Encanto director Jared Bush explains why Abuela's candle flickers during Mirabel's gift ceremony. The latest film from Walt Disney Animation Studios first hit theaters in November of last year, but only really took off with audiences following its December 24 Disney+ release. Encanto has grown to become the studio's biggest hit with audiences since 2013's Frozen, with its Lin-Manuel Miranda-penned soundtrack setting music chart performance records for the studio.
While embraced for elements such as its cultural fidelity or challenging themes, audiences have also loved engaging with Encanto fan theories, pouring over scenes to find previously unnoticed details in the animation. Many of these center on Mirabel's gift ceremony, an event that mysteriously left the protagonist without a magical power and served as the catalyst for the Madrigal family miracle's endangerment years later. Some theories, such as Mirabel accidentally sabotaging her gift by wiping off the magic from Abuela's candle, have been debunked by the filmmakers, but viewers continue to look for new angles that might explain what happened.
Now, in a scene breakdown video by Vanity Fair, Bush explains a key detail that might help Encanto fans flesh out their theories. When young Mirabel's door unexpectedly fades, Abuela notices the flame of her candle flicker, and the director reveals it was important to the filmmakers that this happen after the ceremony had already gone awry. He says that the Enacnto team always believed the candle's magic was connected to Abuela's unconditional love, and that the flame wavers as a result of her reaction to Mirabel's being denied a gift, rather than an indication of what caused the ceremony to abort. Check out Bush's full comment below:
One of the things that we really liked here is that notion that the candle doesn't flicker until after this moment, and one of the reasons we liked that is we always thought that there was a connection between Abuela's unconditional love and the magic. And that when that door started to fade there might have been something in her unconditional love that wavered, and as a result the candle also wavered. So, figuring out that timing and understanding those rules, even if we never convey them to the audience, was something that we had to know as we were creating the story.
For those looking to tease out the full workings of Encanto's miracle, this answer is telling in multiple ways. In firmly establishing a connection between Abuela's love and the candle's magic, the director reveals that the miracle's later waning is not a reflection of the pain the Madrigals experience as a result of trying to live up to an impossibly perfect family image, but rather an indication that Abuela's love is now somewhat conditional. This explains why the candle goes out when it does, as Mirabel confronts her grandmother with the reality that none of them could ever live up to her standards and accuses her of having lost her love for the family.
Additionally, in emphasizing the timing of the candle's flicker, Bush seems to confirm that Mirabel's gift ceremony didn't actually go wrong. Fans have long theorized that Mirabel was chosen as the new Abuela, the keeper of the miracle and family matriarch - indeed, her arc in Encanto reveals her true gift is the ability to love her family unconditionally, making her, by Bush's description, perfect for the job. With this knowledge more shored up than before, Encanto fans can now use it to help explain other aspects of the story - including why Bruno's prophecy about Mirabel included two possible outcomes.
Source: Vanity Fair