Hot take: Abuela is basically a dictator, the Madrigals are a government monopoly, and Mirabel is the revolution
**Encanto makes a lot more sense if the Madrigals are a government, not a family**
Okay, hear me out. I started thinking about *Encanto* as a metaphor for a political/economic system rather than just a story about family trauma, and the more I map it out, the stranger the movie gets.
I’m NOT claiming Disney intentionally wrote it this way. This is just an allegorical rabbit hole I’ve gone down.
The basic premise:
**The Madrigals have effectively become a benevolent monopoly over the entire village. Abuela is the hereditary leader, each family member controls a different essential resource, and the villagers have become dependent on them. Mirabel represents the generation that starts questioning the whole arrangement.**
Here’s the mapping:
**Abuela = hereditary ruler / political boss**
The miracle gives the family legitimacy, but Abuela ultimately decides how everyone’s gifts should be used. She starts out as a legitimate protector of the community, but gradually becomes obsessed with preserving the system she created.
Her mentality is basically:
*“I saved everyone once, therefore I know what is necessary to keep everyone safe.”*
That’s a pretty classic way for a founding leader to become authoritarian.
And when someone challenges the system, she treats that challenge as a threat to the entire community.
**The Madrigals = the governing institution**
They don’t just have cool powers. They control essential services.
**Julieta = healthcare**
She can literally heal people with food. Why develop an independent healthcare system when the Madrigals can take care of it?
**Luisa = public works / muscle**
She moves buildings, bridges, donkeys, etc. The village has effectively outsourced its physical infrastructure to one person.
And Luisa’s song becomes much darker under this interpretation: she doesn’t feel free to stop being useful because everyone depends on her.
**Pepa = control over weather/agriculture**
Her emotions literally affect the weather. In an agrarian community, that’s an enormous economic resource.
**Isabela = economic production**
She can produce plants and flowers essentially at will. She’s also expected to make a politically/socially advantageous marriage.
**Dolores = surveillance/intelligence**
She can hear conversations from extraordinary distances. Everyone knows she can hear them. You don’t need to actively threaten people if everyone knows the government has ears everywhere.
**Camilo = infiltration**
He can literally impersonate other people. If this were a political organization rather than a children’s movie, this would be an absolutely terrifying intelligence capability.
**Bruno = inconvenient intelligence**
He sees possible futures, but information that threatens the family’s preferred narrative becomes dangerous.
He doesn’t actually overthrow anyone. He just knows things Abuela doesn’t want to hear.
So he disappears.
**And then there’s Mirabel.**
This is where I think the theory gets really interesting.
Mirabel is the one Madrigal who doesn’t receive a conventional gift.
At first that seems like she’s the person who contributes the least.
But maybe that’s precisely the point.
Everyone else has been assigned a function within the system:
Luisa works.
Julieta heals.
Dolores listens.
Pepa controls the weather.
Isabela produces.
Mirabel’s “gift” is that **she isn’t defined by a function.**
She’s therefore the person capable of asking:
*“Why are we doing this?”*
I think Mirabel can be read as **democratic accountability, individual agency, or even a rejection of hereditary power.**
She doesn’t overthrow Abuela and become the new ruler.
She doesn’t take control of the miracle.
She gets everyone to recognize that the system itself has become unhealthy.
**There’s also a libertarian reading**
This might be my favorite part.
The Madrigals don’t necessarily oppress the villagers.
**The villagers genuinely like them.**
And why wouldn’t they?
The Madrigals provide healthcare, labor, agricultural benefits, information, etc.
But that creates a dependency loop:
**Madrigals provide everything → villagers depend on them → alternative institutions don’t develop → Madrigals become indispensable → their authority increases → everyone becomes even more dependent.**
It’s a benevolent monopoly.
The problem isn’t necessarily that the Madrigals are evil.
The problem is that **a community has stopped needing to develop its own capacity because one family can do everything for it.**
And the Madrigals themselves are trapped by the same system.
Luisa can’t rest.
Pepa can’t simply have emotions.
Isabela can’t choose her own future.
Everyone is valuable only insofar as they perform the function the system has assigned them.
So the system isn’t just restricting the villagers.
**It’s restricting the people running it.**
**Then Casita collapses**
And this is where the metaphor gets really interesting.
The centralized system starts breaking down.
Mirabel can’t save it by herself.
Abuela can’t save it.
The Madrigals can’t save it.
**The community rebuilds it.**
Everyone contributes.
And the Madrigals are still part of the community—they don’t disappear.
So maybe the ending isn’t “the old system is destroyed.”
Maybe it’s:
**Power stops being concentrated in one person and becomes something the family and community participate in together.**
Which leads to my favorite possible interpretation:
**Abuela represents inherited authority.**
**The Madrigals represent concentrated institutional power.**
**The gifts represent specialized resources.**
**The village represents the population.**
**Mirabel represents democratic accountability/individual agency.**
**And rebuilding Casita represents decentralization and voluntary community cooperation.**
Again, I have no idea if this is remotely what the filmmakers intended.
But once I started viewing the movie this way, *every gift started looking like a different branch of government.* 😅
What am I missing? And, more importantly, **which Madrigal gift breaks this theory?**