Headscratchers / Encanto

WARNING: Headscratchers pages have unmarked spoilers.

Note: Headscratchers pages are for "sincere questions, and discussing Fridge Logic," not complaints.

Why isn't Isabela in charge of the Encanto's food production?

• Abuela Alma pegged Isa as a flower girl. But, her power is to grow all manner of plants. Hell, some of what she grows in "What Else can I do" are actual crops. Why isn't she put in charge of the village's food production?
  • Everyone gets their gift at age five, and most likely by then all she knew how to do was make flowers — and because we know that Abuela gets to work on having them use their gifts to help the town the moment they get their gifts, Isabela probably got designated with the role of 'make everything look prettier' the moment she started doing it. Basically, it is the same reason why a child who learns how to play the piano decently well will sometimes be pushed by their parents to become a piano prodigy despite having a variety of other skills.
  • Likely because that was already designated to Pepa, so Alma didn't consider that option and wanted to maximize efficiency by making sure no one's job overlaps.

Rats in Camilo's impersonation

• When Camilo was impersonating Bruno, did he generate the rats along his back, or did Antonio's rats just join in on the performance?
  • Given that the scene takes place in a dungeon and involves him creating a sinkhole, probably just dramatic imagery along with the flashback shown earlier.

Pepa's contribution

• What is exactly that Pepa does to contribute to the community? With all the pressure everybody else has, it's not exactly clear what she does.
  • One might guess she tries to help the agriculture, but with how volatile her mood is, I don't really know how helpful she can be.
  • Her power could still be helpful even if it's not totally in control. Look at Elsa in Frozen; even with Power Incontinence so severe it causes a storm all over the kingdom, she's still able to use her power on purpose to do stuff like build herself an ice castle and dress. Pepa's power seems to be similar. She can't always control it, but we see she can do it sometimes, like when she uses that "clear skies, clear skies" mantra to calm herself down and get rid of that raincloud over her head.
  • Good point about Elsa and at the end of the film, she does grasp that she can use love to control her power. Pepa may be still working this out and it's even possible that her erratic control is related to the magic fading.

Dolores' contribution

• Rearrange the above a bit, and change that to Dolores. I don't see how super-hearing can be very useful in a small rural community except for gossip.
  • Under the right circumstances, super-hearing could be very useful. If some livestock, like one of those donkeys, or a pet goes missing, she could probably find them much more quickly than anyone else by hearing them. If someone is trapped far away from other people and is calling for help, she could hear their calls when others might not be able to and help find them. How often that happens is unclear, so it's really hard to tell whether the uses outweigh the downsides, but it does have great potential.
  • Another way her gift could be useful would be to hear if someone is in an abusive situation, allowing her to help them get out of it.
  • Which means she could hear ANY wrongdoing. Which must provide no small amount of Paranoia Fuel for the villagers.
  • She might also hear an erratic heartbeat or other signs of physical ailments and bring them to the attention of Julieta.
  • Super-hearing can be extremely useful in a community. She could detect vermin and venomous animals like snakes infesting a house before anyone gets hurt, find people and animals lost in the woods like said above, localize water streams, unforeseen disasters like landslides, know if someone got stuck somewhere etc..
  • I kind of consider her like a Lord Varys (from Game of Thrones) in House Madrigal
  • Dolores' power could also be incredibly useful in the situation that displaced Alma in the first place- picking up on potential attackers/threats and ushering everyone to some form of safety long before they actually arrive.
  • Keep in mind that the Madrigal family basically leads the town; her super-hearing means that anyone who needs their assistance just has to say "hey, Dolores, we have something we need help with here" and she can immediately send the most useful family member. Her awareness of everything that happens in town also makes her an ideal advisor to Alma, especially once Bruno disappeared.
  • Sometimes one can defuse harmful gossip with the truth, or by obliquely offering counter-examples to malicious rumors.

Isabela's contribution

• How about Isabela? It seems all she can do is grow flowers everywhere. While it does result in some really pretty visuals, what exactly does it contribute to the community?
  • There are a few possibilities. Depending on what plants she grows and when and where, she can help grow food and medicine — some flowers are edible, have healing properties, and/or help other plants grow. We see she has powers over vines, too, which she can use like an endless supply of rope. Plus, pretty visuals are often valued for helping people feel happy. The psychological benefits of flowers, especially for elderly people, have been well documented. There's enough demand for them in many communities for there to be people who work full-time as florists.
  • And — there are bees — everywhere. Given that honeybees are dying out in many parts of the world, she may be sustaining their ecosystem.
  • All of this might be intentional — the reason a lot of the gifts don't seem to be particularly useful is because they're gifts. They're not meant to be useful, they're meant to be enjoyed. The fact that several family members have to stretch to find ways they can be "useful" is the first, subtle sign Alma's belief they need to prove they're worthy of them is wrong.
  • In addition, they've been forced to use their gifts in very prescribed ways. It's not that she can ONLY grow flowers, it's that she's been told to only grow flowers because she's the pretty one that should beautify everything. Pretty... but useless and merely an object for others until she learns to exert herself.
  • Isabela's shock at growing something not-pretty and quickness to start growing more of them suggest she wasn't forced or even told to only grow flowers, just didn't realize she could grow anything else. The family is also big on helping out the community, so it seems unlikely that she was told to limit herself to only looking pretty and not doing anything else useful. Yet it does seem that she was so focused on being "perfect" that she never considered experimenting until she started doing it by accident and then was delightedly surprised by the discovery she can also grow things just because she likes them, another sign that the gifts weren't meant to be as useful as the family thought they were.
    • Flowers may be spontaneous manifestations that she started at once, and Abuela Alma (as noted in the above folder) encouraged her to focus on making those "perfect" before letting her work on "difficult" stuff. Also, I think you may be underestimating how insidious and thorough the "be pretty" mantra is drilled into little girls sometimes.

Why is the Encanto all up in Madrigal business?

• I want to know why everyone in town is so involved in the Madrigal family matters. Why does Alma invite the whole town to every child's gift reveal ceremony? Are they actually considered members of the community or are they mere sideshow entertainment? And why, why, WHY do these people, who have no powers themselves, think that they can give Mirabel shit for not having any powers? They're even involved in Isabela's engagement to Mariano, for God's sake!
  • The Madrigals are considered key pillars of the community, and the movie both tells and shows that the family constantly uses their gifts to help the other members of town. That's part of why there's so much pressure on the whole family to make sure they have those gifts and are using them in a helpful way, because other people are counting on them. And none of them try to make Mirabel feel lesser for not having a gift, and they clearly show their appreciation for the family regardless whether or not they have gifts when all of them come together to help them rebuild their home even though they've lost the magic towards the end of the movie. They also help the family try to find Mirabel when she leaves and clearly care about her whether or not she has a magic gift.
  • In addition to what was said above, the original miracle essentially cut the town off from the rest of the world with the mountains so the town is extremely dependent on the Madrigals and their gifts to survive.
    • Also the other refugees were THERE when Pedro sacrificed himself and Alma's despair brought forth the miracle that cut the soldiers off from them. The Madrigal miracle is the only reason they weren't all killed by the same soldiers that killed Pedro.
  • Other than the incredibly tone-deaf "The Not Special Special" guy, the rest of the villagers seem to treat Mira with affection and respect, perhaps similar to the way they see the men who married in.
  • And even he seems well-meaning when he gives her the gifts, in the same way that Bruno's insensitive joke about rain was really meant to be comforting.
  • That's actually how many rural Latin American communities work in real life, with a lot of meddling from the entire community in the matters of each individual family, specially noteworthy families.
  • The general population doesn't give Mirabel shit, and the little kids are just curious and tactless, the way little kids frequently are.

Why didn't Mirabel get a gift?

• The film never seems to answer its own question: why was Mirabel passed over for a gift? Magical universes generally have their own rules, and we're given an explanation when they're broken. Yet there doesn't seem to be any reason that the Casita would shun Mirabel...she seems to have a bond with the house itself, and it won't even give her her own room? The only explanation seems to be "the magic had to make someone a Muggle to teach A Very Important Lesson to the special people before they went back to being special."
  • Or that creating a new foundation (understanding the Casita and seeing it was in danger before anyone else, besides Bruno), is seen with the rebuilding of the Casita. This could also extend to that her gift is that anything she builds will give gifts to others.
    • This doesn't wash because if it is her gift, Casita would acknowledge it by giving her a room and door rather than straight up encouraging others to believe she has no gift, leaving her to 10 years of being regarded as "less than" (if not shunned, as debated below). There is no explanation as to why it does not do so, and it's even odder given that not letting them know what the "gift" is (if it's a gift at all) actually works against the house's interests! As is, it's probably as noted above the Theory of Narrative Causality at play ("Things happen because the plot says they should").
    • The movie is very clear that Mirabel is not shunned. She is somewhat pitied, but that could also happen with other gifts Casita gives - look at Dolores (imagine the problems with accidentally overhearing everything in town) and Bruno (definitely has lots of unpleasant visions).
    • Mirabel may not be shunned, per say, but she's obviously Alone in a Crowd. Just because her family and the villagers don't actively shun her, they do constantly remind her that's she lacking - and that's not even taking Alma's narcissism into account.
    • The Alone in a Crowd trope is about a character standing still as a crowd moves around them, which doesn't seem to apply to any of Mirabel's scenes. Narcissism also doesn't seem to be one of Alma's faults, at least not in the movie. The part about her being reminded that she's lacking is covered by the bullet above, how Casita already gave other family members gifts that can invite pity.
    • Okay, let's trade narcissism for pride. Alma was so unbendingly proud of her family's image that she subconsciously creates the cracks in the very foundation of her magical home (true love for family first, after all.) She ignored all the warnings that didn't fit her ideal narrative - to the point of driving away her only son and blaming the distraction of Casita on her magicless granddaughter - until it was too late. Thankfully this is a Disney film, though. Everything gets saved and everyone gets to live happily ever after.
    • If Mirabel isn't shunned now, she's getting there. Seeing the cracks before anyone else does puts her in Bruno's place. Alma came to see her as not only magicless, but as having a sort of anti-gift and using it to get back at the family for not having a regular Gift (the chaos at the Guzmans' visit). The other family members can't help but be influenced by what Alma thinks, even if they don't entirely agree. It's only a matter of time before Mirabel would have felt compelled to leave as well.
    • Possible, but even Bruno wasn't actually shunned, so it's not a given. The chaos at the Guzmans' visit was also connected to a prophecy involving Mirabel and the fading of the magic. Even if so, why would any of this disprove the theory?
    • True, he kind of "shun-ified" himself by leaving after Mirabel's failed gift ceremony.
    • There's an entire song called "We Don't Talk About Bruno". If that's not shunning, I don't know what is.
    • Merriam-Webster defines "shun" as "to avoid deliberately and especially habitually." The movie shows that Bruno is the one avoiding the family, hiding in the walls, rather than the other way around and that the "We Don't Talk About Bruno" rule applies only during the period when he is gone and the other characters have no opportunity to interact with him — and as soon as they have the chance to do so again, they all promptly embrace him, some literally. By definition, it is Bruno who (for perfectly sympathetic reasons) is shunning the family until he comes back in the end.
  • Going back to the original question, we have to take into account that Jared Bush described Casita, while sentient, as itself imperfect, "a little bit more opinionated and flawed like a family. It's a house that plays favorites, a house that messes with people." Not allowing Mirabel a Gift may have been a bad choice on the house's part, but also reflected its feelings at the time about how things were going and the direction the family was headed if this kept up. There's also some indication that one of the WMGs was correct; Alma's fear about the magic fading messed up Mirabel's ceremony somehow. (This may be one reason she asked Mirabel to steer clear of Antonio's ceremony.)
  • There may be a very valid reason: Mirabel was able to save the magic only because she doesn't have a power. Think about it. Every time a family member receives a gift, he or she also gets a role in the family and with that comes a lot of expectations that prevent them from being their true selves. Mirabel doesn't get a power, thus she doesn't get any role, and while that makes her feel like an outcast, it also means she doesn't have any pressure or expectations, meaning that she is the only one that can be herself. In order to save the magic, Mirabel has to defy many of the rules that Alma has imposed. Neither Isabela or Luisa would do that, because if they do they'd be violating people's expectations, and they can't afford to do that because they feel too much weight on their shoulders. Mirabel, on the other hand, feels more free and that's what allows her to save the day. She is also the only one that's isn't part of the system of perfection that Alma has created (aside for Bruno), so she also is the only only one that can look at that system from an outside perspective and see the flaws in it, and that's what the house needed; that's why it doesn't give her a gift. Also, Alma needed to understand that someone doesn't need a power to be special in order realize her mistakes.
  • This analysis of the film by Andrew Walser pretty much bears this out.
  • The lack of explanation may be allusion to the magical realism genre that Encanto is partially based off. In magical realism, extraordinary "magical" events occur in mostly down-to-earth, realistic settings. It's not commented upon or explored in detail like in traditional fantasy.
  • This may be partly why Jared Bush deliberately left unanswered the question of why Mirabel has no Gift, just leaving it up in the air and going with what Mirabel thinks, becomes and does because she has no Gift.
  • Part of the reason there is no clear explanation is given is because there is not supposed to be a clear reason. The audience is free to interpret it as they want and come up any number of answers. One possible answer is how Alma was beginning to view the family's Gifts more as tools to serve the community. Casita began to notice this change in perspective and thus did not give Mirabel a Gift, possibly as a way to teach Alma a lesson in empathy. We saw for Antonio's ceremony, Alma seemed more concerned for how the village would react if he didn't get a gift as opposed to how nervous Antonio was feeling. Mirabel meanwhile was the one who tried to comfort and emphasize Antonio in place of Alma. Mirabel's lack of a gift serves as a reminder to Alma why they have been given these gifts. To help the family grow as people as opposed to be tools for exploitation.
  • It could be genetic, specifically a dominant gene where the original triplets have one dominant allele each. This would make it 75% likely that a child born from the two parents would have a gift. It would be entirely possible that 3/3 children from one magic/non magic couple got powers while 2/3 children from the other did. If so there could be other children without a gift as more generations went on, or if Bruno had children.
  • "She seems to have a bond with the house itself, and it won't even give her her own room?" Maybe the house was signifying that her bond with the whole house was her gift, and that she didn't need her own room. It was just misinterpreted.
    • There's an entry in the Fridge Brilliance page that really adds to this. Mirabel's focus and the way she improves the family is by keeping track of them, listening to them, and helping them work out their problems. The position of 'Abuela' in the culture and in the movie, plus the general position of 'matriarch' in many cultures, fits right into this. Mirabel, like Abuela Alma, takes care of the family itself rather than being a family member who takes care of the townspeople. In turn, her door is the front door (it shows the whole family, but she is front and center), and the entire house is 'her room'.
  • The Casita itself doesn't give out the miracles, it's another product of it. Casita has no control over the rooms created when a Madrigal receives their gift, which is why it didn't just make a magical room for Mirabel, and when she asks how she's supposed to save the miracle, it clearly communicates to her that it doesn't know.
• Perhaps the house will give one family member of every other generation no powers to test how the others will react, which fits into the narrative that the Encanto was granted by God's power. We've only seen three generations of living Madrigals in the town, and, while Mirabel is the first Madrigal born in the Encanto with no powers, there's nothing to prove that she'll be the last one. By skipping one member of every other generation, it allows the Madrigals to have some perspective on the people they're supposed to be helping in the first place and to not get too caught up in the magic that they stop caring about their family. After all, what better way to make sure that the family with superpowers can still relate to muggles than by having one raised alongside you?

What's an Encanto?

• I might just be stupid for not getting it, but what exactly is the Encanto? The previews suggested that it's the name of the place, but there's nothing about that in the actual movie. The movie itself sometimes refers to it as another synonym for magic, but still not enough to make it clear.
  • Not stupid, just not fluent in Spanish. It's a Spanish term usually translated into English as "charm" - both in the sense of the "magic spell" kind of charm and in the sense of the "likability" kind of charm. The word is usually used in the movie to refer to the magic spell, but its other meaning fits in too. Some characters in the movie, especially Mirabel and Alma, use the English word "gift" while thinking of the family's magic spells only to realize in the end that they, the family itself, were the real gift. You could say the same about the "encanto."
  • Encanto does appear to be the name of the place as well, after a fashion. At the beginning Abuela says "[The candle] blessed us with a refuge in which to live. A place of wonder [...] an encanto".
    • Many places are named after distinct features. Just as an example, London comes from a latin word that means "place at the great river".
  • The answers above speak to this too, but I thought it was worth noting that Puerto Rico is called La isla del Encanto by natives, and shortening it to just Encanto is so common that there's a business called Encanto Watersports. So, no one needed to invent a coloqualial basis for using the word Encanto to refer to a beloved and enchanting town.

Why is it the Family Madrigal?

• Why are they called the family Madrigal when most naming customs dictate women take the husbands last name when married. So Bruno and Abuela would be Madrigals. But Pepa and Julieta and their children would all have the last names of the husbands.
  • The Madrigals are such a big pillar in their community that it seems like something Alma would impose and, given what we know about the husbands, that the men would be willing to do to be with their wives.
  • A lot of Spanish-speaking places have children usually take the last names of both parents' families. Since this movie takes place in Colombia, it would be pretty normal for the mothers to keep their last name and for all the children to have both the name "Madrigal" and the last name of their fathers. It would be unusual to focus on the mother's name, but with the Madrigal family being as remarkable as it is and all of them living together, people would almost definitely focus on that part of the name. Sort of like how people related to the Kennedys are usually still known as part of "the Kennedy family" regardless of what their last names end up actually being.
  • Women in Latin America (and Spain) do not take their husbands' last name. That's why in the Spanish-speaking world people have two last names, the father's and the mother's, but in some cases the mother's last name can be used if is less common, for example former Spanish President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was known as Zapatero, with Rodriguez been his father's last name and Zapatero his mother's last name. He's the son of Juan Rodríguez García de Lozano and María de la Purificación Zapatero Valero, his mother did not became María de la Purificación Rodríguez when married. Spanish naming conventions have their own article on The Other Wiki in case you're curious.
  • Granted, this means that, unless Bruno gets children, the "Madrigal" surname will be lost within the next generation. Even taking into account recent changes of naming conventions (allowing to choose the order), most countries still require the first surname of both parents to be used, while Madrigal is the second one for the current generation.
    • They live in a completely isolated town and have been cut off since they had to flee their homes and were going to be killed by soldiers. Not only are they not capable of keeping up to date with the laws of the country but I don't think they're going to be all that attached to them. We never even learn the original last names of the husbands and everyone keeps on talking about the Madrigals and how great their superpowers are. The two husbands moved into their wives' family home with their whole family and none of their own blood relatives. Everything points to the Madrigal name and family being what matters and that being the name everyone has.
  • Even in the English-speaking world, think of it this way: If you attend a family reunion on your mom's side and/or you have a bunch of married aunts, it would still just be the "Smith" family reunion rather than tacking on four extra last names, because that's their shared maiden name. Likewise, if Pepa and Julieta took their husbands' surnames when they married, they would still be Madrigals by blood, so referring to the clan as the Madrigal family still checks out.

Bruno's powers

• So, what exactly are the nature of Bruno's prophecies? Are they self-fulfilling? Do they just predict the bad? His outcome for Isabela's future was overall positive, and I doubt something as trivial as a pet fish dying was worthy of a prophecy (fish are known to be fragile pets).
  • We know that Bruno has to actively try to have a vision by setting up like a ritual or whatever, so he just tried to predict the future of this fish for whatever reason (maybe it was sick or something and she asked him to??)and saw that it died.
  • Maybe the fish dying was a small part of a larger vision. When he looked into the future for Mirabel, he saw a few things in the sand related to the issue but not specifically important to Mirabel, like Félix pulling Antonio out of the way of a falling piece of Casita. So it's possible Bruno was looking into the fish owner's future (or the future of someone close to her) and the fish's death popped in.
  • The vibe I get is that his more mundane predictions weren't magical at all but basic observations he made: he knew the lady's fish would die because bowls are the worst way to keep them; the priest lost his hair because it was already receding, the fat guy might have had a poor diet, etc. But since Bruno's gift is fortunetelling, his reputation preceded him thanks to town gossip. And the fact that spooking his sister that he knew to be high-strung with Power Incontinence into causing a storm at her wedding was an accident suggests poor communication skills.
    • That might be true for some of them, but Bruno does specifically say that the fish thing was an actual prophecy (when talking about how he hates his gift, he mentioned that he disliked having to tell people things like that and cited that specific incident as an example.) Most likely it's one of the examples above - the fish was sick and she asked him how to save it, or he saw it as part of another prophecy.
    • The line mentioned above is "What if I show you something worse? If I see something that you don’t like, you’re gonna be all, “Bruno makes bad things happen. Oh, he’s creepy and his vision killed my goldfish." Whether that qualifies as an "admission" is debatable.
  • In All Of You, Bruno says, "That wasn't a prophecy, I could just see you were sweating" regarding the "looks like rain" comment he made to Pepa. So it's likely the prophecies about the dead fish, the man's hair and other man's weight were also just simple comments, not actual "prophecies," but people are so scared of Bruno's power that they'll take anything he says as a prophecy.
  • Also, as we see with his vision he does with Mirabel, even though his visions are accurate, they still require interpretation on his part as well a lot of ambiguity if he isn't able to focus on something. Not only that, but he literally SEES - the words are all his own. The visions are also not necessarily linear when he sees them nor are they necessarily in the timeframe he is expecting, especially with very open ended questions ("What is Isabela's future going to be like?" would cover A TON of time, for example). So while they to be true to one degree or another, they're best regarded as general directions and guidance not fate... which is the problem people had in the first place. Also also, he is literally only seeing an specific moment NOT the full ramifications of something nor what happens before or after. Lastly, it seems like while he can target a general question, the visions don't necessarily answer the specific question he wants the answer to but the underlying question which he may not be aware of. See the vision he has of Mira and Isa hugging. They see the cracks sealing back up. That DOES happen but both Bruno and Mira assume this means that the magic is fixed even though the vision doesn't suggest any of that; rather, the vision was merely showing that this was one (major) step in fixing the magic. The 'fix the magic' part of the vision was actually the butterfly and even that was the decision point where Mira could make the choice NOT the aftermath of it.

Why didn't Mirabel get her own room?

• On a note related to Mirabel's lack of a power...why did the poor girl not even get her own room — in any shape or form? Casita could at least have given her a nice non-magical room (sewing room?) after giving her a door only to yank it away from her. Her family could have repurposed the nursery into a room more suitable for her as she grew, or physically built her another one (even if Casita wouldn't cooperate — and it seems to dote on Mirabel, so why wouldn't it? — there's plenty of outside space). But apparently the magic said she wasn't worthy, so they stuck her in the nursery permanently, watching five year olds "graduate" while she couldn't? What were they going to do when she was an adult? Unpaid live-in nanny for future generations? Force her to be the only Madrigal to be turfed out of Casita (possibly to live in a spouse's home)? The one benefit of being "ordinary" was that she supposedly has more self-determination than the rest, but she's not allowed to design/create her own living space?
  • Since the magic bedrooms seem to go hand-in-hand with the magic powers, why Casita didn't give her one probably falls under the same reasoning as not giving her those, whatever that may be. As for other kinds of rooms like a sewing room, the movie isn't clear on whether or not there already are rooms like that in the house, so maybe there was one.
    • Casita is unable to enter/influence the magic bedrooms, so it might be unable to give her one at all. The bedrooms seem to be maintained directly by the gifts/magic, with Casita having little to no influence on them at all. We see parts of Antonio's bedroom appearing with the same magic that filled in his door/created Casita, whereas Casita's abilities don't have the same golden particles. Casita was unable to turn off the sand in Bruno's room, or otherwise help Mirabel while she was in there. The new doors/rooms are probably created directly by the magic, with no influence from Casita. Casita's limited to interacting with the doors to the rooms, but not beyond that.
  • I don't know the stats for Colombia, but at least in New York "in nearly two-thirds of homes with two children under age 18, the kids share a room." In some cases, it's not even a matter of not having enough rooms for everyone, just that the kids prefer it. There probably wasn't a reason to physically add a whole new bedroom to the building just to separate two kids who clearly get along very well, especially when a new one was scheduled to appear in just a few years, and that's not even getting into how it wouldn't be unusual to be wary of messing with the layout of a magic, sentient house.
  • What they would then do once she grew up would probably depend on what Mirabel wanted. Sharing a room with someone doesn't usually mean being their nanny, and if Mirabel wanted to move out of the room but not the house, Luisa seems like she'd be eager to build a new one single-handedly if asked.
    • or what Abuela Alma wanted. I think Abuela Alma just wasn't thinking of Mirabel's feelings. Abuela is spending most of her time managing her family. Mirabel's not a "useful" child, so Abuela would want her to grow up, get married, and move out.
    • Since Mirabel clearly wants to make the family proud of her and be seen as useful, she may have been too afraid to ask them to take on the added work of building a new addition to the Casita.
    • Colombian tradition is for multiple generations to live in the same home together. Not only is Mirabel also a teenager, but she might have stuck around to try to help out where she can. Deciding to live separately from the rest of the family would be equivalent to her admitting that she is no longer part of the family/doesn't belong to it.
  • It seems Casita can't make non-magical additions to itself, not that it won't do it.
  • Casita doesn't seem to be able to make major changes like that to itself. The biggest changes that it does is create a staircase with the courtyard tiles, but building an entire room might be beyond its abilities. The new rooms are probably created directly by the miracle to accommodate new people with powers.

Did Mirabel get her own room at the end?

• Did Mirabel get an actual room to herself in the final scene? I didn't catch it.
  • It wasn't shown, the doors shown inside the rebuilt house didn't have names on them, they simply glowed like Antonio's did before the ceremony. One could assume that since the house was rebuilt with the assumption magic wouldn't come back they also built Mira her own room.
    • The doors might be glowing like that because no-one had picked their new rooms yet, seeing as the house had just been completed when the party started.
  • At least one novelization of the movie does say that she does indeed get her own room at the end, so… maybe yes?

How is Encanto pronounced?

• Is it pronounced “in can toe” or “in con toe”?
  • En - kahn - toe.

Why couldn't Casita help in Bruno's room?

• Why was the Casita's sentience unable to enter Bruno's room when Mirabel asked it to "turn off" the sand-waterfall? We've seen it mess with things in the nursery and the fact that Mirabel asked it to do this implies that the house can manipulate stuff in the other rooms, so what makes Bruno's room so different in-context?
  • It's completely possible that Casita can't manipulate stuff in the rooms it made for the magical members of the Madrigals. Since Mirabel does not live in one of these rooms and would not normally have a reason to invade her family's privacy by going into one for that long, she may have just not realized this. That, or Bruno abandoning his room and causing the light to go out affected Casita's influence inside.
  • On a thematic level, the Casita's magic is a metaphor for the love between the members of The Family Madrigal. As seen in the movie, the strength of their relationships with each other can affect how strong the magic is or isn't. This is the why the gifts start to fade and the house starts to weaken and crack. As things start to fall apart between the Madrigals, the magic is growing weaker. Bruno is no longer considered a member of the family at all, to the point that there's a taboo against even talking about him, so the magic is especially weak in his room. It's a small miracle that the whole room hadn't outright collapsed after all that time.
  • Compared to the other rooms, which have doors and rooms connected to the magic of the corresponding Madrigal, the nursery seems to be a non-magical room, like the kitchen. Casita has influence there, but since the other rooms are created and maintained by the magic itself, Casita has no influence beyond the doors.

How did Mirabel escape Bruno's room?

• How did Mirabel get out of Bruno's room? There didn't seem to be a way for her to cross the gap at the top of the stairs more than once.
  • There was more rope on her (subsequent) side of the gap. She could have repeated her entrance method, or she could have climbed down to the next set of stairs.
  • The amount of rope on Bruno's side of the chasm is no where near long enough for Mirabel to repeat the rope swing that got her there. The stairs on are on opposite side of the chasm. There are no visible stairs on Bruno's side. There is some kind of ledge coming off the right side of Bruno's room but in overhead shot it does not look like it goes anywhere. Technically, Mirabel should have been trapped there until someone with a lot of rope came to rescue her.
  • Bruno later mentions that she caused his vision chamber to crumble, so it's possible that he saw her going into his room and followed her to make sure she wouldn't get hurt. Once she swung to the other side and he saw she wouldn't be able to get back, he may have done something behind the scenes so she'd have a way back across.

The cellular structure of Camilo

• When Camilo shapeshifts, I can feasibly see his clothes turning into the others' clothes, but what about stuff like Mirabel's glasses or Dolores' earrings? I don't want to think that's his own skin and tissue turning into metal.
  • Part of the magic might be the extra stuff coming from the air or from nowhere at all, like Isabela's plants or Casita itself when it first appeared.
  • Another possibility is that he's NOT actually changing form, so much as creating a tangible glamour around himself (so he's still wearing the same clothes and is still the same person, but everyone else sees and interacts with a tangible projection that he calls up).
  • Or perhaps his clothes flow to make any clothing needed, even earrings and glasses.
  • Alternately, his skin does become metal and cloth, and he's technically always naked.
  • As gross as it may sound, the idea isn't without precedent. In Marvel comics, it's been established that shapeshifters like Mystique are able to cast off small portions of their body mass into accessories like clothing, glasses, and jewelry, and reabsorb them when they return to their normal form.

Is Dolores a gossip, or isn't she?

• At the end of the movie Dolores revealed she knew Bruno was in the walls all along, and earlier in the movie she was established to be unable to keep a secret. How was she able to hide this for ten years?
  • The standout scene of her not keeping a secret was with the prophecy about Mirabel and the end of the magic, so most likely the contents of the prophecy got her freaked out enough that she spilled the beans the first chance she got (it's worth noting just about everyone else besides Mirabel's parents told someone the first chance they got, even Mirabel told her father everything moments after he saw it). Meanwhile, Bruno didn't appear to actually be threatening, she may have been more willing and able to keep quiet about him, especially since he's still family.
  • A couple of things here: 1. Her verse in "We don't talk about Bruno" makes it clear that she had always been afraid of Uncle Bruno, and 2. It's been hammered into her head for ten years that he was a taboo subject in the family, so even if she knew he was there, she might have felt it wasn't her place to get involved in grown folks' business.
    • Her verse in the song does much more than that. She outright says she hears him all the time, and then later she says she can hear him now. We're meant to take that figuratively and think it's her being afraid, but after a rewatch, it's clear she's being literal and no one (even the audience) takes her seriously.
  • Dolores was only convinced that Bruno never left Encanto, she never realized that Bruno was hiding in the walls. Until the discovery by Mirabel and Antonio, no one other than Bruno seemed to know the Bigger on the Inside nature of the walls.
    • It’s a little hard to believe that she couldn’t figure out that he was in their own home, since the noise he makes would have been closer than if he was hiding out in the woods somewhere.
    • In the comments for Cinema Therapy Bruno episode there's a theory that lil' Dolores (she'd have been eleven at the time of her uncle's leaving) did tell the grown-ups, but they dismissed that as her imagining things or telling stories, so she stopped telling them. This doesn't, frankly, seem all that in character for anyone, but still.
  • She was doing her uncle a solid. She didn’t know he was hiding a house-crumbling prophecy and let it be.
  • I may have gotten this wrong, but I remember her saying something like "the rats talk in the walls" early on. I thought the idea was that she heard Bruno but didn't understand that it was him, and interpreted it as actual talking rats. (It's a magical house; anything is possible.) Then later she finds out that Bruno himself was making the noise, and she says "I knew it!" when really she only knew it halfway.
  • In "We Don't Talk About Bruno", her first statement is "Hey, grew to live in fear of Bruno." This means that her 'fear' of him was learned and not something she'd always known. Given what we know about Bruno, it suggests that Dolores and Bruno at, at worse, a neutral relationship. It's likely that, given the heart breaking news of her future (which we don't know when it was given) as well as the increasing ostracism before and after his disappearance, she learned both to fear him and not to talk about him. After all, she was a kid and ALL the adults around her were either actively badmouthing Bruno (Alma angrily claims in the climax that he never/didn't love the family) or just refusing to talk about him (out of grief of his disappearance). So she learned to do the same even if she herself doesn't necessarily feel that way. When you can't or don't have the language to talk about a topic - or worse, only have negative language to talk about it - well... If nothing else, Bruno's hidden hole is next to Dolores. It's entirely possible that, knowing she can hear even the faintest thing, basically just told her to not tell anyone. In "We don't talk about Bruno", it's suggested that she's far more sympathetic to Bruno both in the general tone of her lyrics ("humbling", etc.) but also that "Abuela and the family" found his prophesies confusing, that 'they' couldn't understand but not necessarily that SHE couldn't understand and/or that she didn't at least understand his motives and personality, etc; the other times we hear family members talk about what Abuela and 'the family' wants, it is by Isabela who ALSO is doing things for the family but not talking about what SHE knows and wants. Combined with all the other adults reacting the way they did, as a child, she might have been as scared of revealing is secret (because an adult authority was asking her not to talk about him) as she was about telling the adults in her life where Bruno was (because an adult authority was telling by omission not to talk about him/knew that talking about him would cause pain). Bruno's song even starts to 'break down' (characters start to talk over each other) when Dolores and Isabela's conflict take over with Isabela talking OVER Dolores; again, she's being hushed out. Meanwhile, the prophesy about the magic dying is both very fresh, broadly applicable to everyone in the present, and potentially harmful.
  • Was Dolores scared of Bruno, though? I thought the line was "Grew to live in fear of Bruno stuttering or stumbling". She wasn't scared of Bruno himself, she was scared of what he said. Which may mean his prophecies scared her (especially since she received a particularly sad one), or she was scared of the family's reaction every time he made a prediction (or just opened his mouth). A kid would quickly pick up on the fact that the other family members became tense or hostile whenever he spoke up, and since she couldn't stop him from speaking or her family from kicking up a fuss when he did, she would be left walking on eggshells. Dolores doesn't seem to like head-on confrontation — which could explain her gift (it may have given her prior warning of a conflict, in the same way some children from dysfunctional homes learn to read people's moods quickly). Bruno hiding away would therefore suit Dolores — she loves him as family, and she knows he's safe, but he's out of the way and not upsetting everyone, giving her a bit of peace.
  • Indeed, if she's able to hear Bruno well enough to know that he's just quietly living his life, keeping away from the family that he's loath to scare any further, then her living "in fear of Bruno stuttering or stumbling" might hold a double meaning. Namely, that while others dread his prophecies, Dolores herself is sympathetic to her uncle and worries that he'll accidentally make enough noise, by talking to himself or tripping or whatever, to expose his presence behind the walls to others.
  • While Dolores is said to be a busybody, we never actually see her gossiping or otherwise sharing private information, except for of course when she found out that Mirabel was in a prophecy that would end in the destruction of her family's home, and even then she didn't blab it right away but was clearly trying to hold it in. It's just as likely that she's been stereotyped as the town gossip just like how everyone assumes Isabela is perfect, or that Bruno is bad luck, for no other reason than because she can't help but hear everything that goes on in the Encanto.

How do Bruno's powers work?

• So the movie keeps seeming to change how Bruno's powers work. When we see how Bruno looks into the future, it's a complex ritual that requires a large room and takes a while to perform and he has to determine what it means. Yet, he knows that a TV is, despite the movie being set in the 1900's, and in the song "We don't talk about Bruno", we get different members of the village mentioning how Bruno told them something bad and it came true. So did he do that complex ritual in his room, only to discover a random villager's pet fish was going to die?
  • The most common theory about the movie's time seems to be that it takes place around the 1950s, when TV was well-known. It's possible the complex ritual told him about the fish, although it does seem odd that he would keep on doing it when his prophecies weren't popular. Maybe he gets flashes involuntarily and only uses the ritual when he's trying to get it to happen on purpose, or maybe he kept doing the ritual anyway because he thought he needed to do some sort of magic.
    • The movie's flashbacks might be the 1950s or 1940s. The rest of the movie takes place 50 years later, in the 1990s or 2000s.
    • I'm not sure it can be pinned down that precisely. There's not a single piece of technology onscreen that would be out of place in 1900, give or take a decade, the violence in the past isn't elaborated on enough to entirely place it (and the weapons used, fire and blades, don't help at all) since the 1950s aren't the only time period involving violence in Columbia that could cause people to need to flee their homes. It's not like we were told why they were attacked. The ONLY thing entirely out of place with everything else is Bruno's referencing telenovelas, but, like Genie from Aladdin, he can see the future (and now I have the mental image of Bruno using his Gift just to watch TV stuck in my head).
  • Except that part of the miracle was that they are isolated from everyone, mountains grew up around everywhere. So that isolation means new technology isn't going to reach them. Even if some new people manage to climb over those mountains and bring the news of TV, most people still won't know what it is. The biggest form of technology in the entire movie is the camera, which has been around since the late 1800's. So not sure how people have drawn the 1950's argument.
    • By considering the historical context of how those people ended up in that town. The sort of violence they were fleeing starts up in the mid-20th century.
    • 100,000 people died in what's called the Thousand Days War at the start of the 20th Century. That's another context for that kind of violence.
    • In the context of how he would know about TVs, it doesn't add up. The triplets are 50, so if it's the 1950s then they were trapped before the invention of the television.
    • It appears that some things must have gotten in, most notably an ordained priest.
    • Catholicism has been present in South America since the late 1400's. More likely, they had a priest or something close to it with them when they evacuated, who personally trained his successors.
  • One possibility is that Bruno (used to?) get(s) involuntary flashes of the future in general (nothing specific, but vague things like weather or general events), with the ritual being used to narrow down that tangle to a single thread (a person's future, or what will happen in a specific question's context).
  • If Bruno knows what future technology looks like, maybe he just did a ritual one day and asked for a vision about future technology. And maybe he did a ritual about that woman's goldfish, too. There's no indication that he's limited on what subjects he can have visions about.
  • As another troper mentioned earlier, it's possible that some of Bruno's predictions weren't actually prophecies at all. He just said "Your goldfish is gonna die" because he thought it looked sick, and everyone else interpreted this as a magical prophecy.
    • Likewise that someone who eats a lot of sweets is going to grow a gut, someone dealing with a lot of stress (such as being the only priest for a town that includes the Madrigals) might lose his hair, and so on.

Foreshadowing on the doors?

• I noticed during the scene where Mirabel is looking at the photos of when all of her cousins, sisters, mother and aunt and uncle got their gifts, their doors automatically depicted how they appear in the present day as opposed to how they were when they got their gifts, even though we saw with Antonio's door, it depicted him at his current age as opposed to how he'll be in the future like the rest of his family. It might just be an oversight, or perhaps it was foreshadowing that they would lose their gifts and therefore their rooms later on during the movie? Or perhaps the doors change as they grew up and the magic affected the photos to depict them as they grew?
  • The doors changing over time to reflect current reality seems likely.
    • That makes the most sense, but that's not what was reflected in the movie, since the scene does not show 5-year-old versions of the characters on the doors, but grown-up versions with the exception of Antonio.
    • It was most likely foreshadowing that they'd lose their gifts and rooms as the person stated. Casita could have been trying to subtly warn the family that the magic was endangered by not depicting Antonio at an older age, but in retrospect, something like that would be rather easy to miss. It could also be because Antonio was born rather late, or the writers overlooked it. Or it could be that the magic did alter the photos if that's possible.

How secret is the origin of the magic?

• At the beginning of the film, Alma is revealing the candle to Mirabel and telling her how it gives them their magic. It seems like it’s supposed to be some big secret, or at least that children don’t know about it until they’re old enough to get their own gift… but the rest of the film contradicts this, with Antonio being well aware of the source of the magic, the ceremony being highly public and presumably including all members of the family, the candle always being in plain sight, and even people outside the family apparently knowing about it.
  • It's possible Mirabel already knew the story and Alma was just repeating it for the occasion, sort of like how people tell the stories behind certain holidays every year even when everyone in the room already knows them. Or maybe it just simply hadn't come up before, like how the town kids from the opening number don't know which family members have which powers although there's no secrecy about that.
  • Also keep in mind that ten years and a major upset to the status quo happened between the introductory scene and the rest of the movie. Family traditions can naturally drift over time, and after Mirabel's ceremony failed, Alma would have every reason to try to fix any potential problems. Maybe she used to keep the candle in her room to protect it, but then she feared that Mirabel didn't get a gift because she didn't have a chance to bond with it and understand its importance, so by the time the next child came of age, she wanted them to truly understand what was happening and why. Mirabel also grew up in a house full of children, who are prone to telling stories without getting all the details right, so Alma would want to clear up the details before the ceremony; meanwhile, Antonio grew up in a house filled with teenagers and adults who would have shared the story more accurately, so he didn't need a special session with Abuela to learn the truth about the candle.
  • Maybe he did have one, though, and we just haven't seen it, since the camera is on Mirabel at the time.

---

• Exactly when did Bruno disappear? If he vanished after Mirabel didn't receive a gift, how come she seems to be the only one in the family who doesn't know anything about him? Initially, I was under the impression she never met him before.
  • It was probably shortly after Mirabel's ceremony because he disappeared out of worry over the prophecy he saw when trying to figure out why the ceremony went wrong. Chances are Mirabel had met him but had only vague memories because she was so young at the time. Most of the other Madrigals are old enough that their memories of him are probably clearer. The exceptions are Antonio, but he doesn't seem to know anything about Bruno besides what the rats told him, and Camilo, who's barely older than Mirabel but his account is exaggerated — in particular, he portrays Bruno as some sort of giant, which would fit with his most recent memories of Bruno coming from when he was very young and small.
    • It's likely that same night, or very soon afterwards, as Abuela asked him to look into the future when Mirabel did not get a gift.
  • Even before Bruno vanished, he was a recluse regarded as creepy by most of the town. Camilo's impersonation shows Bruno was already hanging around with rats before he hid himself away, which presumably didn't help his popularity much. It could be that Mirabel's parents thought it best to wait until she was older and/or had a gift of her own to meet him, both because he was so flakey and because they didn't want to scare her that her own gift might turn out to be somehow alienating as well.

Yeah, earplugs would be nice!

• Does Dolores have a way to block out sounds or is she forced to hear everyone who uses the bathroom or has sex?
  • It's possible that her room is just soundproof, or at least allows her to hear like a normal person would, so she can have a break from all of the possible stress her gift may put on her.
  • I doubt her room is any help, she said she heard Luisa's eyes ticking all night.
  • The opening song ("The Family Madrigal") states that she "can hear a pin drop" and "can hear this whole chorus a mile away", not that she's forced to. As for hearing Bruno's voice or Luisa's eyes ticking, well, they're family. Of course she's keeping an ear out for them in case they're ever in serious trouble. That's out of love, not out of inability to stop.
    • That sounds a bit nitpickish in this particular instance. People often use 'can' in place of 'must' in casual conversation.
    • Actually, "can hear", "can see" meaning "hears", "sees" etc. are a linguistic peculiarity of English.

Why did Dolores freak out?

• Why was Dolores so quick to tell the family that Mirabel was in one of Bruno's prophecies? She knew Bruno was still around and miserable, she knows that telling the family would hurt Mirabel, she knew that Mirabel was desperately, silently begging her not to tell. So why would she deliberately do something so damaging to Mirabel?
  • Dolores was visibly terrified, and for good reason. Not telling could be highly damaging to everyone who didn't know the magic was fading. If the magic was ending, then the house they were in was unstable, not to mention the danger some other family members could be in if they tried to do something that would be dangerous without powers only to suddenly lose them without warning, like Camilo shapeshifting into someone small to fit into an enclosed space only to suddenly grow or Isabela falling off a high-hanging vine.
  • Dolores seemed to be panicking at the time, considering her calm composure at most other times. Not only was the man that she had a crush on about to propose to her cousin, and about to slip out of grasp permanently, but Casita was breaking, Luisa's gift was fading, and Mirabel found Bruno's last vision, foretelling Mirabel being the one to cause the magic to die.

Why did Pedro sacrifice himself?

• Not meaning to downplay Pedro's courage or the pain that his death caused Alma, but his decision to "block" the horsemen borders on a Senseless Sacrifice. While he technically buys a little time for the other refugees who keep running away from the river, Alma stays where he leaves her, out in the open, fully able to see the horsemen cut Pedro down. If the candle had not ignited with magical power to vanquish the horsemen and seal off the valley, then the fate of Alma and her children would have been quite tragic and Pedro's death would have been in vain. While it can be argued that his death and Alma's anguish is what triggered the miracle, Pedro did not know that was a possible outcome when he made his decision and it seems a better choice would have been for him to stay with his wife and children and quickly guide them into the forest to have a better chance of defending themselves against men on horses.
  • The other refugees were fleeing toward a mountain pass that was too narrow for all four horses at once. They may have had a chance of defending it against one horseman at a time. Alma's decision to stand and scream instead of running would have cost her life and that of her children, but Pedro may have been hoping that Alma would run with the other refugees (or that one would drag her with them).
  • Since we don't know any details, it's possible that Pedro had some plausible method for keeping everyone safe. Maybe the horsemen had a grudge against him in particular, and he thought if he offered himself up for capture they might be willing to let everyone else go. Or maybe one of the horsemen was his cousin or something, and he thought the guy might listen to a plea for mercy.
  • Also, it was an incredibly desperate time. It's not like they had time to form a plan. Whether or not his sacrifice was senseless is only something we would have known after the fact. That's really the only difference between a heroic and a senseless sacrifice; the results after the fact. In the moment, all he knew was that the riders were catching up to the refugees. They could all do nothing and just keep running or they could do something and hope for the future. So he choose to try and do something - anything - to help buy time, even if it was only a few minutes. That's also part of the themes of the movie - he helped out of love for his family and community not because of obligation and some expectation or guarantee that this is the correct way to do things.
  • What seems the most likely is that Pedro was trying to make a deal with the horseman, telling them that they could have him if they let everyone else go. The horsemen, being terrible, terrible people, ignored this request immediately after killing him. Of course, he could’ve also been trying to distract them, but that seems like it would’ve bought even less time for the refugees.
  • It’s also worth noting that Alma is now an old woman recounting an event from over five decades ago. The flashback is probably not an accurate reflection of what actually happened. She could be forgetting in her old age and her own trauma might be mentally blocking out what could have been a bloody, messy fight.
    • Between an unarmed man and several riders with machetes? Bloody and messy, sure, but wouldn't call that a fight.

Why didn't Dolores hear Abuela's confession?

• Why did Dolores say that nobody was worried about the magic besides Mirabel and the rats? She can apparently hear everything and even heard Luisa's eye twitching all night in her room, and we know Abuela Alma was admitting her own worries in her prayer to Pedro because Mirabel overhears them herself.
  • Dolores could also hear that Mirabel was eavesdropping on Alma, so she knows Mirabel already knows how Alma feels. So there’s no need for her to mention it. Maybe she also avoids mentioning it because it would be tactless to remind Mirabel just how much of her personal business Dolores can hear.
  • There is no evidence that Dolores was aware that Mirabel was eavesdropping on Alma. I like to think that Dolores' super hearing ability is not constantly activated. Instead, her ability is activated only when she wants to.
  • Alternatively, Dolores could hear the confession, just like she could always hear Bruno. In fact, she probably heard everything that happened in the movie, including the casita cracking. Why did she never say anything and even denied that she knew anything before telling Mirabel that Luisa's eye was twitching? Maybe because she was afraid of being singled out. She wouldn't have been the first Madrigal to be ostracized for telling people things they did not want to hear.
  • Or because it was night and she was asleep in her room. Keep it simple.

Did the family not look for Bruno?

• Did the family just not look for Bruno when he disappeared? Because the prophecy he made wasn't hidden and all the pieces were relatively easy to put together. If they'd even just searched his own room for him, the place where he'd most likely be if not found in the rest of the house, they would have known about his last prophecy.
  • Maybe he told them he was leaving. He was an adult and had the right to choose his own life, or if the others didn’t agree with that, at least they wouldn’t look for him inside the house. He also had more than one reason to leave, and his mental discomfort and unpopularity must have been visible to the other adult Madrigals. As for the vision, the pieces were buried in sand and were only visible when their glow was the only light in the cave. They could only be found by someone who was energetic enough to climb hundreds of stairs, brave enough to swing across the chasm, yet unprepared enough to get shut in the cave in the dark without having brought a light. That means someone who didn’t already know what was in Bruno’s room. Lastly, he must have told people that the cracks were in the vision because Luisa overheard this. He just didn’t tell them Mirabel was in it. Alma had asked him specifically to find out why Mirabel didn’t get a gift, but he could have said it was because the miracle was faltering, as shown by the cracks, without revealing that it looked like Mirabel was going to cause the cracks. If he said that, then the others might not have thought it was important to see the vision tablet for themselves, so they might not have looked for it very hard.
  • According to a deleted scene, which granted may or may not still be canon, he and Abuela got into a huge fight that culminated with her saying that if he left, he would be dead to her, and him shooting back that he wished he was dead. And it was the last time anyone ever saw him.
  • The scene was deleted because it messed up Bruno's character arc, so it probably isn't canon. But if it were - a guy saying he wants to die then vanishing brings to mind things his mother and sisters probably wouldn't want to believe are true. And if they thought that, they would search alongside the river, or in the forest, or think he went into the moutains to die. They wouldn't look for him where he actually was.
  • The light on his door going out might have made them assume that he had died, since the only other time we've seen the lights on someone's door going out is when the magic disappeared completely. Considering Julieta's comments about Bruno having "lost his way in this family", and her not wanting the same of him, maybe they believed that he had been Driven to Suicide?

Why did Félix panic at dinner?

• Why didn't Félix wait until after the proposal to tell Pepa about the vision? Everyone knows how Pepa gets when she's upset, especially at the mention of Bruno, and the proposal dinner didn't need to involve her causing a literal storm.
  • He probably was panicking from the terrifying news and instinctively went to confide in the woman he loves.
  • It's worth remembering that, as opposed to Dolores' staring contest with Mirabel/Águstin or Camilo's sudden and noticeable but easily-explained-away reaction (the kid is known for using his Gift to play pranks, after all) that only seemed to be noticed by his father and Mirabel, Félix's reaction to the news was to do a massive Spit Take that drew the attention of the entire table. Pepa likely just straight-up asked him what was wrong and, in the moment, he thought it best to tell the truth rather than try and come up with a lie that very likely wouldn't have been believed and would make Pepa annoyed or angry anyway.

How did the family figure out their powers?

• How did some members of the family determine the way to use their powers? Some of them seem to have something more or less inherent: Antonio immediately hears an animal talking to him, Dolores would be able to figure it out pretty quickly, and I'm guessing Luisa didn't always look like the Hulk and Pepa wasn't always magically followed by storms. But how would someone like Isabela, Camilo, or especially Bruno have figured it out? Bruno's power seems to require a fairly intricate ritual; how would he have known to do that?
  • Isabela and Camilo are both shown to be prone to Power Incontinence, so they may have used their powers in excitement without realizing it.
  • According to Word of God, Bruno made up his own ritual, likely to control his anxiety about it. Maybe he had a vision on the spot.
  • Luisa remains musclebound after losing her powers, which shows her figure is just from her working out. Maybe she broke down her door when she tried to open it? It does look somewhat run-down in her poster.
  • How on Earth Julieta realized that she did have powers that involved cooking, however, remains unanswered. It seems possible that the celebration ritual came with the grandkids' generation; Alma had no reason to believe that the house would bless her triplet toddlers with magic powers, so the four of them probably took their time to realize what was going on.
    • Given that the parents are triplets, it's almost certain that the celebration came about with the grandkids. The parents would have happened almost simultaneously and by accident/discover. Perhaps Julieta liked to cook. Or perhaps after Pepa's powers manifested, the others started to understand that certain things that might have been weird were actually because of them. And once that happened and because of Alma becoming a pillar of the community, the expectation was set for the grandchildren to have a ceremony. It's also likely that the ceremony grew overtime to what it was. Perhaps with the first grandchild, it was simply a curiosity in the family. With the next grandkid, a bigger thing. And then, realizing that it was definitely a magical thing, it grows.
  • Considering the toucan arrived at the same moment Antonio got his gift, part of getting a gift might also include the knowledge about what their gift is, and how to use it. Using it for the first time might be the condition needed for their image to appear on the door, seeing as the image on Antonio's door appeared after he used his gift for the first time.

How did Alma know she was having triplets?

• How did a not yet showing Alma know she was having triplets?
  • Maybe she didn’t know and the the paper people were either meant to represent either her, Pedro, and the baby, or that she wanted three kids with him. Maybe she wasn’t even pregnant at that point, and this was her telling him she wants to start trying.
    • Even though this was before modern medicine, it’s pretty easy to tell when someone is having more than one child due to the size of the bump or feeling the babies moving. Alma could likely figure out that she had three in there by herself.
    • The point in the question above is that Alma's pregnancy is not showing yet, so she's likely just missed a couple of periods. I think the "paper dolls represent Alma, Pedro, and soon-to-be-baby" suggestion above is the most sensible. (Also, it was a memory; we are all more variable in our memories than we like to think we are.)

Would adopted children get gifts?

• So, say Mirabel, Isabela, Dolores, etc. any of the future Madrigal kids decide to adopt a child. Would they get gifts? I know Félix and Agustín didn't get gifts and they married into the family, but they were already adults when they became Madrigals. Would adopted babies who eventually grow up get gifts at the age of five like the others?
  • The producer confirmed that the power isn't about bloodline and adopted kids would be blessed with a power if they came of age in the Casita. So any kids adopted early would get a Gift, but any adopted later would not.
    • Alternatively, they only need to do a ceremony to gain their gifts regardless of age, so if a kid is only adopted later they'll simply gain their powers at an older age than usual. After the events of the movie it feels fitting for the family to keep their traditions flexible for the sake of having a healthy dynamic in the house.

How is Pepa a redhead?

• How is Pepa a redhead when neither of her parents are redheads?
  • Because some ancestor from Alma's or Pedro's side was a redhead. If you still remember Mendel's Laws of Genetics, it would not surprise you.
    • Isn't red hair a recessive trait?
    • Recessive doesn't mean disappeared. It can skip a generation or two and still be present.
• Pepa's entire appearance and even some of her disposition suggest a throwback to Celtic heritage. Some ancestor on either side (I'm guessing Pedro's) was most likely Galician but could also be Breton or even Irish. Colombia is home to all kinds of people with very mixed heritage.

Why does Mirabel still need glasses?

• Why doesn't Julieta's gift treat Mirabel's eyesight?
  • Mirabel's eyes aren't injured. Her gift treats injuries, not birth defects.
  • According to the director, she has the ability to heal poor eyesight, but chooses not to because she doesn't see it as an imperfection that needs to be corrected.

Why is the pressure on Mirabel and not Camilo?

• At the start of the movie, it's stated that Mirabel was the previous Madrigal gift ceremony, and because of that, Antonio was worried he might not get a gift either. However, Camilo looks younger than Mirabel, and he has a gift. Also, he's Antonio's older brother, so logically CAMILO'S gift ceremony should've been the one where everyone would've been fretting if he didn't get his gift either. Why is the pressure on Antonio?
  • One of the directors confirmed that Camilo is written to be slightly older than Mirabel and have had his ceremony before hers. They're both supposed to be fifteen, and it's not uncommon for two teens of the same age to look like they're different ages.
    • This is supported by Mirabel saying, "You know, out of all my older cousins, you’re, like, my favorite cousin..." to Delores. If Camilo were younger than Mirabel, Delores would be her only older cousin.
  • Camilo would have to be older than Mirabel, or have had his ceremony before hers, seeing as we're told that "the last gifting ceremony (Mirabel's) was a bummer" by the shopkeep. Since the ceremonies are held upon reaching a particular age, it would be illogical for Camilo to be the younger one. He probably just seems younger, like how some people don't look their age.
• Because Camilo has a gift?

Where did Mirabel get her glasses?

• If no one leaves the area much, where does Mirabel get her eyeglasses?
  • Someone in the village knows how to make eyeglasses - probably the same person who made Agustín's.

Why does Luisa lose all her strength?

• Does anyone else find it fishy that Luisa loses all of her strength once her gift starts fading? Struggling to move a piano is one thing, but earlier we see that she can barely budge a potted plant, and Isabela remarks that she can't even lift an empanada (though to be fair, that's probably just hyperbole). She doesn't seem to lose any of her height or muscle mass, so you'd think that she'd still be significantly stronger than the average person without her gift.
  • It's likely that she didn't fully lose her strength to the point of becoming a wimp, but the sheer impact of not being super strong anymore makes her lose the will to even muster up strength to do regular things, thus making her weaker than she actually is in practice.
  • It was a very big potted plant. Pots full of soil are heavy, even a strong person would have a bit of trouble lifting it and from the looks of things, she was trying to lift with her arms and her back instead of her legs. Most likely because she's always been so super strong so she's never had to use proper technique to maximize her output without hurting herself.
  • The two excellent bits of information above are also supported by one additional fact; aside from Mirabel and Alma, Luisa is the first to get scared. Delores reports her eye twitching all night, implying she didn't get much sleep. And her entire song highlights that she feels incredibly insecure at this moment, not just a fear of the unknown but a genuine existential crisis about exactly who she is and what purpose she serves on this planet, if her powers give out. If she then felt what happened in Bruno's tower, like she felt whatever Mirabel saw the night before, it wouldn't have taken much to send her home in a panic.
  • She probably didn't lose all of her strength, but it was just reduced to what a regular person with her build would have. Large ceramic pots are heavy, especially ones that are the size of a person's torso, and filled with dirt and a potted plant on top of that. But compared to her previous strength, she may as well be as weak as a newborn kitten.

Why is Isabela's gift so underutilized?

• Why is Isabel's gift so underutilized? Like sure; the flowers she grows are pretty and good for morale but why on Earth is she not filling the fields with miles and miles of corn, wheat and other food crops?
  • Going by "What Else Can I Do?" and her shock over the cactus, she's still figuring out the limits of her powers beyond flowers and vines. It's possible she either can't grow those things or doesn't know she can (yet).
    • Also, the role prescribed to her is to be the beautiful one - one that doesn't get dirty either. It's likely that Alma specifically limited her to making flowers and 'beautifying' the village, either through explicit instruction or otherwise.
    • During her song and the finale, we see her growing other plants than just flowers, so she probably never tried to before, both because of pressure from Abuela to be perfect (so she never tried experimenting, because she wasn't allowed to be imperfect), and because she was resigned to her role. The growing of food might have been Pepa's role at the time, considering her control over the weather.
  • See "Why isn't Isabela in charge of Encanto's food production" and "Isabela's contribution" above.

Where'd the cracks go?

• Why were the cracks in the Casita already gone by the time Mirabel had come back with Abuela and the partygoers? Even if Bruno was fixing it, surely he couldn't have moved that fast. Given that he had building material he was doing so mundanely, and there was no sign of a crack - filled back in or otherwise.
  • Because in the moment just before, Mirabel had opened up to Alma... and Alma BELIEVED her out of concern. It was a brief moment of true familial connection.
  • The cracks are reacting to the family's emotional state, and can be filled back in by themselves, like they are in "What Else Can I Do?".
  • They migrated inside the walls, which is why Bruno had to do so much patching in there. This is symbolic of how the family have to hide their problems behind a veneer of perfection. Even though Mirabel wasn't trying to hide the cracks, Alma had a vested interest in doing so and it's possible the force of her will could have made them disappear from view.
    • The cracks inside the walls might be because of Bruno leaving the family, rather than the other problems. Since the cracks are caused by problems with the family, his leaving might have also caused cracks (that he patched up). We know that at the very least, they didn't talk about him afterwards, and Abuela blamed Mirabel for his disappearance.

What if Camilo donated organs?

• What would happen if Camilo tried to copy a person in order to donate blood or organs? Would he still lose them when he changes back and would the blood he donates revert to his own once undone? Not that it would matter at the moment while Julieta is still around.
  • I suspect/presume he reverts to his own form when he's asleep and/or not actively trying to look like someone else, so just being put under anesthetic would keep organ donation from working. And I also suspect/presume that parts of him that get detached while he's shapeshifted (like hair and nail trimmings) also probably revert.
  • It depends on whether or not his shapeshifting only affects his external appearance. It might not change things like his blood type.

The limit of Julieta's powers

• Is there a limit as to what food Julieta can use to heal people? Does there need to be a significant transformation of ingredients or can she simply toss something in a pan and it would work?
  • From what we can see for her gift, it is shown that she simply gives the patients her food by simply holding the food itself in her hand. Basically her hands is basically generating magic as she touches the food before handing them out.
  • It seems like the latter. As long as she made the food, it seems to function. Her giving Mirabel a previously-prepared Arepa con queso, with a sprinkling of (salt?) worked to heal her injury.

The start of the Gifts

• Ok, so how on Earth did the triplets (and to some extent Alma) know that the magic gives them powers and a magical door with their face on it?! I'm confused on how they figured out the door will be made for them and they will receive powers? Did Casita already have them there glowing without a design, waiting for someone to touch it? Did the triplets have to touch the candle to get the gifts or was the candle on the photographs of them when they were younger just there for the looks, cause it seems like they already knew about all of this as if someone had told them?
  • The first time, with the triplets, it probably took everyone by surprise. Let's say, at the age of 5 Alma considers her children to be old enough to have their own rooms and asks Casita to build them. Since having a new room is quite the occasion, they dress up and when they touch the handle, they are surprised to see that the doors are engraved with their image and name. And then a rainbow appears over Pepa! Bruno probably discovered his powers shortly after, getting a random vision, and Julieta's gift maybe wasn't discovered until much later since someone had to be wounded for them to realize her food had healed them. The family probably was expecting the second generation of gifts (although they couldn't be really sure until Isabela turned five), and it became a family tradition to give the children their own rooms at that age. The townsfolk would slowly become aware that new gifts were appearing, and little by little this tradition became a full-fledge celebration with everybody being invited to see.
  • Casita doesn't seem to have much influence over the doors, like the rooms themselves. That seems to directly related to the magic. Like how Mirabel's door disappeared when she touched it, a new door might just appear one day when the relevant Madrigal becomes of age, and is able to get a gift, glowing the whole time (with their initial on the handle).
  • Touching the candle doesn't seem to be relevant to the gift, it's touching the handle of the door that appears to impart the gift. Touching the candle seems like swearing on a religious text, since part of the gifting ceremony involves swearing to help their family and the community with their gifts. Knowing how to use their powers, and what powers they get might also be imparted by the gifting process, seeing as a toucan coincidentally arrived the moment Antonio touched his door and got a gift. Abuela might have also been imparted with the knowledge of what was happening the first time around.

Pressure like a drip, drip, drip...

• Why are Luisa and Isabela given more pressure than Dolores and Camilo? Because the former two's younger sister didn't receive a gift, as such, all the responsibility that would've gone to Mirabel was instead given to them.
  • Likely because Luisa's gift is more practical and because Isabela is the most likely to continue the bloodline. Super strength is a power that has a universal application compared to super hearing and shapeshifting which have a much more specific which means less uses. Isabela having the "pretty power" and appearing more sociable than an identical-aged Dolores means she's more likely to find a spouse earlier.
  • I don't think it's accurate to say that Luisa and Isabela were under more pressure, only that Mirabel's interactions with her siblings reveal the depth of that pressure more fully. Even if you can dismiss Delores' overly quiet voice to her being gentle on her own ears, she squeaks. She's also spent the last several months (or years) observing the engagement of her cousin to the "man of her dreams," while being asked by her Abuela to help facilitate it, without ever saying a single word. Clearly not one person there knows of her true feelings. Camilo seems to take so much in stride that I don't even know if he does notice when Abuela is judgmental of him - though his power being as visibly helpful as Luisa's probably helped keep the weight off of him. I'm sure it wasn't only Mirabel's parents who noticed how hard Abuela was on her, but they were acutely aware, for obvious reasons - and so were Luisa and Isabela. That would've affected how much obligated the girls felt to behave.

Would Mirabel have left?

• If Mirabel had felt like an outsider from her family for any longer, would she have gone down the same path as Bruno, voluntarily vanishing one day for the sake of the family she adores and ending up isolated with a shaky grasp on sanity?
  • We know the magic was already fading and Casita was cracking, so both of those would have continued and been exacerbated by Abuela Alma's attempts to control it.
  • The extras on D+ show storyboards from a script where Mirabel did leave, and end up back in the same city her grandparents fled, with Abuela searching there for her. It seems possible that storyline was abandoned because it took the story to a dark place and kept it there for too long.
  • Maybe not the last bit, since it's implied that at least part of Bruno's Sanity Slippage was a result of literally living in the walls for 10 years. But considering that she was basically excluded from the family with Antonio's gifting ceremony was successful, it's likely that she would have felt that she no longer belonged, and quietly left. She basically vanished after being unable to save the miracle, believing that she was responsible for its death.

Did the remaining triplets blame themselves?

• Pepa and Julieta spent ten birthdays as an incomplete set of two. Did they blame themselves, thinking they pushed their brother away? For that matter, did Abuela Alma blame herself for pushing Bruno away, one of the only people she has left of her husband, and by all accounts, her beloved son?
  • As it was made very clear, they don't talk about Bruno. Everyone would have just done their best to ignore the missing triplet.
  • Abuela blamed Mirabel for Bruno's disappearance, assuming that he saw something in the future related to her that caused him to vanish. Pepa doesn't talk about him (although that could also be due to her thinking he ruined her wedding), and Julieta seems to have assumed that he died, considering her remarks about him having "lost his way in this family", but doesn't blame anyone for it.

Casita's magic dropping: A blessing in disguise?

• Had Casita's magic not failed when it did, would Abuela Alma have taken her overbearing My Beloved Smother tendencies too far and transitioned from Villainy-Free Villain to absolute Jerkass?
  • If that were true, she would've most likely pressured her other grandchildren into marriages to people they don't truly love. Meaning that unlike their Happily Married parents, all of the kids would have had an Awful Wedded Life and Happy Marriage Charade.
  • Judging from her expression just before the casita fell apart, she seemed to realize that Mirabel was making a valid point. One could interpret it as shock from the accusation, but Mirabel had already began pointing it out and her go-to reaction wasn't shock but to try and assert her authority.
    • Most likely, in that moment Mirabel shatters the post-traumatic bubble that was holding Alma together, and in doing so, shatters the magic that kept the casita standing. Which is why Alma isn't really a villain, even an early stage one - meaning Encanto isn't a fairytale, in the traditional sense. The façade keeping their whole family on edge was damaging them all, and there was always going to be a breaking point that took both the family and the magic apart (or they'd have stayed locked in toxic perfectionism until Alma died). Mirabel, by luck or by design, was the barometer for that pressure.
    • It could be both. Shock at the accusation, and dawning horror that Mirabel was right, coupled with even more horror due to Casita literally falling apart around them.

More about Mirabel's eyesight

• Why does Julieta's healing food not work on her husband and youngest daughter's eyesight?
  • Because her powers only work on injuries, and the latter two were born with their eyesight problems.
  • On Julieta's side of the family, she and her two older daughters don't have eyesight problems, but her husband and youngest daughter do. Julieta, Isabela, and Luisa all have gifts, while Mirabel and Agustín don't.
  • Word of God has confirmed that Julieta could heal her husband and daughter's eyesight but chooses not to because she doesn't think their bad eyesight needs to be "cured."
  • Isn't that kinda cruel of her? I get that Reed Richards Is Useless and about not trivialising existing conditions, but in universe, what possible justification could she have? Poor eyesight is not an endearing quirk of personality - it's a disability. Usually minor, yes, but it's annoying, it can exacerbate with time, and it can be dangerous, as was shown in Bruno's tower scene.
  • It's possible neither of them ever asked. If they get too fed up with having glasses and ask Julieta to heal their eyesight, she doesn't seem like the type to deny that request.
  • I would wager that, assuming the person can express themselves fully, Julieta only heals whatever the person seeks her to heal. If just eating any food prepared by Julieta would cure anything, it would eventually have been discovered that people eating her food never died, and she'd have just been constantly feeding the whole town something small every day. If this was a town cured of every cancer and congenital heart defect, this would be a very different story. And the priest would not have gone bald. I don't know that birth defects were all off the table, but clearly she was not a one-stop shop for pristine health, right down to the genetic code.

What happens to the doors when someone dies?

• What would happen to the door of a Madrigal member when they die?
  • It's safe to assume it would be something similar to what happened to the rooms with the Casita started to collapse, I.E; the room itself begins to fall apart on the inside while the door goes dark.
  • A much grimmer alternative would be that their room may fall into disrepair like Bruno's did when he cut himself off and went into hiding.
  • Or maybe it would be forever closed as though it were in memoriam of the owner.
    • Or is simply never occupied again, but left open as a shrine to their memory, with their belongings and pictures and so forth. Children can get to know relatives who have gone on to heaven.
  • Maybe like Bruno's room, the door simply goes dark, with the room being left as-is/falling into disrepair? Julieta seems to believe that he had died when she was talking to Mirabel near the start of the film.

The arranged marriage

• Alma sets up Isabela with Mariano, with implications that their proposal was carefully planned by Alma and Señora Guzman. Isabela didn't want to marry him, but she couldn't just tell her Abuela that because she had been raised since birth to act the part of a Proper Lady. If Mirabel wasn't such a wild card, Isabela probably would have married Mariano without incident and would have lived the rest of her life under Altar Diplomacy, her children born out of an obligation for the family. This is all self-evident, but this begs the question: was this the first time this happened? Sure, we see Julieta and Agustín and Pepa and Felíx is all Happily Married, but how certain can we be that they all married of their own volition? How can we be sure that Alma made a deal with their families and arranged them? Sure, they seem happy now, but how can we be sure that they simply didn't learn how to make it work in spite of the circumstances? If she had managed to do this with Isabela, would she have done it to the rest of her grandkids too?
  • If this is true, it just adds tragedy towards Bruno's own situation: Bruno was so disliked, his mother couldn't give him away.
  • Alternatively, Alma didn’t start planning for Isabela's marriage until Mirabel's failed Gift ceremony when she took it as a sign of the magic weakening and started looking for ways to strengthen it. Of course, this means she started planning to marry her granddaughter off when she was eleven.
  • It's quite likely this isn't the case. Word of God has stated that Agustín and Julieta fell in love because of the Florence Nightingale Effect, with Alma actually not too big on Agustín because apparently, she didn't think he'd be her daughters' first choice but approved on them down the road. Pepa and Félix, meanwhile, she approved right off the bat, and there wasn't a single bit of wording that implied arranged marriage was involved.
    • However, Julieta marrying Agustín was before them having Mirabel and discovering she was giftless. Was that the turning point in Alma's decision to Arranged Marriage? Worse still, that leaves huge Unfortunate Implications that Agustín produces "defective" children, considering his child is the one without a gift in contrast to Félix.
  • With a big, traditional family like the ones in the Encanto, a marriage between your children or grandchildren would have been a big thing that involved the lovers' families. Considering Isabela's belief that she has to be perfect for her family, it's possible that when Mariano started making his attraction to her known, she didn't want to reject him outright because really, he's a nice guy, and then when her family showed how excited they were at the prospect of the two of them becoming a couple, she felt she had to for the sake of their happiness.
  • It's also possible it isn't an Arranged Marriage in the traditional sense. Mirabel certainly doesn't consider it arranged, even though she knows Alma was discussing it with Mariano's mother. Mariano is clearly attracted to Isabela, and Isabela is too afraid of being seen as imperfect to reject him. It's entirely possible that Alma and the rest of the family got so swept up in the narrative of "perfect, beautiful girl and perfect, beautiful boy fall in love, it's a match made in heaven" that none of them stopped to realize it wasn't, and Alma—being the perfectionist that she is—stepped in to ensure that things would go smoothly for Isabela's sake. The whole point of her arc is that she doesn't realize how she's suffocating her family by trying to encourage them. She did invite Mariano over to propose after all. It's not like she had the wedding ready to go whether they liked it or not.
• Word of God confirmed that neither Julieta or Pepa were in arranged marriages. Alma immediately liked Felix and gave her blessing, but she notably did not like Augustin as much. If the marriages were arranged, and Alma had the ultimate say, she would probably not allow her daughter to marry a man she didn't approve of. It's implied that arranged marriages in the Encanto seem due to a combination of the individuals involved showing interest in each other, and then, after telling their families, are subject to a lot of scrutiny to ensure a smooth marriage. It's basically all but directly stated that Isabella's marriage to Mariano was due to a combination of Isabella's (supposed) interest in him, Mariano reciprocating, and Alma and Señorita Guzman overseeing it to make sure it goes well. This is also why Dolores is later able to date Mariano with little issue.

How did Pepa react to Bruno's disappearance?

• How did Pepa and emotionally linked Weather Manipulation react when Bruno mysteriously disappeared?
  • Probably a month of nonstop rain.
    • The "We don't talk about Bruno" rule might well have been instituted after the first time Abuela snapped at one of them, over a power snafu related to discussions of Bruno - such as Pepa's tears turning into rain.

Where's the rest of Alma's generation?

• The only two oldest people we see in the Encanto are Alma and Senora Guzman. Were all the males their age killed alongside Pedro?
  • Unlikely all, but probably a lot. We see some adult males in the crowd after Alma receives the candle and when the Encanto is created, it's possible some died to stall for time and allow other families to escape.
    • Another possibility is that most of that generation is dead and buried, while Abuela Alma is bolstered both by the Encanto, and her daughter's healing food. Senora Guzman may be one of those people who got the his combination of genes and has stayed relatively hearty.
• There is a number of elderly people milling about in the village. Some are guests at Antonio's party (Camilo greets a very old lady).

Exposition fairy

• Besides being a plot convenience to introduce anyone, how come the children on the beginning don't know the Madrigals or their powers? This family is the absolute center of their community, they presumably go to the village every day to help out with their gifts, and there's even a huge painting of all of them on a wall. It seems implausible that anyone who has spent more than a week in Encanto wouldn't be familiar with all of them.
  • It probably has to do with their age. A two-week-old infant may have spent more than a week in Encanto, but they likely don't know the names of their own family, let alone other ones. These kids are definitely older than that, but still may not be old enough to have gotten to know who all the Madrigals are and who has which powers.
  • They're aware that they're the Madrigals and that they have powers but just don't know who's who, some kids even mentioned that. They might have gotten a glimpse of a lady carrying a building without effort, but might not have known she is Luisa, or that an injured person recovered after eating and not knowing Julieta or that her cooking can heal people.
  • To elaborate on that, the Madrigals probably go about their daily chores when the children are at school, so they wouldn't see them in action all that often. The movie is set on the day Antonio gets his gift, which Abuela might easily have declared a town holiday for everyone to celebrate; therefore the kids have no school and get to see up close the amazing family for the first time.
  • They might be able to link the powers to the relevant person, but don't know the extent of their powers, nor their names completely. For all they know, what they see might just be a part of what they can do.

Why didn't Alma have powers?

• Did nobody question why Alma didn't have powers or was it recognized that her gift was the Encanto itself?
  • likely the second option, since the gifts came five years after the Encanto so people didn’t even expect them to appear, while the appearance of the Encanto born of Alma’s anguish saved the lives of the founding population.
  • The house itself would likely have been considered Alma's gift. After all, it appeared for her, and for the longest time she was the only adult there. The town would have come to see her as their benefactor and protector for five years before the gifts even made themselves known; when they did, they'd be seen as extensions of Alma's power and prestige.
  • The Encanto/Miracle and Casita were probably Alma's gifts, since they gave her a sanctuary, safely hidden from the horrors outside, and a place to live afterwards, even if they aren't the superpowers that the Madrigal children had.

How'd they get outside?

• How exactly did Mirabel and Isabela get outside to the roof in "What Else Can I Do?"? There's not indication the tree smashed through it, and I doubt Casita would want that.
  • It is very likely Casita opened the roof for them, as easily as it built the staircase for Antonio's ceremony the previous evening.

Where are Mirabel and Bruno sleeping in the New Casita?

• Where are Mirabel and Bruno sleeping in the newly built house? Does she get to leave the nursery and finally have a room of her own? And does he go back to his tower, or is he granted a less secluded living space?
  • They're building the house from scratch this time, so they probably customize it to their wants and needs. If Bruno prefers a tower, he probably gets a tower. If he prefers a different kind of room, he probably gets a different kind of room. It's not clear in the movie whether the new house is going to be big enough for every grandkid to get their own room, but it's possible, and if so, they probably will. And if it's not big enough, then any room-sharing will probably be based on who wants to share rather than on just age.
  • Considering the lack of names on the door, everyone presumably gets to pick the room that they want. As Casita was rebuilt under the assumptions that the Madrigals had lost their magic, there are probably individuals rooms for everyone, including both Bruno and Mirabel.

Pepa and Julieta started late

• So Pepa and Julieta are both 50 and their eldest children are both 21, meaning both of them got married at 29 or at least only starting having kids at that age. Given how busybody Alma is with how the family is run, doesn't it seem kinda odd for both of them to start having a family when pushing 30 while Isabela is already betrothed at 21?
  • This can be easy to forget when we're watching a movie, but character development does happen over time and offscreen. 21 years passed between Pepa and Julieta's marriages and Isabela's engagement; that's a lot of time for Alma to become more hands-on with managing things. Not to mention, the biggest failure of the Encanto to date—Mirabel's failed gift ceremony—happened in the interim. That's a strong wakeup call for her to realize that the family's magic can't be taken for granted and she might need to be more involved in maintaining it. There's also no indication that she realized she was forcing Isabela into something she wasn't ready for; Mariano clearly likes Isabela, and Isabela is too polite to reject his affections. She could very well have read that as Isabela returning his interest and just gotten involved to ensure things went smoothly for Isabela's sake.
• Word of God confirmed that neither Julieta or Pepa were in arranged marriages. It's possible that the matter of marriage is only brought up when the women in question are actively looking to get married. Pepa and Julieta were likely not under a lot of pressure to find husbands, and, considering how much Alma loved Pedro, she likely understands wanting to marry someone you truly love and would not force them into an unwanted marriage. It seems everyone, even Mirabel, were under the impression that Isabela wanted to marry Mariano, even if we know she was only doing it for the family. Even if it was at a much younger age than her mom and aunt, as an adult woman and The Favorite of the Madrigals, why wouldn't Alma give her a perfect marriage when she seems so ready? This is also why Dolores snatches up Mariano near the end with little hassle; Isabela was clearly uninterested.

Camilo stealing seconds?

• In what way was Camilo taking Dolores's form supposed to help him get seconds? The family is clearly just sitting down for breakfast in the first place, so unless he got there early and ate his allotted food before the others arrived, it's still his first serving. Even if that's the case, his plate is piled comically high with food, so it's not like he's being sneaky, which would seem to defeat the purpose of the subterfuge. Even if Dolores is the one who gets "blamed" for hoarding food, assuming there are actual consequences (which there aren't), he'd still be the one facing them; it's not like Abuela's going to scold Dolores for "her" impropriety after breakfast, she'd just scold "Dolores" at the table. Granted, he's allowed to keep the extra food even after he's caught, and it seems in-character for him to randomly shapeshift just for the heck of it, but it seems like a weird way to work in the "Mirabel talks to the wrong cousin" gag.
  • The way I see it, it goes like this: Camilo, hoping nobody notices, changes into his sister and gets his first plate, then sets it down at the table. Again hoping nobody notices, he changes back to himself, gets back in line, and gets his "first" plate as Camilo. As for how that first plate could be his seconds, the way Félix says to cut it out sounds like this isn't the first time Camilo's done something like this—it's less "you're trying to get seconds now" and more "you've done this to get seconds in the past, so I assume that's the reason now".
  • But why all the effort for more food? Can't Camilo just politely ask for seconds?
  • There may be family rules for how much he’s allowed to take, to prevent overeating or to ensure everyone gets their share. This is him trying to bypass them.
  • Camilo also may just like trying to fool people, in a mischievous or "family clown" way; getting more food is just a bonus.
  • "Greed" and "Gluttony" are still likely to be sins.
  • Camilo may be secretly embarrassed about grabbing seconds or worried the family will tease him for how much he eats. Look at how much food is on the plate, and that's his second go round. Or, alternatively, it isn't that he can't have seconds, but rather he's stacking up two whole plates before the rest of the family has gotten their own pick of the buffet.
  • There's a simpler explanation: fifteen-year-old boy who is also a mischievous trickster? We have a trope for that: Filching Food for Fun. Most boys who do that simply don't have Voluntary Shapeshifting.
  • It could be part of familial etiquette that it's rude to go back for seconds before everyone's had their firsts. Camilo may be expecting one or more of the others to be slowpokes at getting to breakfast in the morning, and doesn't want to wait for second helpings because he's a growing teenage boy, hence would happily eat everything in the kitchen if he were allowed to.

What does Mirabel do for the community?

• So what DID Mirabel do for the community before the events of the movie? It's stated she tries too hard to make herself stand out but we don't see how she's trying to contribute. During the opening when the Madrigals do their rounds of community service she's the narrator and we don't see what she's doing.
  • It's important that it's Isabela who says that Mirabel tries too hard to make herself stand out, so that's just a mean dig. Mirabel is pretty good with small children (even annoyingly persistent ones), and they're pretty comfortable with asking her questions, so she's probably one of the local older kids the adults will send their little ones off to play with.
  • More obviously, looking at the contents of her desk drawer with its yarn and needle, it's quite clear that Mirabel has skill as a seamstress or knitter so making and/or repairing clothing is a skill she very likely contributes to the community.
  • The purpose of the movie is that she wants to find her identity and place in the community. It's likely she has provided the most mundane things her whole life to feel like she belongs or is useful. That would include sewing as the above troper stated, or running errands like shopping.

Why hasn't Bruno's part of the mural been painted over?

• If Bruno is so taboo among the Encanto's people, why hasn't he been painted over in the mural?
  • "All of You" shows the townspeople don't have negative reactions to him when he returned so it was likely they didn't hate Bruno as a person, but rather that his visions make their future bad. As such, they would have found it disrespectful to either cleanly paint over it or deface it.
  • Bruno doesn't "make" the future bad; like Mirabel says, he only gets a bad reputation because they often happen to be negative in the ears of the townspeople. As heard during "We Don't Talk About Bruno" Isabela's prophecy was positive (YMMV on this, as we know later on the vision wasn't positive to her considering she hid her true self, but putting aside all that), and also, the vision he gives Mirabel of her hugging Isabela isn't inherently negative on its own, just that Mirabel interprets it as such since they have an estranged relationship.
  • While everyone says they don't talk about Bruno, it's pretty obvious that nobody truly has the desire to fully forget him. Their grudges against him are just too juicy and indulgent to leave behind, and it can be argued that leaving hints about Bruno creates a sense of mystery and urban legend—something that generates excitement and intrigue for a town where magic is pretty normalized.
  • They don't talk about him, but he is still a Madrigal. It would be disrespectful for the townspeople to just erase a part of the family.
• The mural seems new, though - it has Antonio as he looks like in the present day.

How'd they rebuild the Casita so exactly?

• How was Casita able to be rebuilt exactly, or at the very least almost identical to the way it originally was? The house was made with magic so no blueprints ever existed and since it can reshape and modify itself, maintenance didn't seem necessary.
  • Abuela says the house isn't perfect, so it's likely there are some elements that weren't captured exactly. Otherwise, the Madrigals are very familiar with their house and know how to get it close, and Bruno, who lived inside the walls and likely knows a lot about the mechanics of Casita's construction, is notably shown mapping out pieces with sand for the house to follow.
  • Casita's major elements don't seem prone to change (it doesn't seem to be able to just create rooms, that's an ability of the magic itself), and the town frequently interacted with the Madrigals, including coming to their house for the gifting ceremonies, so some of the town might be fairly familiar with the Casita.

Can the Casita reach occupancy?

• Can the Casita run out of room? What's the limit of family members it can house and doors it can add to the home? Will members of the Madrigals start moving out and spreading across the world now that the mountains have opened, thus allowing new Madrigals to move in and replace the rooms of previous residents?
  • Earlier concepts showed that the Casita would've gotten bigger and taller each time someone got a new room, so my guess would be no. But back then, there were going to be more Madrigals than there are in the movie proper.
  • The rooms are Bigger on the Inside, so they might be added by the magic, like how the doors appear and disappear. Casita might also become Bigger on the Inside to accommodate more doors as new Madrigals are added to the family.

'This Gift Will Self Destruct in 3...'

• ... With no Televisions and Radios in the town, regardless of the time period, how does Mirabel know about the This Page Will Self-Destruct trope when finding Antonio? And how would Bruno know about Telanovelas without those things?
  • Because that trope did exist in some form in literature.
  • Just because we don't see anyone watching TV or listening to the radio doesn't mean they don't have them in the Encanto.
    • Neither of the two responses above resolves this question. The origin of the term "self-destruct" as a verb is the Mission Impossible tv series (according Merriam-Webster and Etym Online), which aired from 1966-1973. And even if it's not the exact line from the show, that's definitely the ultimate origin of lines like "This _____ will self-destruct in 3, 2, 1." It's accepted canon that Abuela's 'origin story' takes place some time around the Thousand Days War, which was 1899-1902, meaning the bulk of the plot takes place in the 1950s. Yes, it's possible that the people in the story had televisions, but not that they had seen a 1960's US television show.
      
      Also, the first telenovela aired in 1951, and the first to air in Colombia in 1959. It's not impossible for Bruno to have seen a TV, nor is it it impossible for them to have seen a telenovela, but it's a huge stretch to imagine Bruno (after 5 years hiding in the walls) has seen one. Unless different information comes forward on when Encanto takes place, both moments represent historical anachronisms.
    • Self-destruct could be explained as Mirabel making the word up. Destruction and self are words she knows exists, so it doesn't take much to combine them. And Bruno is able to see the future, so he most likely glimpsed telenovelas during a vision and liked the idea enough to make his own.

Power Fluctuations

• With how liberally the Madrigals use their powers, why is it that only Luisa started to experience issues with her powers?
  • The other Madrigals also had power issues but were considered much less unusual such as Pepa turning the weather stormy, Camilo transforming wrong, and Isabela making the wrong flora.
    • The power issues seem to be related to shock more than anything. Pepa turning the weather stormy is part of her regular powers, since she creates storms when she is agitated (such as being worried about a marriage proposal going wrong, considering the recent issues with the magic). No-one is particularly confused by this, and Félix's reaction suggests that's not the first time Camilo has done something like that. Contrast against their reactions when they lose their powers.
  • It's established that the strength of the magic/powers is directly connected to the emotional health of the family. Given that Luisa has been feeling the insurmountable pressure of her Gift for (probably) YEARS, her feeling weak when the cracks first appeared along with her opening up to Mirabel probably forced her to acknowledge how weak and shaky she felt under the surface, which caused her mental health to spiral downwards, which caused her to start losing her Gift, which caused her to spiral further, which caused her to lose more Gift, which caused ... you get the idea.

How the triplets refer to Alma

• Pepa and Julieta are shown referring to Alma as "Mama", so why does Bruno refer to her as "Abuela" when she is his mother too?
  • He was talking to Mirabel and used her perspective. [Your grandmother wouldn’t approve]

When Dolores says that she associates Bruno with the sound falling sand makes, is that just for the rhyming scheme or is there some additional meaning there?

• Pouring sand into a circle is a key part of the ritual he uses to access his gift.
• Plus, he keeps salt and sugar on hand for his superstitions, and the sound of that hitting the floor can sound like sand from a distance.
• Plus, there's a waterfall of sand in his tower that could possibly have been falling her entire life, which one assumes is meant to be symbolic of an hourglass - which in turn represents prophecy, and the connection between The Fates and the trope of Death's Hourglass.
• Also since hearing is her gift, it's not that farfetched a notion she'd start associating any particular sound with a family member (weights for Luisa, cooking for Julieta, storms with Pepa etc.) Sand sounds like a natural choice, since Bruno lives in a tower full of sand.

"Pepa, sorry 'bout your wedding ..."

• Given that the incident at Pepa's wedding happened over 20 years ago and Bruno had only vanished for 10 years, did it really NEVER come up that Bruno was just making a poorly-timed joke/that wasn't a prophecy until decades later? Yes he was being ostracized as hell but it wasn't as if his siblings HATED him, judging by their reactions to seeing him again.
  • It probably never came up because Bruno was too timid. It's shown that Pepa is prone to mood swings, and he was probably afraid of her getting mad at him again, or Alma scolding him for upsetting her before he could get his story out. It's not unlikely that he tried to explain himself early on but Pepa was too angry to hear him out, so he just never tried again, especially with the increasing amount of pressure he was getting for his bad predictions.
  • Pepa seems to have hated him for it, given that she turns stormy if someone so much as mentions his name, and refuses to talk about him at all, even amongst the family. His trying to apologise might have resulted in his being struck by lightning, or being caught up in a storm before he could actually apologise. Especially if Abuela and Félix tried to keep him away to prevent her storms.

Where did Bruno get a horse?

• We only see or hear about donkeys in the Encanto, and the only horses are the ones ridden by the men who kill Pedro. So where did Bruno's horse come from?
  • It's possible they're just not a staple with donkeys being more common. Other animals aren't shown but are implied to exist if you break down the ingredients used in Julieta's cooking and where they could have come from. A few animals may have been set loose from the fissure that ran across the whole town which is how Bruno found one.

Mariano’s injured nose.

• In "All Of You," when Mirabel talks to Mariano, his nose still has a bandage on it. The first floor of the new house is visibly built so it must’ve been a few weeks at least if not months since it was injured - even without Julieta and her healing Gift, wouldn’t his nose have healed by now? Did the animators just forget?
  • It's implied that the house goes up in a couple of days, at most. Not only does no one change clothes between the beginning and end of that montage, but 5-year-old Antonio hasn't gotten any older by the end. The lighting and exterior shots imply that it's dusk on the first day when she has that conversation with Mariano, the house being more than halfway done, and it's then the next dusk when they install the doorknob. It's
    • Isabela is still wearing her pollen-covered dress, implying that it all happened in the span of a day or two. Otherwise, it would have been washed, and cleaned of the pollen.

Why did Bruno's chamber collapse when Mirabel got the prophecy?

• Looking at that scene, it seems to me like Mirabel picking and assembling the pieces of the prophecy was causing Bruno's vision chamber to collapse, but I'm not sure why.
  • I believe the implication is that Mirabel realizing that the prophecy about the magic failing and the house falling apart was related to her, pushed the magic and the house closer to that outcome. This is supported by Luisa' showing up immediately after Mirabel has left the tower, having run home distraught over her powers failing her again - just like they had the night before, when Mirabel first observed that the magic & house were in trouble.
    • It could also be that Casita was letting the room be destroyed because it couldn't hold everything together and Bruno's room would do the least damage overall.
    • Casita can't affect the contents of the rooms, hence why it couldn't help Mirabel, or turn the sand off in Bruno's room, being stuck at the door.
  • Mirabel realising that she might be responsible for causing the magic to fail could be causing it to weaken further, since she is distancing herself from the rest of the family. Similar to how the magic started failing when she despaired after Antonio got his gift, believing that it was too late for her, and that she was forever stuck on the sidelines.

Pepa making it rain at the end

• At the end of the movie when the Miracle and the Gifts come back, Pepa is shown making it rain even though she looks happy. I get that the idea was that she’s learned to manage her emotions better and “dance in the rain” so to speak, but why would she be making “sad” weather at all? Did she learn to control the weather voluntarily or did she actually hate her Gift and was sad it had come back?
  • Ah, but is all rain sad?
  • It's actually hailing. And it's implied that her issues are much the same as Isabela's: she's simply never had the opportunity to fully explore her powers and understand how they work because doing so puts the "perfect" image of the family and their Gifts at risk. Assuming Pepa was equally as temperamental as a 5-year-old, Alma likely very quickly saw that "happy Pepa = sunshine; upset Pepa = thunder and rain" and so encouraged Pepa to just...be happy and calm all the time, thus effectively stunting her emotionally and not allowing her to truly explore her Gift and how it works. Given that human emotions become a lot more nuanced and complicated as we grow up, the weather would probably have grown to be less intrinsically tied to Pepa's current emotions and it would have been easier to pick and choose what weather is wanted at what moment had she just been allowed to express herself. At the end, she's finally free to both experiment with her Gift and express herself freely, so she's able to be in control of her Gift and her emotions equally. Thus, being happy while creating (and controlling) "sad" weather.
  • It could be hailing/raining because of "happy tears". She's overjoyed that the house was not only rebuilt, but the magic has returned, causing the hail.
  • Hail is ice. The story is set in the tropics, in an era without refrigerators. Ice can cool drinks, chill dairy products into ice cream, and be shaved into snow cones. Pepa is doing the equivalent of making it rain candy.

Can Camilo transform into anything other than humans?

Yes, I do know that concept art did show him turning into animals, but the finished movie only shows him turning into other human characters. Is there any evidence that he can or can’t turn into animals, objects, or anything other than people for once in the final product?

• If he could turn into animals, I expect he would have shapeshifted into something with wings when trying to save the candle.

What were the plans for Mirabel?

• Casita fell, got rebuilt hopefully with a room for her, lessons were learned, all that jazz, but... what if it didn't? Even if you don't think Alma was abusive, she, the head of the family, mostly ignored her. What was her idea for Mirabel growing up and becoming an adult? Just let her in the nursery forever, as a live-in babysitter? She did stay there until Tonio's birth, seemingly without any plans to get her a room (I say until his birth because, let's be honest, she totally wanted to stay with him). Nobody thought she could eventually get a partner and they would want privacy? Did Alma expect them to just roll with sharing a room with toddlers, in case of any kids getting gifts adding "Oh, sweetie, you have your grow-up room now! Now excuse mommy while she goes to the nursery" to the humilation layers? Maybe hoped she would one day marry and justify leave Casita, finally getting off her hair? Everything comes across rather ugly.
  • With Antonio getting his gift, she would probably have been permanently sidelined, and maybe eventually separated from the family, whether of her own volition, or to make room for the new Madrigals. We already saw it with the family photograph, where she was not included, and Abuela asked her to stand aside, so she didn't cause problems with Antonio's gift ceremony.

Luisa doing physical exercise?

In the opening song, Luisa is shown to do exercise with dumbbells and Casita's floor as a makeshift treadmill. It does give an easy shorthand of her powers, but why exercise? Doesn't she already have super strength? Or is she just training to gain even more strength on top of the strength she got from her gift?

• Because exercise helps increase your limits.
• The gifts are seemingly tied to your interests. Luisa probably just likes working out, as well as trying to be strong enough to do anything the family needed of her.
• Strength and stamina aren't the same thing. Luisa was presumably building up her endurance to cope with the constant demands on her lifting and hauling abilities.
• This video points out how Luisa is the only one shown actively trying to better her Gift, already wide awake and exercising as the rest of the family is just getting up, due to the intense demand placed on her. It's an Establishing Character Moment for her, showing both her Gift and alluding to why she does it.

Family Titles and Translation Convention

• Presumably, the characters are all speaking Spanish, and their dialogue is only presented as English for our benefit, as per Translation Convention. However, some family titles are left as untranslated Spanish - "abuela" and "tio" instead of "grandmother" and "uncle". What's up with that?
  • Likely to enhance cultural impact. While words can be directly translated, certain words sometimes have deeper societal context depending on the language/country. For example, saying "mi vida" is very common in Spanish-speaking countries as a way to express love to a family member, but saying "my life" in English doesn't have the same feel to it and just sounds plain weird. They don't want to take away these aspects of culture in order to "Americanize" the language, so to say. (One could argue they could translate "mi vida" with a better English equivalency, but again, that would be removing or censoring culture and they didn't want to do that).

Why was the fish lady in the madrigal section of "We don't talk about Bruno"?

That section of the song seems to exclusively feature the family. The fish lady showing up seems out of place, especially since she is replaced by Dolores a few seconds later.

Camilo’s contribution

• I have the same kinda question the entries about what Pepa, Dolores, and Isabela’s contributions to the community are, this time about Camilo. Seriously… what does turning into other people do to help the community’s problems? Especially since it’s implied that he can’t turn into anything but the other humans he knows. Of course, at Antonio’s gift ceremony, he greets partygoers by turning into them, but… I don’t know how that’s doing anything particularly helpful.
  • There's a brief moment during The Family Madrigal where Camilo is seen shapeshifting into a baby's mother so the baby can stay safe and calm while the mother takes a nap, and then turns into another José while preparing for Antonio's Gift ceremony so they're both tall enough to hang a banner, not to mention how he amuses the village children with his shifting into other people. From that, it's fair to say that Camilo's purpose is to shift into whatever person is most useful in that moment, mostly for babysitting purposes.

Where do Felix and Agustin live?

So do the fathers married into the family live at the house (either in their wives’ rooms or in a normal room like the nursery) or do they stay in their original homes at the village and visit their wives and children daily? I didn’t catch it.

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