The Miracle gave Mirabel a gift. And you’re going to hate it. Also, SPOILERS.
We are officially an Encanto household. We know ALL the words. We know ALL the gifts.
We don’t talk about Bruno.
And like a million other Elder Millenials, Encanto is the kind of representation we’ve been waiting for a long, long time. While I’m not a person of color, I am an eldest sibling/cousin who openly wept in the theatre the first time I watched Luisa sing Surface Pressure. I tried very hard not to look at my neurodivergent husband any time Bruno was on screen (omg the table with his drawn on dinner plate…how many black sheep had their hearts torn out by that little detail?).
But most of the time I sat there trying to outguess the writers about Mirabel and the miracle. What did it mean? Did she get a gift, did she not? What was her purpose? Did this woman eventually get her own room because that was an absolute INSULT to this wonderful character and it bothers all of us?!
Buckle up, here we go, and I don’t think you’re going to like it much.
Mirabel DID receive a gift when the door disappeared; a gift which comes at the highest price of any Madrigal gift. The Miracle took away Mirabel’s door specifically to cause her a deep, internal trauma. While it did so for a good reason- just as Abuelo Pedro gave up his life for his family- it hurts us to watch the hope in little Mirabel’s eyes die as the door disappears, to be made a martyr for her family. It is only at the end of the movie that we will be allowed to begin to heal.
Encanto is about family trauma in all its glorious forms- pressure to perform, to be perfect, to serve, to be ideal, to not be a burden or a problem. While the gifts are wonderful, in the hands of Abuela and her fear, they are double-edged swords. There are numerous excellent essays outlining what all the characters mean and what their gifts/burdens represent in terms of trauma and I encourage you to seek them out, but I want to focus on Mirabel.
Mirabel’s gift is compassion. By taking away the door, by denying her an outward power and gift, by making her an outcast, the Miracle created in Mirabel an intimate understanding of hidden suffering. In truly rare and brilliant people, this becomes the ability to recognize the pain of others and to show them compassion. It is compassion for this suffering that unlocks every door in the Casita. Without her own ‘unspoken invisible pain’, Mirabel would never know how to identify it in her own family members. Step by step she unravels the mystery simply by listening without judgment to the stories of others.
Our first sustained interaction with Mirabel that isn’t a catchy song is watching her encourage Antonio. This is actually the perfect place to begin observing Mirabel’s gift for compassion- she understands better than anyone the fear and trepidation that Antonio is feeling. Abuela and the town may be worried about the miracle failing for Big-Important-Adult-Reasons, but Mirabel knows that Antonio’s real fear is to end up like Mirabel; loved, yes, part of the family, yes, but on the fringes and off to the side. Mirabel is a living reminder that the miracle isn’t guaranteed, and her very presence reminds the family that things in their perfect world can go horribly wrong.
But over and over again, we will see Mirabel meet fear and suffering with compassion. When Antonio begs her to walk him up the stairs to his own door, telling her that of all the family he needs her by his side, Mirabel puts aside her own pain and listens to the needs of her beloved cousin. For him she faces what will be the certain wrath of Abuela (and by default the disaproval of the rest of the family) to give Antonio the encouragement that he needs to face his fear.
You may also not like this idea; the cracks in La Casita are caused by Mirabel. The cracks begin to appear after Mirabel’s song Waiting on a Miracle, as she sings about what it’s like to be in a family, but not truly part of it. While the other Madrigals pose for a picture, she walks away, forgotten, to find the Casita crumbling. Later she will notice that the cracks begin to heal when she helps Isabela embrace her wilder side, and says “Isabela was unhappy…and then we did all this, and the candle burned brighter and the cracks healed-”. What Mirabel doesn’t put together is that the cracks started when she finally admitted that she was deeply unhappy.
Even my three year old picks up on this. Mirabel sings “I’m fine, I’m totally fine…I will stand on the side while you shine…I’m not fine, I’m not fine!” Every time this song comes on, without fail, Rosie pipes up “But she JUST SAID that she was FINE mom! It’s not ok to fib!”
No, it’s not okay to lie- especially not to yourself. Bruno’s vision that Mirabel may both destroy and restore the family shows the cracks radiating from Mirabel’s core, and then disappearing inward again. The Miracle has been abused- instead of being used to protect the important things (love and family) it has become performative and a tool of power/expectation as Abuela demands that nothing go wrong ever again. If the Miracle is going to sustain itself, it needs to create a Mirabel to show the family where they are going wrong, or the cycle of emotional dysfunction will continue indefinetly. Imagine if Isabela really did marry Mariano. Imagine the chasms that would cause in the family structure. Mirabel is a necessary sacrifice to pull back the curtain on what is really hurting the family; the pressure of expectation, and the fear of loss.
When Luisa sings Surface Pressure, Mirabel doesn’t question what Luisa is telling her. She doesn’t tell her older sister to ‘toughen up’ or ‘that she can handle it’ (boy do I hate hate hate those phrases- can you guess why?). Instead she gently suggests that maybe her sister overdoes it. Maybe Luisa should step back for a minute. That little piece of compassion is what starts tearing down Luisa’s exterior and starts deteriorating her strength; someone finally acknowledges all the hard work that she has been doing, and identifies that it is too much for one person to handle.
Has that ever happened to you? Someone tells you that they see you, or they hear you, and suddenly the floodgates open wide in both pain and relief? You’re left weak for a while after, as you pick through the wreckage of everything you thought was so important, that you HAD to do.
Compassion is a very powerful gift. It can bring down stone walls like Luisa.
Mirabel follows the threads, and eventually discovers Bruno. It’s easy for all of us to feel compassion for Bruno, because we have all felt like outsiders before. What really hurts is to discover that Bruno exiled himself to protect his young niece from the same fate he suffered- fear and misunderstanding. I won’t get into all the neurdivergent parallels, others have done it far better than me, but Mirabel makes it clear that when she comes back to Bruno, it won’t be to visit, but to bring him home. Mirabel’s compassion gives Bruno a family again, even if that family is just one person who loves him for who he really is. She even convinces him to use his gift again, leading us to-
Isabela.
There’s a lot of undeserved hate out there for this character. Isabela is a very real archetype- I was a lot like her when I was young. Focused on perfection, believing wholeheartedly that the way to win approval and a little bit of peace was to be ‘the perfect golden child’. I even have a younger sister who really did not like that about me (don’t worry, we’re good now, but there were some rough years). The idea that the good of the family came first also resonated strongly with me. I have a very tight family and the idea of bringing them any kind of shame or any reason to be disappointed absolutely killed me.So when Isabela says “I’m so sick of pretty, I want something true, don’t you?” its an admission between the sisters that they have always known the Madrigal facade of ‘everything is fine’ has been slowly poisoning them.
By the end of the song, they are laughing amid a pile of wildly colored flowers and Isabel is stained with all kinds of hues. “You’re a bad influence,” she laughs, before Abuela appears. Instantly, the ‘ugly’ flowers start to fade, and Isabela starts to straighten herself up. She doesn’t defend or protcect Mirabel from Abuela’s wrath- her freedom is too new and the conditioning is strongest for her, the eldest of the Madrigal grandchildren. She’s terrified of Abuela’s disapproval, and she knows its about to come down on Mirabel.
I won’t write you a blow-by-blow of the fight between Abuela and Mirabel, suffice to say that it brings the house down. Literally and figuratively. And again, I find myself aligning with a character that gets a lot of hate, because I understand the lesson that Abuela can’t learn. It’s the lesson I trip over and injure myself on all the time. There is nothing that can protect you from pain and loss. Not perfection, not preparation, not a house, not mountains, not even a miracle. You can do everything right in your life, and still lose. Abuela, who has suffered loss and trauma on the deepest level, has taken the miracle and used it to build a wonderful little world for her family- but she has also let the fear of loss push that same family to the edge of what the heart can bear to maintain that safety. It isn’t until she believes that she has well and truly lost her granddaughter that she begins to understand the effects of her well intentioned, but deeply flawed leadership.
One last time, Mirabel listens without judgement to the story of her grandparents. All throughout the film, the Miracle, Mirabel, and Abuelo Pedro are associated with a buttefly motif. This isn’t an accident or a nice design idea- there are deeply held indigenous, pre-hispanic cultural beliefs all across the Latinx diaspora that butterflies represent a departed soul returning to the world. When Abuela says that Pedro sent Mirabel to heal the magic, she is absolutely correct. The hell of it is all the suffering that Mirabel has to do in order to receive and interpret the pain that each member of the family feels, and to heal it by listening to the needs of her family members. Mirabel is, as Bruno says, “exactly what this family needs”, and it is no wonder that she takes over family leadership at the end of the film. She can do what Abuela cannot do- look beyond her own trauma and listen to the narratives around her.
Is Mirabel the reincarnation of Pedro? Yeah, thats a completely different essay and there’s not enough Dayquil in the world to get me through writing that one today.
But the fact remains that the Miracle created Mirabel by injuring her. We are all creations of our injuries, as well as the result of our triumphs. We are complicated, transformative creatures. The good news is, the power of compassion is one we can all use. We can all of us listen to, and help heal our families, our friends, our communities. We don’t have to be special to be compassionate.
DOES SHE GET HER OWN ROOM THOUGH BECAUSE THAT IS STILL BUGGING ME.
Hey Encanto 2, lets go lets go!