His time away and his suffering make him able to defeat Scar when Mufasa couldn’t. Now, to return and take his rightful place, Simba has to understand the evil in the Pride Lands in order to vanquish it and by confronting the darkness as his father never did, he at last becomes an even stronger king. Eventually, Scar brings literal darkness to take over the Pride Lands. “Everything the light touches is our kingdom.” - Mufasa in The Lion KingĬould easily be abused by a less benevolent and selfless leader. The godlike level of power of this absolute monarch, This naive refusal to face ugly truths makes the kingdom weak, untested. He minimizes the seriousness of the problem.
He’s aware of his brother’s ill will but won’t think too deeply about it. He’s been given no means of addressing the unpleasant, apart from pushing it away.Īs perfect as Mufasa seems as a king, his failing is not recognizing the existence and role of darkness in the kingdom.
Mufasa doesn’t explain what this disturbing place is, or why it’s not a part of their kingdom so Simba is poorly equipped to deal with it, just as he later responds to tragedy by running from it and suppressing his feelings. All this badness is ignored and pushed out of sight, as symbolized by the shadowlands which are explicitly rejected by Mufasa’s kingdom. The Pride Lands don’t acknowledge evil, wrongdoing or ill intentions. This is actually something Simba’s society has failed to do, too.
After this point, the journey that follows for Simba is about learning how to reckon with the role of pain and injustice in our lives. Then, while Simba is still processing the unfathomable, the horror is doubled by the psychological torment Scar inflicts, persuading the poor boy he’s to blame for his own father’s death. “But you’re not scared of anything.” - Simba in The Lion King In Lion King, Mufasa’s demise is even more shocking due to the visceral, immersive experience we take in through the eyes of the son who, until now, thought his dad was invincible. A big exception to this is one of The Lion King’s key inspirations: Bambi, a story set in motion by the heartbreaking loss of Bambi’s mother at the hands of hunters. But rarely do we witness the actual death of the character’s parents. Removing the parents from the fictional equation subtly empowers young viewers to think about being independent and self-reliant. Plenty of children’s stories are about orphans. The brutal, tragic death of the good king Mufasa no doubt traumatized many of us as kids. So here’s our take on why the brilliance of the Lion King comes from inviting darkness into the Disney picture. The movie’s enduring success proves that kids want stories that make sense of life’s difficulties, instead of censoring them out. So what actually made the Lion King so vivid and life-changing for 90s kids is it’s not afraid to go to some dark places. And darkness is woven into everything that’s light. The circle of life is just as much a circle of death - for you to grow up and become an independent adult, your parents have to get older and eventually pass away. Not only do you have to reckon with where you fall on the food chain, but even if you do get to be King, you’re not exempt from the suffering and loss that’s inherent to our mortal existence. So The Lion King swiftly and harshly breaks it to kids that, sometimes, life sucks. But this kid who has everything soon loses the center of his universe, as his beloved father dies a horrible death right before his eyes. Scar is annoyed by the social hierarchy that puts him in an inferior position to his seemingly less deserving nephew. “Life’s not fair, is it?” - Scar in The Lion KingĪnd in fact, this whole story is about the universal rite of passage of learning that life really isn’t fair.
The first line of The Lion King belongs to its villain, Scar, who utters a very relatable observation: The Lion King Explained: Let The Darkness In Subscribe to The Take on YouTube | Support The Take on Patreon Here’s our take on how the 90s classic is a great lesson on “letting the darkness in.” Disney’s The Lion King has a profound message for everyone: we need to make sense of life’s difficulties, not censor them out.