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Wendy Torrance is the deuteragonist of Stephen King's novel The Shining and its film adaption and a posthumous character in its 2013 sequel, Doctor Sleep.

She's the wife of the central antagonist Jack Torrance and the mother of the protagonist Danny.

She is portrayed by Shelley Duvall in the film, Rebecca De Morney in the 1997 TV series The Shining and Alex Essoe in the 2019 sequel Doctor Sleep.

The Shining[]

Wendy is an anxious woman, fearing for Jack and Danny's health and wellbeing. When Wendy and her family arrive at The Overlook Hotel, Wendy is surprised by how busy the hotel is.

She sits with her husband, Jack, and Danny on one of the sofas and watches the guests check out and some of the staff leave. Eventually, she is given a tour of the kitchen by Dick Hallorann, along with Jack and Danny.

Wendy is surprised by how big the kitchen is. When the tour of the kitchen is over, Wendy notices that the lobby has cleared greatly and that most of the staff and guests are gone and wishes that she could leave herself.

After Danny goes to talk to Hallorann outside, Jack, Danny and herself are given a tour around the hotel by Stuart Ullman, the manager. Eventually, Ullman leaves, along with any remaining staff and guests, leaving the Torrances alone in the Overlook.

At first, Wendy loves the Overlook and confides Jack that she's the most happiest she's ever been. Things quickly change when Danny starts having frightening visions.

After Danny has a vision in front of herself and Jack, Wendy thinks of taking Danny away from the hotel and letting Jack stay alone in the hotel, but Danny refuses to leave.

When the snow starts falling, she's nervous, but quickly starts having fun in the hotel's front and backyard which is covered in deep snow. One afternoon, while it snows heavily outside, she dozes off and Danny enters Room 217 and is strangled by the ghost of a dead woman.

Then, Wendy awakens when she hears Jack screaming and smashing something. She runs into Ullman's office and sees that Jack has smashed the CB radio after a disturbing nightmare.

Then, she goes to the lobby to look for Danny and notices Danny standing on the staircase, traumatised and bruised. She accuses Jack of strangling him and whisks Danny to her room, locking Jack out.

She eventually discovers that Danny was strangled and is terrified of sharing the hotel with another person and begs Jack to leave the hotel. Jack says yes, but in a rage, he smashes the snow cat's machine, destroying the engine, stranding the Torrances.

As the snowstorms become worse, Danny becomes more frightened and Jack seems more grumpy. After a disturbing vision of murder, Danny telepathically calls Hallorann to save him and his parents.

Wendy, knowing her husband is not functioning properly anymore, gets a knife from the kitchen and takes Danny into her room, locking the door while downstairs in The Colorado Lounge, Jack gets drunk with a roomful of ghosts and is told by the ghost of the previous caretaker to murder his family.

When Wendy goes to check on Jack, she's brutally assaulted by him. He almost kills her until Danny knocks him out. They lock Jack in the pantry and hope that Hallorann comes.

After a period of time, Wendy goes down to the lobby to cook some food but finds Jack with a roque mallet. He attacks Wendy with the roque mallet, but Wendy stabs Jack in the shoulder, seemingly killing him.

As she struggles up the staircase, Jack wakes up and goes after her. Wendy locks herself in the bathroom and as Jack bashes down the door, Wendy slashes his hand with razor blades. Hallorann arrives, causing a distraction for Jack.

Jack goes to find out what the noise is. Wendy leaves the bathroom and passes out due to stress and exhaustion. Jack knocks out Hallorann and goes to find Wendy.

Danny is able to talk to his father in a corridor and realizes the boiler wasn't checked and it was going to explode. Then, Jack runs off and Danny finds Wendy and Hallorann, together.

They evacuate the hotel as the boiler explodes, destroying the hotel. Hallorann whisks Wendy and Danny away as the hotel burns to the ground. A few months later, Wendy and Danny are staying at a lakeside cabin. Wendy is still injured and traumatised, but doing better.

Doctor Sleep[]

Wendy and Danny move into a small apartment after leaving the lakeside cabins. One night, while Danny goes to the bathroom, he finds the ghost of Room 217 in his apartment bathtub.

He then pees in the sink and warns Wendy not to go into the bathroom before going quiet. Wendy calls Hallorann and Hallorann comes over and helps Danny lock away the ghosts of the hotel in his mind. Unfortunately, Wendy dies of lung cancer in 1999, likely caused by the explosion of the hotel and the injuries caused.

The Shining (1980)[]

Jack Torrance's son, Danny, has ESP and has had a terrifying premonition about the hotel. Jack's wife, Wendy tells a visiting doctor that Danny has an imaginary friend named Tony and that Jack has given up drinking because he had broke Danny's arm following a binge.

The family arrives at the hotel on closing day and is given a tour. The African-American chef Dick Hallorann surprises Danny by telepathically offering him ice cream. He explains to Danny that he and his grandmother shared this telepathic ability, which he calls "shining".

Danny asks if there is anything to be afraid of in the hotel, particularly Room 237. Hallorann tells Danny that the hotel itself has a "shine" to it along with many memories, not all of which are good. He also tells Danny to stay out of Room 237.

A month passes; while Jack's writing project goes nowhere, Danny and Wendy explore the hotel's hedge maze. Wendy becomes concerned about the phone lines being out due to the heavy snowfall and Danny has more frightening visions.

Jack, increasingly frustrated, starts acting strangely and becomes prone to violent outbursts. Danny's curiosity about Room 237 gets the better of him when he sees the room's door open.

Later, Wendy finds Jack, asleep at his typewriter, screaming while in the midst of a horrifying nightmare. After she awakens him, he says that he dreamed that he had killed her and Danny.

Danny then shows up with a bruise on his neck and visibly traumatized, causing Wendy to accuse Jack of abusing Danny. Jack wanders into the hotel's Gold Room where he meets a ghostly bartender named Lloyd.

Lloyd serves him bourbon on the rocks while Jack complains to him about his marriage. Wendy later tells Jack that Danny told her that a "crazy woman in one of the rooms" tried to strangle him.

Jack investigates Room 237, where he encounters the ghost of a dead woman, but tells Wendy he saw nothing. Wendy and Jack argue about whether Danny should be removed from the hotel and a furious Jack returns to the Gold Room, now filled with ghosts having a costume party.

Here, he meets the ghost of the previous caretaker, Grady, who tells Jack that he must "correct" his wife and child, and that Danny has reached out to Hallorann somehow.

Meanwhile, in Florida, Hallorann has a premonition that something is wrong at the hotel and takes a flight back to Colorado to investigate. Danny starts calling out "redrum" frantically and goes into a trance, now referring to himself as "Tony".

While searching for Jack, Wendy discovers his typewriter; he has been typing endless pages of manuscript repeating "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" in different layouts. She was confronted by Jack who threatens her before she knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat.

She manages to drag him into the kitchen and lock him in the pantry, but this does not solve her larger problem. She and Danny are trapped at the hotel since Jack has sabotaged the hotel's two-way radio and snowcat.

Later, Jack converses through the pantry door with Grady, who then unlocks the door, releasing him. Danny writes "REDRUM" in lipstick on the bathroom door. When Wendy sees this in the bedroom mirror, the letters spell out "MURDER".

Then, Jack begins to chop through the door leading to his family's living quarters with a fire axe. Wendy frantically sends Danny out through the bathroom window, but it will not open sufficiently for her to fit through it herself.

Jack then starts chopping through the bathroom door as Wendy screams in horror. He leers through the hole he has made, shouting "Here's Johnny!", but backs off after Wendy slashes his hand with a razor blade.

Hearing the engine of the snowcat Hallorann has borrowed to get up the mountain, Jack leaves the room and head down into the main lobby. He kills Hallorann in the lobby with his axe.

This act in turn cause Danny (Who was hiding in one of the kitchen shelves) to scream which alerts Jack to his presence. Jack spots Danny from a distance and proceeds to chase him into the hedge maze.

Danny, in the mist of the chase, proceeds to walk backwards and cover up his show prints in order to mislead Jack. Meanwhile, Wendy, on the run from Jack, encounters the dead body of Hallorann as well as many frighting visions of ghosts in the hotel.

This ends with her witnessing a river of blood gushing from the lobby elevators. After Danny successfully flees from Jack in the maze, he was reunited with Wendy by the Snowcat used by Hallorann which they use to flee the hotel. 

Miniseries[]

Wendy Torrance 2

Wendy (1997 TV series) played by Rebecca De Mornay

The character here is far different. She is more of a cheerleader-type, closer to the novel. Also Wendy knows about Danny's psychic abilities. 

While the Wendy of the previous film seemed more dependent on Jack and afraid of him, this Wendy is more independent yet unlike the Wendy of the first film, isn't familiar with dealing with hard situations. She is portrayed as strong-willed, but not as resourceful as the Wendy of the previous film.

Jack Torrance's alcoholism and explosive temper have cost him his teaching job at Stovington, a respectable prep school. He is also on the verge of losing his family, after attacking his young son Danny in a drunken rage just a year earlier.

Horrified by what he has become, Jack tells his wife Wendy that should he ever start drinking again, he will leave them one way or another, implying that he would rather commit suicide than continue living as an alcoholic.

Now, nursing a life of sobriety and pulling in work as a writer, Jack and his family take on the job of looking after the Overlook Hotel, a large colonial building in a picturesque valley in the Colorado Rockies.

Hoping to succeed and move on as a writer, Jack is happy to take the job as it will provide desperately needed funds and the time to complete his first play.

Upon entering the Overlook and meeting its head cook, Dick Hallorann, Danny discovers that his psychic powers grant him a form of telepathy. Hallorann tells Danny that he too "shines", and that Danny can contact him telepathically whenever he needs help.

It gradually becomes apparent that the hotel's ghosts are more than figurative and far from peaceful. There is a force within the building that seems determined to use Danny for an unknown, possibly sinister purpose.

This force manifests itself with flickering lamps and spectral voices and eventually a full-on masked ball from the Overlook's past. Danny is the first to fully notice the darker character of the hotel, having experienced visions and warnings that foreshadow what he and his parents will encounter over the winter.

In order to achieve its goal, the hotel takes over the person dearest to Danny: his father. Toward the end of the film, Danny telepathically communicates with his father, and encourages Jack to free himself from the hotel's ghosts. Jack does so, and sacrifices himself to destroy the hotel.

Danny, Wendy, and Hallorann (to whom Danny sent a telepathic message) escape to safety. 10 years later, Danny graduates from college (we see that Tony is Danny's adult self) with his mother and Halloran present at his ceremony, as well as seeing the ghost of his father being proud of him.

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