It really strikes me how intense some of the storyline is in Lion King, now that I’m watching it again as an adult.
Scar murdered Simba’s father and then told elementary school aged (I’m guessing, because these are anthropomorphized animals) lion cub Simba that his father’s death was his fault and that his only choice is to run away from everyone he knows and loves.
As a result, he has been running from his past for a long time (into his teenage years?). He has been living a hakuna matata life with Timon and Pumba, free of worries and responsibilities.
Then blast-from-the-past friend/love interest Nala and wise monkey Rafiki convince him to stop running from his past. As a metaphor, Rafiki hits Simba with his stick. Simba asks what that was for, and Rafiki says what does it matter, it was in the past? He sums it up saying the past can hurt, but one has to learn from it and not run from it.
Scar continues the lie. When Simba returns, he tries to corner him with purposely vague questions regarding the death of Simba’s father in front of the lionesses, to further make it sound like Simba murdered his father. Scar is continuing to try to perpetuate the lie, in order to make the lionesses believe that Simba is the murderer. This is so maddening because of how wrong it is based on the actual series of events. How could he be defaming Simba like this? The difference now is that Simba is no longer a child that can be completely gaslit. He is grown. He can fight back. Scar tries to turn them all against Simba, and goes to kill Simba, in the same way he killed his father. Before he is about to he whispers that he killed Mufasa, Simba’s father, and Simba summons all the strength from the pain of what had happened and pounces on Scar, forcing him to admit to killing Mufasa loudly, so that all can hear.
I don’t know, this just seems like an intense lesson and situation. What an enormous amount of trauma for a child/lion cub to experience. It is only resolved in adulthood.
