Encanto Fan Theory
A note on Encanto: This is not part of my review of the film, but is related.
The film inexcusably leaves unanswered several crucial questions, including what, if anything Alma’s gift might be, and whether Mirabel was granted a gift at the end, and, if so, what it was.
Let us suppose Alma’s power was to build the house itself. The house is alive, and animated by a spirit, due to the sacrifice of Pedro and her own love.
If so, Mirabel inherits that power in the final scene, because it is her hand that opens the front door. Upon her touch, glitter floods the rebuilt edifice, and it springs to life again. Everyone’s door shows some image of his gift; the front door shows the family gathered together, as they were not, for example, in the family photo taken earlier.
The image shows what her power is: to bring the family together.
Please note that it is never said whose power makes the house alive.
Now, the ability to bring the house to life is no less wondrous than making roses bloom or hearing whispers on the wind. Thematically and emotionally, this would be a perfectly satisfactory gift for the quirky, bespectacled youngest sister to inherit.
This also would explain Mirabel’s lack of any gift heretofore, and in a rather ironic way.
If Mirabel were granted Alma’s power, the house would continue to be alive both before and after Mirabel’s seventh birthday, and so no one would notice or tell that Mirabel had any gift, not even she herself.
Mirabel would have had no idea because the house would be alive due to the magic power of Alma. She would have had a power the whole time, and not known it.
Like her aunt causing thunderstorms when angry, Mirabel would have indeed been causing the cracks in the foundation whenever she her unhappy emotions boiled up: which would explain why cracks appeared when she stormed out of her cousin’s birthday party, and then, when her love for the family causes her to rush back into the party shouting a warning, that love cures the cracks again immediately.
It explains why her argument with Alma destroys the whole house, because now both of them are unknowingly unleashing their anger in the form of cracks toppling the house, and their combined strength does more damage than either alone.
Finally, the reason why the gift-door evaporated under her touch at her seventh birthday was not that she was denied a gift. Instead of being given a room in the house, the whole house was her room, and the front door leading into it was her door, in much the same way as the window where the ever burning prayer-candle burns was Alma’s window.
So this theory I think answers the questions neatly, and in a way that I would have found satisfying.
I would have found these answer satisfying, that is, if I had not made them up out of my own head.
But I was not an author on this film. I should not have to do the work of putting into place the details the real writer should have put into place. I am a pro writer. I am perfectly capable of making up stories. But when I buy a ticket, I am off work. Why should I do another writer’s job for him, if I am paying him?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
