Alternative Character Interpretation in Encanto.
- The Miracle:
- It seems to give the family gifts based on their passions, leading them down distinctive paths. If Mirabel just wanted to help her family; then it's possible the miracle wasn't fading at the time it rescinded her door; it was just giving her what it thought she wanted: a way to focus on her family instead of an exploitable gift.
- It's also commonly assumed by fans that the Miracle and La Casita are actually the soul of Pedro himself, trying to help his descendants.
- Whether Casita is the Miracle itself or an extension of the miracle that has no bearing on what it does (I.e what gifts the Madrigals get) is something a lot of fans vary on.
- Dolores invites a lot of this.
- By the end of the film, Dolores makes it quite clear that she's known Bruno never actually left. However, it's never addressed why she never told anyone, especially when she's able to keep Bruno's secret for a decade, but can't keep Mirabel's for more than an hour.
- Is it in part due to the stress of watching the love of her life proposing to her own cousin, and this is just the straw that broke the camel's back?
- It is possible that Dolores doesn’t know why Bruno is hiding, just allows him to do so anyway, and hearing that the magic is in danger at that moment is too much.
- Or maybe Dolores’ seeming inability to keep a secret besides Bruno’s is because of the stress from having to hide something so big, and she can’t handle keeping two major secrets.
- Or maybe she is trying to ruin the proposal and didn't consider the consequences for Mirabel?
- Does she keep Bruno's secret because she feels sympathy for him, as shown in her verse in his song, or is she scared of him?
- It's also possible that she tried to tell someone (possibly her parents) about Bruno early on, but was told, "We don't talk about Bruno."
- It could also be that Dolores thought that she was going insane when she kept hearing Bruno in the walls for ten years, but told no-one out of fear of being seen as a freak, since everyone told her that Bruno had walked out on the family. Her "I knew it!" line was likely Dolores expressing her relief that she wasn't going mad after all.
- Combining the two ACIs of Dolores (that she knows of Bruno the whole time and why she breaks the news in the middle of the dinner) gives you a dark interpretation that Dolores is the hidden antagonist of Encanto, intent on disrupting the magic so that she could be normal.
- Alternatively, one could paint her as a Guile Hero trying her best to give Mirabel clues in her search for answers, even telling her about their uncle's true nature and burden, without giving her direct information that might lead to a more volatile family member discovering Bruno. In that light, her panic at the dinner table is a My God, What Have I Done? moment, thinking her attempts to help Mirabel save the magic had backfired and causing her subsequent Freak Out.
- Does Mariano actually want to have five kids, or is Dolores just messing with her cousin because she herself loves Mariano and is upset that he's going to propose to Isabela instead? Or, alternately, is she just messing with Isabela like family members would and Abuela took her seriously?
- When Dolores tells Mirabel "the only person worried about the magic is you and the rats in the walls," is she lying or simply mistaken? Did she secretly overhear Abuela's worries about the magic or was she in her room (confirmed by Word of God to have some soundproofing) at the time? Could she hear the cracks or did the cracks just impair her hearing powers whenever they occurred?
- In Dolores' first section of We Don't Talk About Bruno the man himself can be seen walking across the far walls of the lower and then upper sections of courtyard. Throughout this part, Dolores acts very physically expressive, much more than she does in any other part of the movie. She's constantly flourishing her hands and skirt, and manhandling Mirabel so that her prima is either looking in the opposite direction of where Bruno is or directly at her. As a result, there's been some debate over whether or not she's really trying to emphasize to Mirabel that their tio isn't a bad person, or if she is instead helping him go by unnoticed. The debate only gets more fuel when one considers the possibility that it may be a shapeshifted Camilo waiting for his sequence (which comes immediately after) rather than Bruno himself.
- When she sings that she associates Bruno with the sound of falling sand, does this mean that she hears the sound of him throwing salt and misremembers it as sand or thinks it sounds similar to sand? Or is it a reference to hourglasses, since Bruno can see through time? She follows that up with "Ch-ch-ch". Is this a demonstration of the sound of the sand, or is she shushing Mirabel?
- By the end of the film, Dolores makes it quite clear that she's known Bruno never actually left. However, it's never addressed why she never told anyone, especially when she's able to keep Bruno's secret for a decade, but can't keep Mirabel's for more than an hour.
- Pepa's feelings about Bruno:
- Two common interpretations of Pepa and Bruno’s relationship pre-movie is that either Pepa was actively antagonistic towards him, resentful from his bad prophecies, or they had a good relationship that was tainted by hurt over him leaving, causing her to latch onto past transgressions.
- Is she actually still mad at him over her and Felix's wedding day, or is she focusing on a past event to avoid thinking about the fact that her younger brother disappeared one night without a word? Her happy reaction to his return would seem to indicate the latter. Prior to finding out about his final vision, is she dealing with guilt out of a belief that she's one of the things that drove Bruno away?
- How come Bruno didn’t clear things up about the rain comment being a joke until the very end of the movie, despite not disappearing until well over a decade after the wedding? Is it because Pepa refused to talk to him about it? Or did Bruno not realize that there were still hurt feelings over the incident? The latter would indicate that Pepa did move past it, but fixated over it when Bruno left.
- Camilo's memories (or lack thereof) of Bruno:
- Does Camilo actually remember Bruno at all, but the memories are distorted because he was so young when his tio left, or is his knowledge on the man based solely on the gossip around town? Does he think Bruno is 7 feet tall because Bruno seemed so tall when Camilo was a short little 5-year-old? Or, given Mirabel doesn't even seem to know the gossip until the We Don't Talk About Bruno, is Camilo, who is quite theatrical, just grabbing at the chance to play a cartoonishly villainous caricature of their tío?
- A fan comic hypothesized that Camilo's verse sounds like Bruno was just standing around with his rat friends on his back, said hi to Camilo, and managed to look so intimidating that the kid fainted ("When he calls your name, it all fades to black").
- Camilo and Dolores have less screentime than their cousins and little brother, and their issues regarding their roles in the family and community (aside from Dolores' longing for Mariano) don't get much if any focus. Does this mean that their issues just aren't as big as their cousins' or was there just not enough time in the film to cover them, and they do indeed have some big issues that they'll have to work through post-movie?
- Did Mariano actually have any romantic interest in Isabela, is he a hopeless romantic, or (due to how quickly he was to move on from Isabela to Dolores), did he actually like Dolores back from the start, but was too afraid to break the marriage that had already been set for him?
- Were the "prophecies" that the townsfolk tell Mirabel about in We Don't Talk About Bruno actually prophecies or was Bruno just making simple observations and trying to warn them (as he did on Pepa's wedding day) and the townsfolk took it the wrong way? He could have very easily noticed that Senorita Pezmuerto's fish was looking ill (or else knew that tiny fishbowls aren't a good idea), and may have noticed Osvaldo was a Big Eater who was getting on in age (aka having his metabolism slow), and that the Priest's hairline was beginning to recede. On the other hand, Word of God has said that Bruno can have involuntary visions as well as his intentional ritual-activated visions, so the townsfolk's visions could have been visions he had from time to time.
- Did Abuela disown Bruno after he left and forbid everyone in town to talk about him at all because she felt "he was dead to her"? Or did his leaving cause so much grief for her that the Madrigals, and by extension the townsfolk, stopped talking about him altogether, lest they saddened her further?
- To what extent is Isabela's planned engagement to Mariano an Arranged Marriage on Alma's part? She's shown to be controlling, and her entire character arc centers on recognizing that she's been smothering her family with her expectations while trying to help them. Is she so blinded by her desire to secure the family's future that she doesn't see or outright ignores Isabela's unhappiness with the situation? Or does she genuinely believe the match is what Isabela wants, and is only getting involved because she wants things to go smoothly for Isabela? Mariano is clearly interested, and Isabela is too polite/afraid of upsetting her family to reject his affections, so Alma could misinterpret it as her returning his feelings, and Alma has come to micromanage her family in general. And to what degree is Alma projecting her own relationship with her late husband onto them? Isabela and Mariano resemble a young Alma and Pedro, so it's possible she's too busy focusing on her past to recognize how it's affecting her family's present and future. On the other hand, both Pepa and Julieta are shown to be Happily Married to their respective husbands, and according to Word of God, Alma was skeptical of Agustin marrying Julieta but let them do it anyway. This leads to another interpretation that she used to allow her family members to marry whoever they wanted and whenever they wanted to (which can be supported by how Bruno never got married nor had any children), but after Mirabel didn't get her gift, Alma could have been more forceful in her desires, and tried to make sure that Isabela gets wed and has babies as soon as possible to ensure that her legacy doesn't die out.
- An observant viewer will notice that Isabela often leaves loose flower petals behind her as she moves, with one scene showing Abuela sweeping them up. Immediately after Isabela's "I Am Becoming" Song where she and Mirabel are confronted by Abuela, the plants she grew are shown to disappear as a silent attempt to appease her grandmother. This leaves the interpretation that she may leave flower petals everywhere for Abuela to clean up as a subtle act of rebellion against being forced to play the perfect, angelic, golden child role in her family open.
- During the opening song "Family Madrigal", when Mirabel is asked about her (nonexistent) gift, a band throws her an accordion and encourages her to continue the song. Are they aware she has no gift and helping her change the sensitive topic of the conversation, or are they just as unaware and want to find out as well?
- An interesting observation found on You Tube: Isabela's grand entrance, with all the attention hogging, may be an effort to help her aunt. Pepa was definitely freaking out, and Isabela distracted her (and everybody else) from the vicious circle Pepa (by her own admittance) is prone to. And it worked.
- As Casita is collapsing and Mirabel is trying to get the Candle before it does, Casita forces everyone else out but helps Mirabel without hesitation. Did it also believe that saving the Candle would also save the Miracle even if it collapsed, or did it just know Mirabel well enough to know that Mirabel was not leaving without the Candle and so reasoned it'd be quicker to just help her?
- As Lee points out, it speaks volumes that Abuela just watches on as Mirabel's parents actually put in the effort to save their daughter or at least discourage her from getting the candle. Is she being exceptionally negligent of Mirabel's well-being? Or could it be she's coming to an epiphany that this is what unconditional, familial love looks like? On that note, could she also be having her Heel Realization that she's put Mirabel's parents through what she went through by leading Mirabel to risk her life the way Pedro did?
