Leafie
Leafie
Leafie is a free-spirited hen who welcomes adventure and accepts challenges. When she wishes for a child to raise on her own, she gets it in the form of an orphaned duckling.
- All of the Other Reindeer: She's ostracised both by the farm animals and the animals from the marsh, because she is a common hen and a weird hen with a duckling as son respectively. At one point, even the Mayor tells her nobody wants her (though he immediately regrets it).
- Character Tic: She tends to shout when she is excited.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Very much in the third act as she gets sicker.
- Dub Name Change: In the dub, she is called Daisy.
- Face Death with Dignity: As One Eye is about to give the fatal blow, Leafie just closes her eyes and calmly waits for the inevitable.
- Good Parents: She's nothing but caring and supportive towards her adoptive son.
- The Hero Dies: To help another mother to feed the latter's offspring.
- Heroic Sacrifice: After saying goodbye to Greenie and realizing she wouldn't survive the winter because of her illness anyway, she allows One Eye to kill and eat her so the baby weasels won't starve.
- Interspecies Adoption: She adopts Greenie the duckling after his parents deaths.
- Mama Bear: She's willingly to go to great lengths to protect Greenie and make him happy. Her maternal love goes beyond her adoptive child, as she lets herself being eaten by One Eye, so the latter can feed her babies.
- Mirror Character: To One Eye, as they are both mothers who just want to protect their offspring.
- The Nicknamer: She loves nicknaming other animals with names that may fit their personality or features.
- No Indoor Voice: She has the habit of being loud whenever she's excited.
- A Pet into the Wild: Leafie is a young hen who's sick of her life being stuck in a tiny cage being forced to lay eggs constantly. She ends up escaping and runs away into the nearby marsh after being ostracized by the coop chickens. Deconstructed as the marsh is not suitable for a hen, especially a captive one with no survival skills, something that even the Mayor points it out. Leafie grows sickly by the time her son is an adult and would have likely died even without her Heroic Sacrifice.
- Secretly Dying: Because of her being a domesticated hen in a completely different environment, she gets sicker as the movie goes on, sneezing, coughing, and looking thinner, pale, and disheveled. It's very implied that even without her Heroic Sacrifice, she wouldn't survive the winter anyway.
Greenie
Greenie
A male mallard duck whom Leafie adopts after his biological parents are killed by the weasel.
- Adoption Angst: Eventually lashes out at Leafie when he realizes he's not like her though ends up reconciling with her after she saves him from having his wings clipped by the farmer.
- Adoption Diss: Suffers this from the other ducks teasing him about his mother Leafie who is a hen.
- Call of the Wild Blue Yonder: Has this when he sees other ducks fly off though it takes from being taught by a bat and an owl and eventually being confronted and pursued by the weasel he does manage to fly.
- Coming of Age Story: The film focuses on his time growing up with Leafie from a duckling to an adolescent mallard.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: Never gets to know his biological parents who were separately killed by the weasel which left him in the care of Leafie.
- Die or Fly: Is faced with this when the weasel comes after him over a cliff which they fall off of which Leafie feared he was killed until he manages to successfully fly much to her relief while the weasel catches herself on the cliffside.
- Happily Adopted: Leafie takes good care of him during his time in the everglade.
- Heroic Lineage: Manages to gain his late father's position as a guard duck in a flying race with his flight skills taught by a bat and an owl.
- Manly Tears: Has this as he leaves Leafie at the end of the film to join his own kind as the new guard duck.
- No Indoor Voice: Inherits this being around his adopted mother Leafie.
Wanderer
Wanderer
A brooding male mallard duck whom Leafie befriends and later entrusts her in caring for his child eventually named Greenie.
- Big "NO!": Shouts this as he helplessly watched his mate be killed and taken away by the weasel.
- Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Is killed by the weasel at the same time his son later named Greenie eventually hatches out.
- Byronic Hero: Comes across as this due to his past and present feud with the weasel, but is nevertheless kind.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Crippled his right wing during his first confrontation with the weasel as a former guard duck which then cost her eye in return, left behind by his flock, captured and kept captive in the confines of the farm Leafie formerly resided in being unable to fly for some time before he escaped.
- Dub Name Change: Is named Wilson in the dub.
- Handicapped Badass: Despite being crippled in the right wing by One-Eye in the past, He still manages to hold a fight against her up until his sacrifice.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Led the weasel away from Leafie and the egg to ensure their survival before he's killed.
- Last Request: Before he sets off to fight One-Eye for one last time does he instruct Leafie to take his then unborn child Greenie to the everglade and understand why as Leafie later learns the former flock he was the guard duck returns to the area around autumn to let Greenie thrive with them.
Mayor
Mayor
An otter who helps Leafie adjust into the wild and watching out for Greenie.
- Adaptational Comic Relief: Provides some of the comic relief in the film.
- Canon Foreigner: Never appeared in the original novel though is one of the supporting characters for the film.
- Honorary Uncle: Is considered this for Greenie helping him manage to teach him swimming as a duckling and cheer him on in the flying race as an adolescent.
- Shoo Outthe Clowns: Disappears from the last few minutes of the film helping the rooster find a home in the wild, until being last seen with his mate as Greenie flies over them.
One-Eye
One-Eye
A ferocious female weasel who antagonizes Leafie and attempts to hunt her.
- Big Bad: The main antagonist of the film as her presence endangers Leafie and Greenie. She also kills both of Greenie's birth parents, prompting Leafie to raise the orphaned duckling. Subverted in hindsight, since, as she points out, as a carnivore she needs to kill other animals to survive.
- Mama Bear: Keeping her pups well-fed and alive is her main motivation during the winter season and she won't take kindly to those who threaten her pups, as Leafie nearly finds out.
- Monster Is a Mommy: Her true motivations involve her wanting to find food so her pups won't starve and die this winter, hence why she's been forced to hunt for meat.
- Named After the Injury: Gets her name from the fact that she's missing an eye, and she has a scar where it should be. However, in the English dub, this is averted, as she is nameless
- Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: She's a ferocious predator that needs to hunt to survive. Leafie only learns later on that she also became a mother caring for her babies and is desperately trying to scrape for food to survive. It's this understanding what allows Leafie to willingly let One-Eye kill and eat her so she can save her babies' life in the winter.
- Predators Are Mean: Subverted later in the film. She initially is depicted as predators typically are, being shown as "evil" and antagonistic to Leafie and Greenie, as well as killing both of Greenie's parents with malicious framing. However, The Reveal later in the film that she is a mother providing for her pups shows that she's simply doing what she has to ensure her babies' survival.
- Tender Tears: Let's this out when Leafie willingly gives herself up as food so One-Eye's babies can survive.
