs him that Slugworth, Prodnose, and Fickelgruber are known as the "Chocolate Cartel" and are scheming to eliminate their competition. Their base of operations is located under a cathedral, which is run by the corrupt Father Julius and his "chocoholic" monks and is where they store a large reserve of chocolate. Wonka hatches a plan to manipulate Bleacher and Scrubitt into falling in love with each other, enabling him and Noodle to secretly leave the laundromat and begin selling his chocolates. The Chocolate Cartel exploits the Chief's love of chocolates to threaten Wonka into leaving town. Wonka tells Noodle that his love of chocolate came from his deceased mother, who made him one last chocolate bar before her passing, and she teaches him how to read.

During one run, Wonka realizes that his chocolates have been stolen by a mysterious orange man who had been stalking him for years, and he and Noodle travel to the local zoo to milk its giraffe, Abigail, as Wonka creates his signature chocolate using giraffe milk. Wonka and Noodle recruit Abacus, Piper, Larry, and Lottie to help him sell chocolates to pay their debts while evading Scrubitt and the Chief. Meanwhile, Wonka catches the man who had been stealing his chocolates, who is revealed to be an Oompa-Loompa named Lofty. Years ago, Wonka took precious cocoa beans from the Oompa Loompas under Lofty's watch, who is now hunting down Wonka to repay his debts. Lofty fools Wonka into escaping.

Wonka's group earns enough money to open his dream chocolate store, to the excitement of a crowd. However, the Chief and the Chocolate Cartel, who learned of Wonka's operations, rat them out to Scrubitt. She taints his chocolates with yeti sweat, causing the customers' hair to grow excessively and their skin to become discolored. The angry crowd ransacks and destroys Wonka's store in retaliation. As the team returns to the launderette, the Cartel reveals themselves as the masterminds to Wonka and offers to pay off everyone's debts if he leaves town and stops making chocolate. Wonka reluctantly accepts the offer and leaves by boat that night, with Lofty joining him. He motivates him to return and fight back against the Cartel before the two abandon ship after realizing it is set to explode.

With their debts paid, Abacus, Piper, Larry, and Lottie are released from the launderette, but Slugworth pays Scrubitt to refrain from releasing Noodle. Wonka and the group rescue Noodle, and Wonka tells her he deduced she is the daughter of Slugworth's deceased brother. After Noodle's birth mother left her to Slugworth, he realized she could challenge his claim to the family fortune. Slugworth disposed of his niece to Scrubitt and lied to her mother that she had died. Wonka and the group form a plan to expose the Cartel through an accounts book Abacus had previously spotted while working for Slugworth.

Using a distraction caused by Abigail, Wonka and Noodle enter the base, but are cornered by the Cartel, who attempt to drown them in their reserves of chocolate. Wonka tells them to give a jar of hover chocs to Lofty to repay his debts, but the Cartel and Julius eat the chocolates, making Lofty knock out Father Julius and rescue the two. Upon confronting the Cartel and the Chief, Wonka and Noodle expose their actions to the police and the public through their account book, and release their chocolate reserve laced with Wonka's true ingredients through a fountain, ruining their business. The Cartel uncontrollably levitates due to the hover chocs, while the Chief of Police is arrested. The crowd celebrates by tasting Wonka's chocolate fountain as Wonka unwraps his mother's chocolate bar. Inside, he finds a Golden Ticket with a message from his mother telling him that chocolate is best shared. Wonka shares his mother's chocolate with his friends.

Wonka helps Noodle meet her birth mother, then pays off his debt to Lofty. He and Lofty purchase an abandoned castle and begin building a factory, while Scrubitt and Bleacher are arrested after their attempt to eliminate evidence of sabotaging Wonka's shop backfires, turning them into the Twits.

Later life[]

See: Willy Wonka (1971 film character)

Quotes[]

  • "I'm making chocolate, of course. How do you like it? Dark? White? Nutty? Absolutely insane."
  • "She'll be thankful for an ankle. She'll be pleased to see your knees. But if you want to make her sigh, show some thigh!"
  • "Mark my words, this is gonna be the greatest chocolate shop, the world has ever seen!"

External links[]

Gallery[]

Characters
Golden Ticket winners

Augustus Gloop (1971)
Veruca Salt (1971)
Violet Beauregarde (1971)
Mike Teavee (1971)
Charlie Bucket (1971)

Families

GLOOP: Mrs. Gloop (1971) • Mr. Gloop (1971)
SALT: Rupert Salt (1971) • Angina Salt
BEAUREGARDE: Scarlett BeauregardeSam Beauregarde
TEAVEE: Norman TeaveeLucy Teavee (1971)
BUCKET: Grandpa Joe (1971) • Helen BucketWilliam BucketGrandma JosephineGrandpa GeorgeGrandma Georgina
WONKA: Willy Wonka (19712023) • Wilbur WonkaMamma

Other characters
Arthur SlugworthFickelgruberLoftyMr. TurkentineMr. WilkinsonNoodleOompa-LoompaPrince PondicherryProdnoseThe Shopkeeper
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