Disney's Frozen 2 may have caused Elsa to be reborn as an immortal magical spirit, but that’s not all good news for her. After discovering her true nature and the history of her family in Ahtohallan, Elsa froze all the way through, even causing Olaf to disappear. Once Anna fixed their wrongs by destroying the Northuldra dam, Elsa thawed out, much different than before.
Things actually end well in Frozen 2, at least over the short term. Anna is crowned as Queen, a job she’s better suited for than Elsa is. The future of Arendelle is solidified with Anna and Kristoff’s marriage and future kids to inherit the throne. Elsa is fulfilling her purpose, while still being close enough with Anna that she comes back for game night. Over the long term, however, this ending isn’t quite as happy as it seems.
The main curse of being immortal is that everyone around you isn’t, and that applies to Elsa in Frozen 2. Her magic lets her create Olaf, Marshmallow, and possibly other beings, so they should be able to live forever. There are also the other four elemental spirits who are shown to be basically immortal like Elsa is, but that’s a pretty limited group. If they’re the only immortal ones, then what about everyone else?
Anna isn’t immortal, but just an ordinary person despite how extraordinary her sister is. Kristoff is as ordinary as they come, along with everyone else in Arendelle. This means that Elsa is likely going to outlive all of them. She’ll see Anna’s kids grow up to take the throne, then even they’ll die. While she’s close with everyone now, that’s not going to last when “everyone” is a different group of people. As generations move on, she’ll still be there, the immortal sorceress who used to be the Queen, more a mythological figure than a person.
Without everyone she loved to ground her, Elsa is likely to have less and less of her humanity moving forward. Her purpose is to link magic and humanity, but how well can that work when she’s lost everyone? She already showed in Frozen how removed from humanity she could be when she was still fully human, just with magical powers – in her new form, this looks even worse. She’ll live long enough to lose everyone, then start to lose her humanity as there’s no one left to ground her. This would put her well on the course to truly becoming the villainous Snow Queen that her story started off as.
While none of this has been shown (or is likely to happen in a Disney movie), the implications are all there. Frozen 2 ends well for all the characters. Elsa has found her true place, along with everyone else in her life. This makes for a happy ending, it just has scary implications for Elsa’s future.