When Esteban's childhood friend, Victor Delgado (with his daughter, Carla Delgado), returns from exile to steal the crown jewels, Esteban must decide between protecting Elena or protecting his secret collaboration with Shuriki.
Tropes in this episode include:
- An Aesop: Your past will come back to haunt you, and you have to choose whether to run from it until it comes back again or face it.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: For all Esteban may be, he does love his family and regrets betraying them.
- Cassandra Truth: Victor attempts to reveal that Esteban betrayed the royal family to Shuriki, but Elena assumes he was just lying to divide them.
- Dramatic Irony: Esteban sings about how he's scared that the Awful Truth will break his family's heart and ruin their world as they know it. It's too late. It already happened when Shuriki invaded Avalor those forty-one years ago. Esteban believes confessing would just make it worse.
- Exact Words: While comforting Esteban about what Victor said about him and Shuriki, Elena says that she believes he wouldn't hurt his family on purpose. She's not wrong. Esteban didn’t want them to get hurt, but Shuriki violated that part of their agreement. Elena also tells Esteban he had no choice, leading him to reply that’s what he kept telling himself, but he always felt guilty. Esteban doesn’t say why.
- The Exile: The Delgado family were exiled from Avalor after Shuriki took over, but now that she's gone, they can return home. They are exiled again as punishment for stealing from the treasury.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: While Esteban navigates the treasury, he sets off a bell that rings lightly. The guard at the treasury doesn't investigate the room when he hears it, despite that it is supposed to indicate that someone not permitted is inside.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Elena assures Esteban that what he did under Shuriki's rule was to survive, and that in the end, he helped them against Shuriki, which is all that matters. What she doesn't know (or want to believe) is that he helped Shuriki take over in the first place. Victor disagrees, because Esteban always had a choice, but chose not to leave when things got ugly.
- Musical World Hypotheses: All In Their Heads. Esteban sings "Something I Would Never Do" while maneuvering through the booby-trapped treasury, despite that singing out loud would've gotten the guards' attention — a bell gently ringing is enough for a guard to stop and wonder if they just heard something from the treasury, and Esteban has to hold his breath while being frozen in place to keep from making any further noise.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: Noticeably, in the family paintings, Esteban is near the very edge while the royal family is in the front and center.
- Shut Up, Kirk!: When Victor calls him out for doing nothing when Shuriki banished him from Avalor, Esteban insists he had no choice after Shuriki killed Elena's parents, fearing things would have gotten worse if he had intervened. Victor is unmoved and counters that he always has a choice.
