Encanto’s directors talk the movie’s big ending mystery

Mirabel Madrigal (Stephanie Beatriz), the center character of Disney’s newest animated feature Encanto, is the only person in her family who wasn’t granted with a magical power by their enchanted house. Mirabel, despite the fact that her mom can help people with food, her cousin can speak to animals and talk to them, has no other special abilities and struggles to integrate with her fairy family.

Mirabel’s curiosity has been a constant throughout her life. Why?She never received a gift from her house. And when the house begins to crumble, threatening the family’s magic, Mirabel must figure out how to save her relatives’ powers without any abilities herself. But there’s a significant surprise waiting for viewers in terms of how her quest resolves, and director Jared Bush has a good reason for it.

“Story-wise, that’s what I needed,” he says.

[Ed. note: This post contains major spoilers for Encanto.]

Image: Disney

Mirabel and her fellow Madrigals can finally understand one another by the end of this movie. The Madrigals learn to accept each other beyond the limitations of their family roles and special gifts. Mirabel, however, never gains any power. The Madrigals can embrace their flaws. Film never shows exactly. Why? she didn’t get powers in the first place. Bush says that isn’t what the story is meant to be about.

“I think there are so many reasons that people can relate to Mirabel about feeling left out and lesser-than,” he tells Polygon. “Rather than put some magical reason why, I think it’s clear in the film that she is who she needs to be for a very good reason.”

Bush says that Mirabel was the film’s main character from the beginning. Mirabel was born into a magical family and became the ideal vehicle for the story. She also proved to be a sympathetic character for the viewers.

“This one young woman just was not given the same opportunity as the rest of these extraordinary people,” explains Bush. “The empathy was just there for her from the beginning [..]It’s my favorite reason [she lacks powers] isn’t exactly stated.”

The mystery of Mirabel’s powers remains, well, a mystery. But that’s what makes the movie particularly evocative. Bush and codirector Byron Howard described this at an earlier press conference. EncantoIt is an art of magic realism. This means that the magical elements will seamlessly integrate into a real world. This is what they aimed at Encanto to function just as well as a story if the magic didn’t exist.

When Mirabel saves her family and the magic, she isn’t discovering long-lost enchantments or abilities. She’s healing their fractured bonds and helping them see each other clearly for the first time. This isn’t a movie about the mechanics of magic. It’s about the emotions and actions that the magic is able to facilitate.

EncantoIt’s available now in cinemas