A new Encanto theory has suggested that Abuela effectively predicted the magical powers that would be bestowed upon her three children. Led by the formidable matriarch Abuela Alma (María Cecilia Botero), Encanto introduced the world to the affable Madrigal family while also poignantly displaying how Abuela’s life had been touched by tragedy. Years before the main events of Encanto, while fleeing an armed conflict in Columbia, Abuela’s husband, Abuelo Pedro, was killed, leaving Alma widowed and their triplets, Julieta, Pepa, and Bruno, without a father.
It was in this moment of despair that a magical miracle occurred. A candle that Abuela was holding gained magical powers that protected her and her children by creating an enchanted town and a sentient home for the Madrigal family called Casita. The miracle also bestowed magical gifts upon each member of the Madrigal family on their fifth birthday. This began with the oldest of the triplets, Julieta (Angie Cepeda), who gained the ability to heal with food, Pepa’s (Carolina Gaitan) moods affected the weather, and Bruno (John Leguizamo) had visions of the future. These magical gifts carried on into the next generation of Madrigals except for Julieta’s youngest daughter, Mirabel Madrigal (Stephanie Beatriz), whose gift failed to appear.
According to a fascinating theory (via sensible and astute Julieta had the power to heal with food as Alma and Pedro sat together eating Arepas. The second showed the pair bathed in golden sunlight at their wedding, foreshadowing how Pepa’s moods affected the weather. Finally, Bruno’s gift of seeing into the future was shown by Abuela Alma revealing paper cut-outs to Pedro that showed she was pregnant with triplets.
How Encanto's Abuela Theory Works
In many ways, the Encanto Abuela theory has a lot to commend, and part of the reason for this is that Encanto is a movie that is unusually precise in of its story beats. Encanto's storytelling has extraordinary attention to detail, as shown by little things like the Pepa, and Bruno was even confirmed by director Jared Bush (via Twitter) when he wrote, “Julieta’s oldest, healing helps everyone and she’s most responsible, Pepa’s “the middle child” - more emotional because Julieta was the “adult,” Bruno is the baby… making his departure all the more tragic.”
Conversely, the theory's weaknesses can be said to lie in the general vagueness of the flashback in relation to the magic itself. For example, it is easy to dismiss the scene where Abuela and Pedro eat together as being little more than sweet but irrelevant. In the same way, the sun shining on their wedding day could be a simple coincidence, while the paper cut-outs simply show that she is going to have triplets or even that she plans to have three children in total. However, this suggestion underestimates the aforementioned precision of Encanto’s storytelling. In the flashback to Abuela Alma and Abuelo Pedro's story, the pair were shown eating Arepas together during their courtship. This is an important point because Arepas are not just a staple Colombian food; they are also a food Julieta uses to heal various of the Madrigal family and townspeople throughout Encanto. Indeed, Mirabel even sings the line, “My mom Julieta can make you feel better with just one Arepa,” in “The Family Madrigal.”
The use of sunshine as a reference to Pepa's powers is rather more tenuous. That it just happened to be sunny on the wedding day does feel like poor reasoning for this Encanto theory, even if it provides a wonderful counterpoint to Pepa’s own wedding day as immortalized in “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” However, the sun is literally shining down onto Abuela and Pedro in the flashback, and when considering the context of the undoubtedly happy day, it seems equally appropriate to understand it as signifying the moods of the happy couple.
On the surface, the scene with the paper cut-outs is also innocuous. This is especially true if it is assumed that it is not Abuela informing Pedro she wants three children and that she is actually telling him she is pregnant. As such, it is hard not to wonder how she knows she will have triplets, which is still a relatively uncommon type of birth. After all, since Encanto's flashback scenes are estimated to coincide with Columbia's Thousand Days' War at the turn of the twentieth century, there would obviously be no ultrasounds. On top of this, Alma has no visible baby bump in the scene, which would be significant even relatively early in her pregnancy. As a result, if not for some motherly intuition, there are few viable ways for her to know she will have three children meaning that the cut-outs do seem like a genuine reference to Bruno's gift.
Why Encanto's Abuela Theory Is Great (Despite Its Flaws)
Along with the precision of Encanto’s writing, the Abuela prediction theory's greatest strength may well be the heart and love at its core. In this way, these three flashback scenes, which also feature candles similar to the miracle candle of the Madrigal family, represent three of the happiest moments in Abuela Alma's relatively short time with Pedro. The beauty of the Reddit theory is that it means that through the miracle, she can on those memories and all they signified to her children. Ultimately, if that isn't the definition of a mother's love, then it is difficult to know what is.
