How the Pevensies Returned to England in 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'

There is a common misconception about the ending of C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The four Pevensie children—Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy—do not return to 1940s England by simply walking back through the wardrobe.

The Actual Mechanism

After ruling Narnia for ~15 years (Narnian time) as Kings and Queens, they chase the White Stag into a thicket in the Western Woods. There, they encounter the lantern-post—the same marker near where Lucy first entered. Pushing through the thicket, they tumble out of the wardrobe into the spare room at Professor Kirke's house.

Key Details

• No time passes on Earth: They return moments after they left, as children again.
• The wardrobe is the portal both ways: They enter through it (Lucy first, then all four) and exit through it.
• The "forest near their house" is incorrect: The portal is the wardrobe itself, located in the Professor's country house, not a separate forest portal near their London home.

The wardrobe remains the singular threshold between the two worlds in this book. (Later books introduce other portals: a painting, a door in the air, magic rings.)