Content Warning: This section refers to terminal illness and death.

The recurring references to the lion in Once Upon a Wardrobe allude to the character Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In both novels, the lion symbolizes hope and faith. While Lewis did not intentionally write a Christian allegory, his conversation with Megs acknowledges Aslan as the equivalent of God in an alternative world. Aslan’s battle against the evil force of the White Witch, as well as his sacrificial death and resurrection in the course of the first Narnia novel, replicate the narrative of Christ.

Of all the Narnian characters, George is most preoccupied with Aslan. He hears the great lion’s roar in his head and includes the creature in all his illustrations of Lewis’s life stories. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan’s resurrection signals the beginning of spring and the end of the eternal winter that the White Witch has inflicted on Narnia. Consequently, Megs also thinks of the lion as a savior figure, wanting “something or someone like Aslan to prowl through the door and save [them], save [them] from the sorrow and the pain” (99). Megs’s notion of salvation is a miraculous cure for her brother’s heart condition.