fairytale-2
Explanation
This comic takes the common romantic wish for a "fairytale ending" and delivers it with brutal literal accuracy.
In the first panel, a woman wishes upon a shooting star for "a romance with a fairytale ending." This is a universally understood idiom meaning a happily-ever-after conclusion, the kind associated with sanitized Disney-style fairy tales where the princess finds true love and lives in a castle forever.
The second panel, labeled "Later...", reveals what an actual fairytale ending looks like. A witch stands in front of a scroll that reads "And so they were eaten by witches for disobeying social norms... The End." Behind her, people are being roasted on a spit over a fire, and severed heads are visible on the ground. This is the grim reality of original fairy tales -- the Brothers Grimm and earlier folk tale traditions, in which stories routinely ended with characters being devoured, dismembered, or otherwise gruesomely punished, typically for violating social or moral rules.
The joke operates on the gap between the modern, sentimentalized meaning of "fairytale ending" and the actual content of historical fairy tales, which were morality tales designed to frighten people (especially children) into obedience. The wish is granted with perfect fidelity -- the woman gets exactly the kind of ending that real fairy tales contain. The detail about being punished "for disobeying social norms" is particularly on point, as many original fairy tales served as cautionary stories enforcing conformity (e.g., Little Red Riding Hood as a warning about straying from the path, or Bluebeard as a warning about feminine curiosity).