Grief
What 'The Last Unicorn' Teaches Us About Grief in 2025
Revelations in truths about despair, connection, and living with loss.
Posted September 21, 2025 Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
Key points
- Grief alters our internal landscape, sometimes leaving us strangers to ourselves.
- Connection, though imperfect and sometimes delayed, remains the most powerful antidote to grief and despair.
- Despair is inescapable—yet confronting it can deepen our resilience and capacity for growth.
In 1982, The Last Unicorn introduced audiences to a mythical creature who learns what it means to experience human emotions, to long, and to live with the burden of grief. More than 40 years later, in 2025, this story feels like an uncannily relevant mirror to our collective condition. We have endured global upheavals, private losses, and waves of despair that leave many of us searching for meaning and connection. What does a unicorn’s journey have to teach us now about grief, despair, and the fragile beauty of finding one another?
As a psychotherapist and geek therapist, I often turn to the stories that shaped me and my clients. They become maps for navigating difficult inner conflict and pain. For me, The Last Unicorn is more than a nostalgic touchstone—it is a parable about grief and the search for belonging, told through the fantasy lens but grounded in our collective human truths.
The Weight of Grief
The unicorn begins her journey when she learns she may be the last of her kind. Her grief is not only about the possible extinction of her species but also about the shattering of identity. Who are we, when those like us are gone? Who are we, when we feel abandoned by community, tradition, or family, or global connection?
In 2025, grief has become layered and complicated. We grieve for people lost to a pandemic that never fully left us, for wars and violence that flood our screens daily, for a climate that feels increasingly fragile. On a personal level, many grieve fractured relationships, estrangement from family, or the slow fading of communities that once anchored them. This grief is not just about death—it is about the loss of safety, the loss of certainty, and sometimes the loss of self.
Like the unicorn, grief confronts us with the possibility that we are now different. Once touched by loss, often ambiguous or directly violent, we cannot return unchanged. The unicorn’s lament—“I am no longer like the others… I regret”—resonates deeply. Grief alters our internal landscape, sometimes leaving us strangers to ourselves.
Despair as a Companion
Despair is never far from the unicorn’s story. The Red Bull, who drives the unicorns into the sea, is both a literal monster and a metaphor for overwhelming hopelessness. The unicorn cannot outrun it. She must face it, even as despair threatens to consume her. Sound familiar?
Despair in 2025 feels similarly inescapable. Rates of depression and anxiety remain high. Young people, in particular, describe feeling adrift, anxious about their futures in a world that seems less stable by the year. Despair whispers that our efforts are futile, that connection is fleeting, that belonging is impossible.
And yet, The Last Unicorn reminds me that despair is not the end of the story. To confront despair, the unicorn must allow herself to be changed—even transformed into a human, where she experiences love, mortality, and regret. It is only by being touched by suffering that she gains the courage to resist the Red Bull. Despair may mark us, but it also forces us to grow.
In therapy, I often sit with people who feel that despair is all that remains. What I tell them—and remind myself—is that despair is part of the human condition, but it is not the totality of it. Like the unicorn, we are called not to deny despair but to walk alongside it, learning from the scars it leaves behind.
Searching for Connection
At its heart, The Last Unicorn is not only about grief and despair but also about the relentless search for connection. The unicorn’s journey is filled with unlikely companions: Schmendrick the bumbling magician, Molly Grue the disillusioned woman, even fleeting encounters with those who cannot see her true self. Each relationship teaches her something about vulnerability, trust, and the messy business of being in community.
In 2025, many of us are still trying to find our people. Technology has connected us in unprecedented ways, but it has also deepened feelings of isolation. The unicorn’s longing for her kind mirrors our own longing to be seen and known—whether as LGBTQ+ individuals seeking affirming spaces, trauma survivors searching for those who understand, or simply humans looking for authentic connection in an often disconnected world.
Connection, however, does not erase grief or despair. Molly Grue, who meets the unicorn late in life, exclaims, “Where were you when I was young?” Her cry embodies the ache of missed chances, lost time, and the knowledge that connection, even when found, does not undo the years of loneliness. Still, the act of being witnessed—even belatedly—carries its own healing power.
Living With Regret, Living With Hope
By the end of the film, the unicorn succeeds in freeing her kin, but she cannot return to innocence or ignorance. She carries the memory of love, loss, and regret. This is the paradox of healing: we do not return to who we were before. Instead, we integrate grief into our being, carrying it with us as part of our story.
In our current world, this feels like a call to radical acceptance. We cannot erase what we have lost over these years, nor can we deny the despair that lingers. But we can choose to live with it—to let grief soften us into compassion, to let despair remind us of our resilience, and advocacy, to let connection, however fragile, guide us forward.
My Clinical Thoughts
The Last Unicorn teaches us that grief is not a detour from life but an inevitable part of it. Despair may chase us, but it does not have to define us. And connection, though imperfect and sometimes delayed, remains one of the most powerful antidotes we have.
As I sit with clients, with friends, my partner, or even alone in my own grief, I remember the unicorn’s journey. She is the last, yet she is not truly alone. And perhaps that is the message we need most in 2025: even in despair, even in grief, we are still searching—and in that searching, we are never entirely without hope.
I choose hope over fear. Join me, and let us be the alchemy of healing in our collective choice, fighting back.
References
Brewer, M. B., & Gardner, W. (1996). Who is this" We"? Levels of collective identity and self representations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(1), 83.
