- Warning: Minor spoilers ahead for "Frozen 2."
- Despite many popular theories that Queen Elsa in "Frozen" is gay, she doesn't have any love interest in "Frozen 2."
- The movie's codirector Jennifer Lee says the creative team agreed they were not going to build the story from the outside in.
- As they wrote Elsa's story for "Frozen 2," her focus was on learning more about her powers.
- "We weren't making a statement about it," Lee said of the fan theories. "We were just building from where she is now and felt like we needed to stay true."
- "She's very shy," Lee said. "Right now she's not ready for relationships."
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Ever since "Frozen" premiered in 2013, people in the LGBTQ community have found Queen Elsa's story to be a powerful allegory for queer identity, and hoped she might be given a gay love interest in the coming sequel.
But Elsa doesn't have any type of romantic partner in the upcoming movie, despite the popular fan theories about her sexuality.
"When we agreed to do the sequel, we agreed we were going to not build it [from] the outside in," codirector Jennifer Lee said in an interview with Insider at the Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank, California this past September. "We just couldn't do it."
Lee and her codirector Chris Buck, along with producer Peter Del Vecho, first started thinking about the story for "Frozen 2" about three years ago.
"What we did was spend a lot of time with each of the characters," Lee said. "I journaled as the characters, we did personality tests, just a lot of in-depth work and looking at where they are in their lives. For us, really looking at what Elsa's journey is, it was her need to understand her powers."
Lee and Buck have said that two of the driving questions for "Frozen 2" were where did Elsa's powers come from, and why doesn't Anna have any?
"We got a lot of feedback from each other while talking about [the story] and the pressure Elsa feels [as] a mythic character," Lee said. "She carries the weight of the world on her shoulders and that struggle of being pushed to her limit."
Elsa's bond with her sister Anna takes precedent over romance, and Lee says the queen isn't 'ready for relationships'
The first "Frozen" film was a subversion of Disney's previously typical "girl falls in love with prince and gets married and lives happily ever after" trope. Anna's prince charming wound up being the villain, and the "act of true love" that saved Anna's life was saving her sister, Elsa.
Anna did wind up falling in love with Kristoff in the B-plot of the movie, and the sequel will deal with their relationship as Kristoff tries (and fails) to propose to Anna early in the movie.
Lee says the core of the story was always about two sisters, and romance just wasn't where they were with Elsa as they wrote the sequel.
"We couldn't change that from the outside because it wouldn't be authentic," Lee said. "So we didn't build Elsa a romantic story line. We weren't making a statement about it, we were just building from where she is now and felt like we needed to stay true."
In a scene screened for press at the Walt Disney Animation Studios, Elsa participates in family game night with Anna, Kristoff, Olaf, and Sven. But when it comes time for her to act out prompts in charades, Elsa balks.
"She's very shy," Lee said of Elsa. "Right now she's not ready for relationships. We knew she's still struggling. It's enough that her sister is getting her out of her shell, right? You saw how charades took a lot for her. But she has this incredible power inside her and she's wrestling with that. I'm excited about where she gets to at the end."
"Frozen 2" is in theaters now.
- Read more:
- How the fan response to the first 'Frozen 2' teaser wound up saving Anna's sword-swinging scene
- 'Frozen 2' has a bonus scene at the very end, plus another great reason to stay through the whole movie's credits
- What the cast of 'Frozen 2' looks like in real life
- 10 things you didn't know about Disney's 'Frozen'
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