In the film, Hunk (the actor who plays the Scarecrow in Oz) says to Dorothy: "I think I’ll miss you most of all, Scarecrow." That line is loaded. In many UK stage productions, Hunk is rewritten as a shy farm boy who clearly has a crush on Dorothy. The romance is left hanging—will she notice him when she gets back to Kansas?

Officially? No. The 1939 film famously gives Dorothy zero love interest. No prince, no farm boy, no kiss at the end. This is rare even by today’s standards.

But UK fan culture and modern adaptations have filled the gap.

No romantic storyline is complete without the triangulation of desire. The Dorothy narrative frequently employs the contrast between the exciting, unpredictable "bad boy" and the stable, perhaps slightly boring, "nice guy."

The beauty of these storylines is that they rarely judge the character for her choices. Instead, they highlight the universal lesson that we often have to kiss a few frogs (or bad boys) to understand what we actually need in a partner.