Frozen 2: Every Memory Elsa Sees In The Ahtohallan, Explained
In Frozen 2, there are some callbacks to hit predecessor Frozen, some of them done in the form of crystalline memories Elsa sees in the Ahtohallan. The film reunites the voice talents of the first movie, including Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Jonathan Groff, and contains little nods to jokes and story elements from Frozen. In one scene, Elsa sees actual visions of moments from her past with the help of a magical river, the Ahtohallan.
The second film introduces new story elements, expanding the mythical design of the Frozen universe to include a tale the princesses' parents told them as children. Their mother sings them a song about a magical place "Where the North wind meets the sea, there's a river full of memory," and their father tells them of the indigenous people to the north, the Northuldrans, who live in an enchanted forest beyond the borders of Arendelle. King Runeard, the girls' grandfather, made a treaty with the tribe by offering to build a dam. A fight occurs for unknown reasons, and the king is killed, leaving the kingdom to his son, who is rescued from the fray. Years later, Elsa goes on a quest to discover what happened to anger the forest spirits, and she eventually comes to the very river full of memory that her mother spoke of, a place called Ahtohallan.
In recent years, the Disney company has utilized self-referential humor and meta-jokes in an effort to move into the future while protecting their brand from the past. Jokes in Frozen like, "You got engaged to a man you just met?" and "If you start singing, I'm gonna throw up," in Moana act as a recollection for older fans, reinventing and critiquing all at once. The scene in the enchanted river Ahtohallan acts in a similar way, connecting the old with the new in an inventive plot device that rounds out the story with revelations while at the same time effectively using nostalgia to remind fans of the moments from the first film that made the story and characters memorable.
The giant snow monster Marshmallow was created when Anna and Kristoff attempt to appeal to Elsa in her ice palace. After her sister and her friend refuse to leave, Elsa erupts in anger, summoning a giant snowman to chase them away. Marshmallow tosses them from the palace and pursues them down a cliff, telling them not to come back. Marshmallow mirrors Elsa's then-frozen emotional state and desire to be isolated from the world. The beast is not wicked but obeys Elsa's wishes to her detriment. He proves himself a gentle giant in the end with a post-credits scene that illustrates his softer side. In the river, an all-ice version of Marshmallow appears to Elsa, smiling placidly and humming to himself, signifying that she has reconciled with the dark moments of her past.
One of the first visions Elsa sees in Ahtohallan is the childhood moment when she first creates Olaf the snowman. She and Anna are children playing, and Elsa conjures the little snowman out of thin air. Elsa crouches behind Olaf, making his arms reach out to Anna, saying "I like warm hugs," a phrase he repeats later in both Frozen and Frozen 2 once Elsa gives him life. The memory is one of the last Elsa has of her and Anna's childhood together before things were complicated by her parents' fear of her powers. When Elsa recreates a sentient Olaf the Snowman during "Let It Go," it is, in a way, her inner child emerging to remind her of her connection with her sister.
A little Kristoff and his trusty reindeer friend Sven are two of the first characters seen in Frozen, crouching in the dark as the men harvest the ice. In the river, Elsa sees crystalline versions of them sliding through the snow. This is an interesting one as Elsa never met Kristoff as a child, so the memory isn't necessarily hers. Kristoff, however, saw both Anna and Elsa when they went to the trolls for counsel, an important moment in his life, as it was the moment a motherly troll took him and Sven in as her own. He alone in the kingdom of Arendelle knows of Elsa's powers, but as a commoner, he has no connection to the royal family and grows up to seemingly forget the incident. He does, however, retain his kinship with the trolls, and it turns out to be a helpful relationship when Anna is hit with Elsa's dangerous curse.
Elsa sees a frozen vision of herself strutting by and belting out her famous solo, "Let It Go." She shudders and shields her eyes as though embarrassed. The scene in the first film was a formative one, a moment that allowed her to address all the things about herself that she had been suppressing. The culmination of this growth is arrived at in Frozen 2 when Elsa learns more about her powers and her destiny and how they were gifted to her from the spirits of the forest. It is perhaps because she has learned more about what to do with her gifts that she finds her past rebellion cringeworthy, such as when an adult looks back on old pictures of them as a teenager and shakes their head.
The scene from Frozen in which the Duke of Weselton dances awkwardly around Anna appears to Elsa as she wanders through the magical river. The hapless Duke at first provided the comic relief that allowed the sisters to share a laugh for the first time in years. He bows to them, his toupee flipping forward to reveal a bald spot, and then proceeds to take Anna to the dance floor, flopping around energetically. The Duke is a treacherous man easily incited to violence when Elsa demonstrates her powers, but he ends up being little more than a fly in the ointment once Elsa discovers the real villain that is Prince Hans and his attempts to unravel the kingdom of Arendelle. The Duke is returned to his own kingdom sans a treaty after his misdeeds.
Anna meets Hans in the first film in a typical meet-cute when she accidentally stumbles into his boat. Hans marked an important learning moment for both sisters, first for Anna when she learned how real romantic love truly develops, and second for Elsa when she learns that Anna is more important to her than all the independence in the world. Hans' treachery brings the two sisters closer together than any romantic bond, and the villain Hans is the one memory avatar that Elsa casts aside with a dismissive flick of her wrist, illustrating that he is a sad annoyance not to be given any weight. Once again, it shows Elsa has grown.
Not much is divulged about Anna and Elsa's parents in the first film, but the second allows them to learn more about the love that Iduna and Agnarr shared. In the river, Iduna appears before Elsa, talking to her husband with great sincerity, telling him that she needs to explain more things about herself to him. There seems to be a lot in common between Elsa and her mother, as they both guard difficult secrets they must eventually reveal to the ones they love.
One fun thing both Elsa and audiences got to see was the burgeoning friendship between the two ill-fated royals of Arendelle. A short scene between the phantom-like memories shows that Iduna is every bit as playful as her daughter Anna, while the young Agnarr is poised and thoughtful just like his daughter Elsa. In the memory, Iduna dangles from a tree, making Agnarr laugh. "What are you reading, your majesty?" she asks curiously. "Some new Danish author," Agnarr answers, an obvious nod to Hans Christian Andersen, who wrote The Snow Queen, the fairy tale upon which Frozen is based.
The two princesses were never told how their father escaped the conflict between the Northuldra and the Arendellians. When the memories of the forest are frozen, Anna and Elsa discover the truth together: their mother was the Northuldran who pulled their father to safety through the cursed mist. Later, Elsa sees more details, witnessing the very moment that Iduna ensures Agnarr's survival. She lifts him into a wagon and covers them both with a blanket, whisking them across the bridge before they could be trapped in the forest or lost in battle.
In the story Elsa and Anna's father tells them, their grandfather Runeard sought peace with the Northern tribe. He gives them a gift in the form of a dam that is supposedly going to strengthen their rivers. King Agnarr does not know why the battle between the two civilizations commences, only that his father was lost. In a memory in Ahtohallan, the truth is revealed to Elsa. She sees her grandfather betraying the Northuldran people, confiding his plan to one of his officers: "the dam will weaken their lands so they will have to turn to me." When the dam does indeed cause the forest to fail, a Northuldran elder pleads with Runeard to reconsider the gift, and he suggests they discuss it elsewhere. Runeard turns on the elder, killing him when his back is turned and he is unarmed, thus angering the spirits of the forest and causing a battle to ensue. Elsa witnesses his prejudice against magical forces and his ignorance about those he wishes to colonize.
Some 39 memories flash before Elsa as she enters the sacred river, some from her own mind and others from the point of view of characters like Kristoff, Anna, and Iduna. As she sings the film's standout song "Show Yourself," she is granted snatches of her own childhood, of the traumas and joys she has experienced, and the things that shaped her along the way. Like "Let It Go," the moment is one of self-acceptance and empowerment, and it is a gift to Elsa to see all the memories that belong not only to her but to the ones she loves. She sees Kristoff and Sven sailing through the ice to meet the trolls, sees Anna arriving, frozen to the bone, to Wandering Oaken's Trading Post and Sauna. In one moment as she gazes on the memories, her mother (Evan Rachel Wood), sings along with her, expressing the power that the truth of the past possesses, a significant theme threaded through the story of Frozen 2.
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