Why style the '2' with Roman numerals instead of a number? Because Frozen II can also mean Frozen The Second, which ties as a hint into the sisters' royal blood, since heirs to kings and queens have a Roman numeral after their name if they share a name with an earlier monarch.
After Elsa abdicates, Anna is the second Frozen sister to become queen.
At first it doesn't seem to make sense that Elsa's barefoot when running on water to fight the Nokk. The platform she makes is heaving up at an ever-increasing angle and made out of ice. And she’s soaking wet. Those things combined create a nearly impossible climbing situation without spiked climbing boots. But Elsa has ice powers, so her magic can keep her from slipping on ice. And it also explains how she managed to climb the North Mountain without any gear. Also, some extreme sport practitioners go barefoot to get a better control on the surface and enjoy the use of their individual toes. As Elsa has no need for climbing gear or protection from the ill effects of cold, it makes perfect sense for her going for the maximum ability to grip and balance with hands and feet.
It’s no wonder that Anna and Elsa are so shocked and disgusted when learning what their grandfather did, considering their past experience with Hans and the Duke of Weselton. The reveal is likely especially shocking from Anna’s perspective, as the shot where Runeard attacks the Northuldra leader from behind is disturbingly similar to when Hans did the same to Elsa.
How come Matthias never managed to leave the enchanted forest while Agnarr and Iduna did? The spirits were punishing the ones who were fighting and disrupting the peace, while Agnarr and Iduna did the exact opposite by falling in love.
Sure, Elsa wincing at the echo of her singing "Let It Go" is primarily a good-natured Take That Us over the song's infamous Hype Backlash. However, it makes a good deal of sense in-universe, as "Let It Go" represents the moment where Elsa was so enamored with her newfound liberation that she didn't realize that she plunged her entire kingdom into an endless winter. Small wonder she'd regard it as an Old Shame.
How did Elsa come back to life after Anna destroyed the dam? Elsa explains Anna saved her. How did she? Because an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart, and Anna once again committed such an act. In this case, it was not just her love for her sister; but also her love for the people of Arendelle and the Northuldra. The spirits recognized Anna's willingness to sacrifice her kingdom to make things right. Thus, they revived the one being who was capable of stopping the flood. That's why Nokk is waiting for Elsa when she thaws out.
Ahtohallan, the holder of the world's memories, is a place of ice and snow, "where the north wind meets the sea." Elsa's ice powers make her immune to the cold and let her survive in Ahtohallan, a place of ice and snow, to find out the truth. While she does freeze to death after jumping into the pit, she was immune to the cold in the area of the glacier where she could find out the true cause of the war between Arendelle and the Northuldra.
Why didn't the Earth Giants simply destroy the dam on their own a long time ago? Because the dam was only a symptom of the real problem. The spirits wanted the people of Arendelle to realize and correct their mistakes. If the spirits destroyed the dam on their own, Arendelle would've just built another one. Also, if they did destroy the dam on their own, it would have flooded and destroyed Arendelle; the only reason why that didn't happen was because of Elsa and the Nokk using their powers to prevent it. Even worse, without the spirits evacuating Arendelle out of the kingdom, several people would have died in the flood, either from drowning or getting crushed by the debris. That scenario would have given the Arendellian survivors even more of a reason to distrust magic and the Northuldra. Besides, Elsa explains to Anna that when Anna made the right choice, the spirits agreed Arendelle should continue to stand - with Anna. This suggests they wanted to see if an Arendellian would take the responsibility and that the kingdom's fate would depend on whether one did. Between that and them using their powers to evacuate the people out of the kingdom, it's clear that the spirits didn't want to condemn a group of innocent people for the actions of one of their leaders.
Why does Iduna look so different as a child in comparison to their appearance as an adult? While the obvious reason is to keep the identity of the mysterious girl a secret, it's likely that her hair got darker as she got older, which is also shown with Agnarr, not to mention the natural changes in facial features as one ages. Besides, the castle likely has portraits of Agnarr from his youth as a prince for Elsa and Anna to recognize him right away. No such portraits of Iduna would exist, so they simply had no idea what their mother looked like as a young girl.
Elsa only starting to hear the Voice now makes a lot of sense if you apply the context here to the first film. In the first movie, the bridge between nature and humans was broken: Anna and Elsa's closed-off relationship, and because Elsa was also imbalanced due to shifting from one extreme to another, suppressing her magic because she was afraid of being found out, and later abandoning Arendelle to embrace her magic. The first film has Elsa finding the balance between her human and magical natures, fixing one part of the problem. The intervening years give the sisters time to repair their relationship and for Arendelle to adjust to magic by virtue of being ruled by a queen with ice powers. When the bridge is finally repaired, it can do what it was meant to do.
Also, both sisters are now of age. They can both make the decision to find and take their places as different sides of the bridge: Elsa in Ahtohollan / the Enchanted Forest, communing with the elemental spirits, and Anna as the new Queen of Arendelle, leading it into a new era based on truth and love.
The specific season makes sense as well. It's Autumn, the season most strongly associated with change and maturity. The first Frozen was all about Spring and rebirth, thawing and restoring the sisters' bond after being frozen for years. This one is about that bond going through an evolution.
Not only is Anna the second side of the bridge with the magical world, but her union with Kristoff makes her also part of another bridge between Arendelle royalty and people living in the wilderness like the ice harvesters and the Northuldra.
Also, Anna's experiences have prepared her well. She lived with Hans a similar situation Northuldra lived with Runeard, witnessing firsthand a power-hungry royal wreaking havoc through countless lives just to feed his power fantasies. There's no way Queen Anna is going to willingly cripple the equilibrium between Northuldra, Ice Harvesters and Arendellians like her grandfather did, or solve her problems pretending they could be just hidden biding for better times like her parents did.
Matthias readily accepting Anna's revelation of King Runeard's betrayal of the Northuldra makes sense given that Matthias was part of the royal guard, and it's pretty plausible he was aware of Runeard's hatred of magic.
When Yelena declares that Northuldra would never have attacked first, it's telling that Matthias doesn't immediately retort that neither would Arendelle. All he says is, "May the truth be found." In his heart, he had his doubts.
Runeard told at least one of his aides about his plan. It's plausible that certain details leaked out to the rest of the guard, but were initially dismissed as rumors, until Anna revealed the truth.
While in Northuldra, Elsa muses about the Ahtohallan Lullaby being unnecessarily scary for a kid trying to get to sleep. This is actually Truth in Television, as lullabies and fairy tales used to be scary and gore-filled as a way to drill in children's minds enough knowledge to avoid dangers on their own. And Elsa survived Ahtohallan only because of her powers and Anna's intervention: a random Northuldra kid would have needed the lullaby's advice.
It also explains Iduna's compliance with Agnarr's misguided attempts to help Elsa. As she was a Northuldran girl when Runeard killed her people's leader out of sheer racism and basically she spent her entire life hiding her own heritage even to Agnarr (until they grew old together and married, basically) in fear of losing him or becoming the next victim of Arendelle's distrust of magic, she sees in Elsa a more extreme version of herself. Taken together with Pabbie's vision, no wonder she worried what the average Arendellian could have done to Elsa if she ever were found as a powerful magic user and a half-Northuldra herself.
"Water has memory." Elsa creates ice figures based on past events. This could actually be representing photographs, as some might say they are memories frozen in time, or perhaps, more accurately, an image frozen in time to represent a memory.
This also explains why most of the images seen at Ahtohallan are clips from the movies. She subsequently creates many snow figures representing past memories. And as above, these can be taken to be 3D-photographs. They're moving pictures.
If water remembers everything, you can say it has a photographic memory.
Additionally, the part of the brain responsible for storing memories is the hippocampus, which physically resembles a sea horse and was thus named after the sea horse of Greek mythology. What does the water spirit manifest as, again?
While it's passed off as a sweet and slightly funny inside joke, Agnarr reading to Iduna his copy of the novel of some Danish author with the cover showing a picture of Disney's adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid makes perfect sense. Not only is Andersen also the author of the story that inspired Frozen, Iduna's story has some parallels with both the Andersen and Disney versions of The Little Mermaid. Iduna is the playful and compassionate singing savior of a fully-human prince, hailing from a place of people deemed to be more than human (or less, if you ask the dead Runeard) because they commune with spirits and command magic. Iduna willingly follows her prince into the less magical world, unable to go back, losing her heritage forever and scared to tell him the whole story. Fortunately, she does get a somewhat happy life after leaving, making her ending a cross between Disney and Andersen.
Elsa and Anna themselves also have parallels to the little mermaid. Andersen's version is reserved and introverted, often keeping to herself, like Elsa. Anna's daring, playful, compassionate personality is like Ariel's. And like Andersen's mermaid, she initially thinks she needs to be rescued by a prince's love, only to discover the love within her is enough.note Andersen's version is known for not having a happily ever after and marriage like Disney's, but its conclusion is more of a Bittersweet Ending than a pure downer. The mermaid does not get the guy, but due to her own Act of True Love, she does get the immortal soul she had longed for.
Also, the expanded lore of the Disney Little Mermaid says that King Triton had reasons to believe humans are murderers. Just like the average Northuldra had no doubt Runeard shed first blood even before Elsa uncovered that.
Agnarr was largely unconscious during his rescue and doesn't know who saved him, but remembers hearing a voice. Not unlike Eric and Ariel for most of The Little Mermaid.
Don't dive too deep, or you'll be drowned. If you stay inside of your memories for too long and never make new ones, you might become trapped and lose yourself. A visual representation of this is Elsa becoming frozen (stuck) in Ahtohallan. And as mentioned above, true love thawed her out. It takes a lot of love to help someone with that kind of escapism problem.
In "Some Things Never Change," Anna and Olaf sing about "an old stone wall that will never fall" - which immediately proceeds to crumble - as a metaphor for how things change. What's the dam, if not an old stone wall?
Anna is the only person in her family to accept magic unconditionally. Her grandfather hated and feared magic, her parents wanted Elsa to hide her magic (granted, that was only after being warned that Elsa might be attacked if she couldn't control how it manifested) and didn't think to also teach her how to use them in a purposeful way, and in the first film, Elsa had the same reaction and was afraid of her powers. Meanwhile, Anna never showed any fear towards Elsa's powers and always believed that she could control them. Fitting that she becomes queen in the end and the "human" side of the bridge linking the human and magical worlds together.
Frozen (2018) already foreshadowed some plot points of Frozen II. Queen Iduna knows the Hidden Folk's call because she was a child of the northern nomads. (This is revealed in private, after she has given the order to clear the room and to let no one in or out.) Later, when a young Elsa worries about being unable to cope while her parents are gone, King Agnarr tells her the trip is needed to find answers.
The interior of Elsa's ice castle from the first movie resembles the "anteroom" of Ahtohallan. That segment of "Show Yourself" is a visual Call-Back to "Let It Go," right down to Elsa stamping down to create a snowflake/vegvisir on the floor, and getting a makeover that has her undoing her hair and giving herself a cape made from ice. "Let It Go" is one of the steps on her journey to embracing her powers - and, unknowingly at the time, her position as one half of the fifth spirit. Her powers may have recreated Ahtohallan subconsciously.
What's the first thing Elsa creates in "Let It Go" (after Olaf), that begins to showcase the extent of her growing powers? A bridge, made out of ice, that's structurally sound and enough for people to walk on with ease.
Anna's fear that Kristoff is going to break up with her when he uses poor word choices is Played for Laughs, but it makes sense when you think about what's happened to people she loves during Anna's life. Her parents left on a trip and died suddenly and unexpectedly on it, Elsa stopped talking to her and shut her out for years before nearly dying in front of Anna (and only survived because Anna threw herself in front of the sword), and her fiance broke things off without warning by telling her no one loved her before leaving her to die. It makes a lot of sense that she'd have abandonment issues, and it looks like she does. She followed Elsa up a frozen mountain into an enchanted forest, and then a section of that forest that was on fire just to avoid being separated from her sister. Her abandonment issues actually make her jumping to conclusions quite realistic.
During their years being separated in the first film, Anna brings up that she’s now started “talking to the pictures on the walls” since Elsa won’t play with her anymore. It’s no wonder that she identifies Matthias so quickly when they meet, even knowing the exact place and position where his portrait is placed. And on close inspection of the castle library during the charades scene, Matthias is indeed the second portrait on the left.
Elsa is able to part the mist surrounding the forest by touching it whereas when Olaf and Kristoff tried, they bounced off. However, Elsa was holding Anna's hand when she parted the mist... Which foreshadows that it's not just Elsa who is the bridge and who will free the forest, and that Anna is just as important to freeing the forest and is the other part of the bridge. This explains why they weren't able to pass through the mist when they tried again after passing the first time - they were trying separately.
To viewers familiar with the Alchemic Elementals, the Nøkk seems like the odd man out since Bruni is obviously Salamander, while Gale and the Earth Titans are easily accepted as different interpretations of Sylph and Gnome, but Undine has apparently been replaced by a horse. However, in some folktales Nøkks appear in human form, usually as beautiful women. So it does end up working as a different interpretation of Undine.
Elsa's Big Damn Heroes moment in stopping the flood seems like an Ass Pull, with her Traveling at the Speed of Plot to be able to reach Arendelle in time. However, after she thaws out in Ahtohallan, the Nøkk sees her fall, presumably catches her, and the next thing we see is Elsa emerging on horseback from the water. Water is the Nøkk's domain. There is no canon-defined limitation on how fast the Nøkk can go in its element. Elsa and the Nøkk are essentially traveling with the flood waters and speed up to catch the beginning of the waves just in time. Alternatively, water has memory; it could have teleported her in some form. Furthermore, Elsa says that the spirits decided that Arendelle deserves to stand. It's possible that the spirits are helping her, or have increased her power. She has an easier time stopping a wave with ice than she did when battling the Nokk. This could either be because he's working together with her or her power has increased. Whichever explanation you subscribe to, it makes perfect sense within the limitations of the story and the lore that has been presented.
When confronting Bruni, Elsa raises a fist at him, immediately after which Bruni approaches her curiously. Normally, a raised fist is a sign of aggression, but Elsa just demonstrated that she uses an open hand to use her powers. Thus, a closed fist tells Bruni she is not preparing a magical strike.
All of Elsa and Anna's battles with the four spirits make more sense with the perspective that the spirits are trying to lose. We know they're not really malicious, since they could've destroyed Arendelle but instead forced everyone out in anticipation it might be destroyed. Each time a spirit is "tamed", however, that spirit is only fighting just hard enough to make Elsa earn it.
Inside Gale's tornado, Elsa rescues Anna from a flying branch, after which Gale interferes with Elsa's powers, and ejects the rest of the gang out of the vortex while Elsa is distracted, then frees Elsa so that she will use her ice powers against the vortex. Use of the ice powers leads to some memories and a hint about the past.
Bruni could burn the whole forest if he wanted, but never actually attacks anyone, backs himself into a corner and allows Elsa the chance to prove she's using her powers defensively (by putting out a flame he starts on a tree.)
The Nokk repeatedly allows Elsa to swim to the surface and breathe, before attacking. He does try to pin her down underwater, but only after she's taken a breath, and it's likely this is once again only to force her to use her ice. And if he were really trying to kill Elsa or stop her from getting to Ahtohallan, he need not have even appeared at all - the Dark Sea was doing a fine job of stopping Elsa on its own.
Anna doesn't fight the earth spirits, but they sure do miss her with their boulders a lot. In particular, while Anna is on the dam, one boulder comes crashing down in front of her, forcing her to turn back - she would otherwise have been cut off from Kristoff and Mattias. And the giants stop throwing boulders as soon as they notice the dam is breaking, which suggests they knew all along they weren't aiming for Anna.
In all cases, the spirits are trying to help, but in a way that forces Elsa and Anna to figure things out on their own, and never in a way that suggests (to the viewers, but also to the characters) that they'll simply act as a deus ex machina to clean up the world's messes.
While eventually, it's more or less explicitly stated that the spirits were trying to force everyone out of Arendelle rather than harm anyone, this is hinted at during the evacuation scene: the wind blows everyone toward the mountains and nobody has to force their way into it; also, the earth moves in waves in the same direction - but only up the streets. Fire and water could destroy the town or hurt someone, so they're merely shut off.
Anna's song "The Next Right Thing" has an odd rhyme scheme that seems a bit scattershot at first. The first stanza has nine lines and only two of them rhyme - it's something like ABCDEFGHE. The next one seems equally random, with only two sets of rhymes in nine lines that goes ABCDECFFG. It throws off the listener, who is used to hearing songs and being able to fall into a rhythm and perhaps even able to fill in a rhyming word. But the song slowly coalesces, and rhymes become closer together, until the last stanza, when the lines get sorted into rhyming pairs: AABCCDDB. We are given the chance to feel, like Anna, that we cannot see what comes next - we cannot easily see "the next right thing" in the song. But as Anna sorts things out in her mind, and the next right thing for her to do becomes clearer and clearer, so too does the song, and by the end, we, like Anna, can start once again to mentally fill in the blanks.
Queen Anna has the exact same hairstyle as her mother. If Elsa's gradually loosening hairstyles signify her growing freedom, Anna adopting Iduna's style as queen can signify a greater and more permanent acceptance of the role than Elsa had.
One of Elsa's reasons for not wanting to follow the Voice into the unknown is that "everyone I've ever loved is here within these walls." But that's not really true....and Elsa's "secret siren" knows that.
"Some Things Never Change" has the cast singing about things they think will last forever. But the song is not called "Nothing Ever Changes", and true to the actual title, some things really do never change - but some things do, and there's an important message in what changes and what doesn't. The things they sing about that actually don't change all deal with love, family, relationships, people, etc., such as, "Like how we get along just fine," or "Like the love that I feel for her." But some things do change; for example:
"We'll always live in a kingdom of plenty" - and the townsfolk are ejected from the kingdom that night.
"The flag of Arendelle will always fly" - that night the flag is ripped off its flagpole, and by the end of the movie, the flagpole has been replaced with a statue of Agnarr and Iduna to represent the regained friendship between Arendelle and the Northuldrans. (Yes, it's the same plinth.)
While Elsa is singing "Show Yourself", she makes a new ice-dress (or else Ahtohallan makes one for her - it's not totally clear) with a split train. The train appears while she sings "Grow yourself into something new" - and it looks a lot like butterfly wings.
As Honeymaren is telling Elsa about the fifth spirit, she mentions that some people say they "heard it call out the day the forest fell." They were hearing Iduna, calling for Gale's help.
Elsa, with her ice magic and supernatural tolerance of cold, is the only one who can get to Ahtohallan. Anna almost certainly cannot. Perhaps Iduna knows this, either subconsciously or otherwise, because as she sings "All Is Found", she puts Anna to sleep right away and sings the song to Elsa almost exclusively. It foreshadows who will eventually get to see Ahtohallan.
Elsa has to leave Anna behind to reach Ahtohallan and realise her destiny. However, when she pushes too far into Ahtohallan, she ends up turning to ice. This reinforces the symbolism of Anna and Elsa as the two ends of a bridge, as well as the relationship between the sisters at the end of the movie - they aren't meant to be in the same place, but they are also not meant to be too far apart.
There is a bit of symbolism relating to birth or motherhood in the Ahtohallan scene. For example, the entrance to the cave appears a bit yonicnote shaped like the female genitalia. There are a couple ways to interpret this. One is that Elsa is reconnecting with her mother by returning to the source of her magic, i.e. "reentering the womb (the main chamber where she views her memories)." It's also foreshadowing that Elsa will soon be "reborn" when she unfreezes, as well as perhaps suggesting her ascension to womanhood.
When Anna is trying to convince the soldiers to help her destroy the dam, she reveals that Elsa, the Queen, is dead. That means Anna is now Queen of Arendelle, so her request isn't just a request, it's now an order from their Queen.
Water has memories, which spawns all kinds of ideas about water knowing if it's ingested, which is something that Olaf actually refers to in the movie.
When Elsa is frozen in Ahtohallan, all of her magic is undone. This results in Olaf’s death and would have definitely done the same to Marshmallow and the Snowgies in Elsa’s ice palace. While Olaf’s explanation to them in The Stinger is Played for Laughs, the experience of suddenly disintegrating from existence must have been especially horrifying from their perspective. Given how large Marshmallow is, he might have disintegrated slowly compared to the others.
The soldiers from Arendelle that were trapped in the Enchanted Forest are finally able to leave the Enchanted Forest and return home if they want to, which seems fine until you realize that they had been stuck there for over 34 years. A lot would have changed since then, and not all of it would be positive. Loved ones could have passed away without a chance to say goodbye. Significant others could have moved on with someone else. Children now grown up without their fathers would have their own children now. Their homes would be gone or now occupied by someone else. Matthias seems to have adjusted, but what about the others?
When Olaf talks about all water having passed through multiple humans and animals, Elsa's unsurprisingly disgusted. It gets another layer when one realizes what her element is. Yeah, the idea of her ice powers being ex-urine would definitely be unpleasant to her.
The number of Arendelle soldiers seems small compared to Northuldra, especially when you notice how large the Arendelle troop contingent was in the beginning of the movie and how many were remaining when the Frozen group enter the forest. It's because when the mist descended, the entire tribe was trapped along with their men, women, and children, while the soldiers had just left their families or romantic partners back in Arendelle, and there don't seem to be many women in the army anyway. Also, the forest was already the Northuldran's home so they already had the necessary supplies and knew how to survive in the forest, even with the angry spirits. The soldiers most likely only had their rations and had to learn how to survive in the forest. Imagine just how many soldiers died in that forest during those 34 years.
After the fight between the Northuldra and Arendelle in the Forest, it's assumed there were multiple casualties. As the fight occurred, the forest was closed off - meaning that the remaining survivors were surrounded by the dying/dead bodies of their friends and family. They then would have had to spend time burying everyone, and they lived in essentially a graveyard for the next 34 years.
Remember Sven leading the reindeer out into the meadow, to run around in excitement through the flowers? Reindeer only live about 15 years. None of those animals had ever been able to run around in the open like that before, nor did their parents or (probably) their grandparents. Furthermore, those meadow flowers they're galloping among are the kind of food reindeer normally get to gorge themselves on in the summer, instead of subsisting on lichens and twigs from the forests. These reindeer have been essentially stuck on starvation rations for their entire lives, and only now will they be able to dine on what their bodies are built to eat.
The look on Elsa's face makes it clear that she feels terrible about tricking Anna and Olaf into getting pushed down her ice slide. Elsa's already pretty emotional from confronting the truth about their parents' deaths. But while Anna's just sad, Elsa is certainly both sad and guilt-ridden - and not just about feeling like she caused their deaths. She also forced her 15-year-old sister to be the chief mourner at their parents' funeral, with all the royal duties and emotional baggage that come with that chore, while she - the elder sister, and queen to boot - locked herself in her room and hid. And even after that, Anna came to her and sang, "I'm right out here for you," and begged Elsa to open the door - which she didn't do. Elsa's feelings of guilt were strong enough to cause her to spend weeks planning a surprise birthday party for Anna - and now, after all those memories come flooding back, Elsa feels like the only path forward is to do the one thing Anna begged her for years not to do, and the one thing Elsa feels worst about. There are a lot more awful emotions going on for Elsa than she even shows on her despairing face.
Upon finding out that Halima had never married anyone else, Mattias notes that the fact doesn't make him as happy as he thought it would. One possible reason for this is that he may have subconsciously guessed that she was waiting for him all those years, and they both missed some of the best years of their lives they could've spent together. A part of him could had also hoped that Halima had moved on and found happiness with someone else instead of mourning/waiting for him for 34 years.
There's an aurora as Agnarr and Iduna tell the girls the story of the enchanted forest and sing about Ahtohallan, and there's an aurora the night Elsa strikes Anna in the head with ice magic. And their parents are wearing the same clothes in both instances. It's probably the same night.note and during a bonus feature, the co-director, Jennifer Lee, says she thinks it is. It's rather sad to think that such a poignant scene is also Elsa's last night as "herself", and Anna's last night with her sister's companionship, for 13 years.
