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Mirabel Madrigal is one of the main characters of Disney's 2021 animated feature film Encanto. She is the youngest daughter of Julieta and Agustín Madrigal, who has the distinction of being the only Madrigal without a magical gift.
Background[]
Mirabel is the youngest daughter of the family and the only Madrigal child who did not get a gift, having to face many difficulties and challenges such as sometimes being left out of her family. But when the magic is in danger of disappearing, Mirabel might be the last hope for the Madrigal family to restore the magic and save the miracle.
Personality[]
Mirabel is an optimistic young girl who, despite her lack of having a magical gift, manages to scrape by with her down-to earth-approach to solving problems. She is known for being imperfect, quirky, and a little weird, but also deeply emotional and empathetic. Despite her happy and loving nature, Mirabel has insecurities about her place in her family: being the only child not blessed with a gift, she feels like an outsider to the family (believing she contributes nothing to her family and community) and thinks she disappointed her family, particularly her Abuela, who is quite hard on her for not getting a gift. Despite this, Mirabel genuinely loves her family and wished to receive a gift to make her family proud, as well as benefit her community. She is very brave, spunky, and adventurous, as she was willing to save the magic despite the repercussions and the danger she faced.
Despite being the only Madrigal grandchild without a gift and constantly being in the rest of the family's shadow, Mirabel is very caring, kind, sociable and friendly towards them and everyone else around her. She also gets along with most of them aside from Abuela and Isabela and often projects a confident demeanor that she doesn't need a gift to be happy and sees herself as being just as special as everyone else in her family. However, deep down, she's actually quite insecure about this since it means she can't contribute as much to her family as the the others and is often looked down upon, primarily by Abuela and Isabela. She also feels lonely and isolated as a a result. Over the course of the film, as she investigates the cause of their magic fading away, she begins to realize how much pressure many of the other members of her family are under and demonstrates what her true "gift" is; her capacity for empathy. This allows her to connect with them in ways that others couldn't, as well as helps them to see their own value as people beyond their gifts. While she also highly respects Abuela, both for being the family's matriarch and the founder of the magic, she grows understandably frustrated from being looked down on and excluded from familial activities by her. She eventually calls her out on her behavior and how she's the one truly hurting the family when she blames her of the same, as a result of feeling no matter what she, along with the rest of the family does, it isn't good enough for her. However, she even sympathizes with and forgives with her after they have a heart-to-heart conversation and she finds out why Abuela became that way. Ultimately, her empathetic nature ends up both bringing the family together in a way it had never been and helps save the magic of the household as a result.
Appearance[]
Mirabel is a young 15-year-old girl with brown skin, black hair with curly sides, a dark shade with freckles in the cheeks and nose, black eyebrows, and hazel eyes with Colombian descent.
She has a white shirt on black trimming with use to it of the colorful butterfly stitched in her middle of the dress and it made of the name stitching in this. She has pink sandals has wearing in them and long blue skirt has colorful butterfly on her prints with use to it. She has green glasses with around on the frame, a purple petticoat, and white bloomers. She also has indigo pom pom earrings.
Physical appearance[]
The symbols of Mirabel's magical relatives.
Mirabel is a 15-year-old Colombian girl with black hair, thick eyebrows, hazel eyes, and visible dark shade of freckles on her nose and cheeks. She wears light green round-framed glasses, blue earrings, and a white shirt with black trimming on it and colorful butterfly stitching on it, and in the middle of her dress it has her name stitched on it. She wears a long teal skirt with colorful butterfly prints on it with an indigo petticoat and white bloomers, and sandals with pink linking on them and black ribbons around her ankles. Mirabel's skirt has many drawings stitched on it, like butterflies, flowers, a little version of herself, some even representing her relatives, like a candle (for Abuela), a little basket of food (for Julieta), a chameleon (for Camilo), musical notes (for Dolores) and the same for the rest of her family.
Powers and abilities[]
Mirabel has no magical powers, unlike the rest of her family. However, she does have a stronger affinity with the Casa Madrigal than most of her family; she communicates with the house (or Casita) like it is a real person and Casita responds to her prompts and helps with her daily routine. Mirabel is skilled in sewing, having embroidered her own clothes and made a stuffed jaguar for her cousin, Antonio. She is also quite nimble and quick on her feet, displaying skills similar to parkour to navigate through difficult areas.
Biography[]
Mirabel is a 15-year-old girl, the youngest daughter of the Madrigal family and the only child who wasn't given a gift, causing her to have significant self-esteem issues and be shunned by some of her family members. However, upon the realization that something was wrong with the Miracle that gave the valley life, she took it as a call to action to save the Miracle and prove herself worthy of being a Madrigal, even though she's giftless.
It all began during her 5th birthday, the day that every Madrigal family member by blood would be granted a unique gift by Casa Madrigal, or Casita. The only exceptions to this were Mirabel's father Agustin and uncle Felix, since they married into the family, thus were denied gifts by Casita due to joining the family by marriage. However, when the moment came and Mirabel touched the doorknob to what was to be her new room, the door vanished, denying her a gift. This caused Mirabel to essentially become alienated from the family by her grandmother, or Abuela, Alma, who feared that the miracle was dying because Mirabel was denied a gift and turned to her son and Mirabel's uncle, Bruno, for aid. However, Bruno vanished shortly after his prophetic vision regarding Mirabel was made, and this only further fueled Alma's prejudice against her granddaughter while marking Bruno as a villain and his name a taboo in Encanto.
10 years later, Mirabel is still trying to prove herself, despite being giftless, and help the family as best she can, even with Casita's help, despite being alienated by Alma. Soon, it comes time for her younger cousin, Antonio, to endure his ceremony to get a gift from Casita. Despite the looks she gets from her family and everyone when she reluctantly brings a nervous Antonio to his door, when Antonio touches his doorknob, he does receive a gift, much to the relief of the rest of the family. However, during the celebrations that follow, Mirabel interrupts them to report she had seen cracks developing in the Casita. When the cracks are not found, Alma brushes Mirabel off for causing a false alarm and trying to upstage Antonio on his big day.
Later, she begins to find the pieces of Bruno's last vision he had before he vanished. Discussing them with her father Agustin, when Mirabel and her father agree to keep this a secret from the rest of the family, they find to their horror that Dolores, thanks to her super hearing, overheard everything. This leads to a dinner where Mirabel's sister Isabela is going to be proposed to by local resident Mariano Guzman to go catastrophically wrong when word of the vision leaks out, and despite Mirabel's innocence to everything, she is blamed for what happened by Alma, her aunt Pepa, and Isabela, even when her mother, Julieta, and Agustin come to her defense and try to tell Alma off for being too hard on Mirabel.
As she tries to figure out what is happening to the miracle following all those events, she soon finds that perhaps her uncle Bruno never left the Casita, despite everyone thinking otherwise. During her attempts to figure out what's happening to the miracle, she manages to locate her uncle, Bruno, who was still living in the Casita, but in hiding, trying his utmost to help the house, despite its deterioration. Asking him for another vision with using Antonio's room when he agrees to help, Bruno does so, but the vision shows the same thing until it shows that Mirabel has to embrace Isabela to make the candle brighter, much to her annoyance. Although hesitant to patch things up with Isabela, Mirabel finally discovers the emotional baggage that Isabela carried due to Alma wanting her to be perfect for the family's sake as she also did not harbor any love for Mariano, her wedding proposal having been an arranged marriage by Alma. It is during this talk between the two sisters that Isabela is able to unleash the full extent of her gift, which not only allows her to be herself and free of her emotional baggage, but make up with Mirabel as they genuinely share a hug in front of the Miracle candle (fulfilling Bruno's vision).
However, when Alma shows up to investigate after noticing the commotion while apologizing to the Guzmans, Mirabel excitedly tells her of how she's figured out how to save the miracle (which was why she was in Bruno's vision), but Alma snaps at her, and once again pins the blame for the miracle dying on Mirabel, even going so far as blaming her for Bruno's departure, Luisa's powers failing, Isabela going out of control, and hurting the family all because she was denied a gift, believing her to be hurting the family out of jealousy and spite. Finally fed up with this mistreatment, Mirabel angrily snaps back at Alma and tells her that no matter how hard she, her sisters, or the rest of the family try, they will never be good enough for her or her high standards and defends Luisa and Isabela by saying that they will never be strong enough or perfect enough. While reaching her breaking point, she also defends Bruno by saying that he really left the family because Alma always saw the worst in him. Alma is nearly pushed to her breaking point by these accusations and almost blows her top at Mirabel as she starts to shout back at her "Don't you ever...", but is cut off mid-sentence when Mirabel finally shouts out that the miracle is dying because of her. Alma barely has a chance to let this horrible truth sink in as her face widens in utter shock, horror, and realization (while Mirabel also becomes shocked by what she said), before the Casita finally collapses, and the candle melts and is extinguished, stripping the Madrigals of their gifts, and leaving them homeless.
Guilt-ridden and heartbroken by her failure, Mirabel runs away to the river, where her Abuelo was murdered, unable to be found by her family for several hours, at least until the following day. When Alma finds her there, Mirabel tearfully apologizes, but Alma finally admits that it wasn't Mirabel's fault, taking full blame and responsibility for the loss of the miracle because she lost sight of what was really important: the family, not their gifts. With that, Alma reveals that, after Pedro sacrificed himself to save Alma, Julieta, Pepa, and Bruno, along with their fellow villagers who were escaping with them, she was devastated, having lost her husband, her home, and her town all in a single night. When the miracle gave her Encanto and the Casa Madrigal to rebuild, Alma never truly had a chance to mourn and recover from her loss as she was pressed into becoming the elder of Encanto and matriarch of the Madrigal family, causing her to become much more strict as she always carried the fear of history repeating itself in the back of her head and losing everything again, but not from within. She always feared the threat of losing everything again would come from an outside influence like the marauders that killed Pedro and ransacked their village, despite the mountains that kept Encanto safe, until the miracle was destroyed and the mountains cracked, allowing Alma back to the river to make peace with her past. She never thought the threat would be from an inside influence like herself because of her paranoia, and she is deeply sorry for it. Now knowing Alma better and realizes that her heart never fully healed from her past trauma, Mirabel forgives Alma and assures her that Alma no longer has to bear that burden alone; she has the rest of the Madrigals to support her and help bear the burden. Hearing that, Alma realizes that Mirabel is the miracle that Pedro sent her when she asked his spirit for help as they reconcile and shared a hug after 10 years since Mirabel's failed ceremony to get a gift from the Casita, truly fulfilling Bruno's vision. Bruno arrives shortly thereafter to try and spare Mirabel by taking the blame himself, but Alma simply hugs Bruno and welcomes him home, showing she's sorry for driving him away because of her fear.
Together, the three return to Encanto, where with the support of the townsfolk, the Madrigals are able to rebuild Casa Madrigal, with Mirabel having the honor of adding the doorknob with her initial engraved on it to the front door, which revives the house and restores all of the Madrigals' gifts, with the front door now bearing a mural with every one of the Madrigals on it, including Mirabel, front and center, as the heart of the family.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The reason for why Mirabel did not get a magical gift was intentionally left unexplained in the film because the directors felt it was unecessary since it was not the point of film and believed that "she is who she needs to be for a very good reason."[1]
- Mirabel is not only the fourth Disney animated protagonist to wear glasses (after Milo Thatch, Chicken Little, and Lewis Robinson), but the first female protagonist to do so.
- Mirabel's glasses are an important part of her design, with production designer Lorelay Bove stating that "one of the film's main themes is perspective — how different points of view can affect a relationship — and having our main character wear glasses was an intentional choice to reinforce that theme."[2]
- Initially, during the "Vanellope and the Princesses" sequence in Ralph Breaks the Internet, Snow White was to reveal she was actually nearsighted and needed glasses. There was even some merchandise portraying Snow White wearing glasses, but, for some reason, this trait was dropped.
- Early in production, the character's name was Mariana.[3]
- The name Mirabel means "wonderful".
- The "Mira" in Mirabel's name comes from the Spanish word mirar, which means "to look". This was an intentional choice for thematic relevance.[4]
- Mirabel is the second human female protagonist from the Disney Animated Canon to debut in 2021, after Raya from Raya and the Last Dragon.
- This marked the first time in history that two human female protagonists from two different Walt Disney Animation Studios films debuted in the same year.
Reference[]
- ↑ Radulovic, Petrana (November 27, 2020). "Encanto’s directors talk the movie’s big mystery". Polygon.
- ↑ Giardina, Carolyn (January 5, 2021). "‘Encanto,’ ‘Flee’ and ‘The Mitchells vs. the Machines’ Artists Detail How They Designed Their Animated Characters". Hollywood Reporter.
- ↑ Sharpe, Josh (December 9, 2020). "Exclusive: New Details for Walt Disney Animation Studios’ ‘Encanto’". The Disinsider.
- ↑ Bush, Jared (December 27, 2022). "Mirabel's name". Twitter.
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fr:Mirabel Madrigal
pt-br:Mirabel Madrigal
ja:ミラベル・マドリガル
es:Mirabel Madrigal