Why I Hate Frozen II's Ending - Into the Unknown

I'm pretty on record saying I love Frozen I but it suffers from massive problems that mean it doesn't quite live up to the standards of some of the best Disney Animated Canon movies (for more detail on that, go here). I have watched Frozen II only once recently, so my feelings on that one are still settling down.What I do already know is that I hated the ending so much that it actually ruined my weekend. Frozen II's ending made me angry, but not just angry in a way that it was an unsatisfying sequel to a movie that I rather liked (in many ways it wasn't, it was actually rather good). Frozen II's ending hit a much more personal nerve.

Spoilers for Frozen I and Frozen II (obviously).

Into the Unknown
Why I Hate Frozen II's Ending

In the first Frozen, an accident with Elsa's ice powers causes the King to keep her far away the outside world until she learns proper control. Instead what happens is that her growing anxiety and depression worsen her condition, so by the time she comes of age and is crowned Queen Elsa of Arendelle a small spark was all that was needed for her first public appearance in years to go horribly wrong. In order to protect everyone, and being goaded by the Duke of Weselton, she then decides to exile herself into the mountains so she can't hurt anybody (while her kingdom unbeknownst to her freezes over). In the end Elsa learns that locking herself away was the problem itself, and so thanks to the love and support of her sister she starts opening up and finds that everyone does in fact accept her the way she is despite still being introverted, suffering from anxiety and depression, and of course having ice powers. Her place is home despite being different from everyone else.

Then comes Frozen II. We learn more about the backstory of Anna and Elsa's parents and how they were actually more involved with Elsa's powers than the first movie led us to believe. In their own way they were preparing the young girls to deal with them but their temporary solution and untimely deaths ended up causing more harm than good, leading up to Elsa's state in the first movie. In the present Elsa starts hearing voices calling her to a mystical place thought lost during an incident years ago that magically closed off sections of the land from Arendelle. There they discover a lost civilization, remnants of Arendelle soldiers locked in with them, and four spirits raging over a mysterious past event Elsa and Anna must discover and find a solution to. In the end Elsa discovers the reason for her powers, what actually happened to their parents, the sisters settle a conflict that has existed since their grandfather's time and in the end save both Arendelle and Northuldra. All is well.

But then ...

Suddenly one of the new characters suggests Elsa's place isn't in Arendelle but within the Enchanted Forest among the Northuldra. Elsa somehow agrees to this and the movie ends with her living happily among the forest spirits with people she knew for a day while Anna is crowned Queen Anna of Arendelle instead.

This made me angry in a way I imagine longtime Star Wars fans must have felt when the sequel series showed them their childhood heroes lived a life of failure and misery after having defeated the Empire. This is casting a very dark shadow over everything that preceded and people put personal stock in. First of all, breaking up the sisters after spending the entire franchise building up that they truly belong together is apparently in line with the current popular and unoriginal plot twist of splitting up teams, after twist villains and true love not necessarily meaning romantic love (both of which appeared in Frozen I before it, albeit poorly executed) so an eye roll is already warranted. It was a bad decision for Ralph Breaks the Internet and it was a bad decision here. True, there is nothing preventing them from teaming up for future adventures and they still maintain a healthy relationship, but at the same time this movie is telling us that their relationship has irrevocably changed in a way that would never have happened if the characters were a romantic couple (with the exception of Pocahontas and John Smith but even there the first movie ended up separating the characters and historically she ended up with John Rolfe anyway) and in doing so made it feel more empty than is appropriate for an escapist fairy tale world where sisterhood ended up being the solution to everyone's problems. The adventures of the sisters as a team are now over and condensed into a mere three-year time frame.

However that part might just be my personal preference in having a certain status quo established by the first movie maintained. What truly struck a nerve with me was taking Queen Elsa out of Arendelle. Again we have been hammered with the message that despite Elsa being different and suffering mental issues, she still had her place among her people with friends who loved her. Now suddenly the sequel shifted that into telling us that no, she's different so she actually doesn't belong among regular people in Arendelle. It's not that she's suffering from the mental consequences of having lived a life in isolation scared she would hurt the people she loved, no, the real problem is that she simply isn't physically in the place where she would be happy. Her true place is in the forest with people she only just met (wasn't this also a point where the first movie mocked Anna mercilessly for?) where suddenly her mental issues seem to have disappeared because that's where a fire lizard, a breeze of wind and a water horse live.

It's a small world after all

So that in the end is what really made me angry about the ending of Frozen II. After the previous movie repeatedly made clear that being a depressed socially anxious introvert in a world of extroverts does not mean you don't belong, doesn't mean you can't be loved for who you are, and that you can thrive just by being who you are as long as you open up to the people who support you, Frozen II suddenly says we really do not belong and tells us to travel.

Therefore in my mind Anna is only the regent queen while Elsa is in the forest learning to properly control her powers before she returns to Arendelle as its queen. Kind of like how the Genie had an emotional departure from Aladdin at the end of the first movie where he left his friends to see the world but promptly returned to reset the status quo at the beginning of the sequel. Screw the previously unmentioned destiny, Elsa already has a place where she belongs.

I expect my opinion of the movie in general to improve over time, as it really was okay overall. The visuals were breathtaking, the characters were (mostly) still who they were supposed to be, I actually laughed at Olaf's antics several times, and the soundtrack was ... frankly a bit underwhelming (Let It Go might have had a fanbase who misunderstood the point of the song somewhat but Into the Unknown and Show Yourself simply didn't measure up to it). I just would have been much happier had they simply allowed Elsa to return home instead of making her a poorly-defined elemental goddess who needs to stay in the forest because of reasons.

Now we can only hope Walt Disney Studios corrects this grievous story error in Frozen III: The Search for Samantha.