Credit: DisneyOh yeah, King Triton and Ursula are brother and sister. Did you know that? While it may not be common knowledge for those who have only watched the original movie, it seems the relationship between the two characters will come up in the live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid (2023).
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In preparation for their latest live-action remake, Disney released another feature that explores each character and the actors portraying them. In the two-minute video, Melissa McCarthy, who plays the iconic Disney villain, comments on working with Javier Bardem, who plays the mighty King Triton. The actress states, “I got to be Javier Bardem’s sister, and it was just so incredible to work with him.”
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McCarthy is either reminding audiences or teaching them for the first time that Ursula and Triton are related. This isn’t some background that Disney has decided to shoehorn into the film, either. In the recent Peter Pan & Wendy (2023), the writers took the liberty of giving Captain Hook a brand new origin story that has never been explored. Like other Disney classics, the villain doesn’t have a deep backstory in the original animated versions. The live adaptations of these Disney films now have the luxury of expanding on the villain’s history. However, for The Little Mermaid (2023), Disney could be pulling from existing source material to explore Ursula’s upbringing further.
Poor Unfortunate Soul: A Tale of the Sea Witch is a novel published by Disney Press in 2016 where it was revealed that Ursula was King Triton’s sister but chose to become a sea witch with tentacles instead of a mermaid. There have also been mentions of this relationship in stage play adaptations of The Little Mermaid (1989), and reportedly this family dynamic was removed from the movie’s original script. Whether this relationship was canon has long been debated, but now we will finally see it unfold on screen.
With a runtime of two hours, compared to the 83-minute animated version, it would make sense to cram in more of Ursula’s backstory into the live-action. Still no word on how much of the villain’s history will be revealed, but fans will soon find out when The Little Mermaid swims into theaters on May 26, 2023.
Did you know Ursula and King Triton were related? Let us know in the comments.