Pepa Madrigal

Pepa Madrigal is a supporting character in Disney's 2021 animated feature film Encanto. She is the middle child of Alma and Pedro Madrigal and the mother of Dolores, Camilo, and Antonio, whom she parented alongside her husband, Félix. Described as "overly emotional and dramatic", Pepa's gift allows her to control the weather via her emotions.
==Background==
Pepa is one of the three children Alma and Pedro had, alongside her brother, Bruno, and her sister, Julieta. When she was just born, their home was attacked and her family was forced to flee. After her father's death, a miracle was created that blessed the family with an enchanted house and protection from the raiders. Five years later, Pepa and her two siblings opened their magical doors in the house, revealing their powers. Pepa gained the ability to control the weather with her emotions and has had to learn to control her emotions to avoid causing harm to those around her. Pepa met a man named Félix at some point in her life after receiving her gift; he was very good at helping her calm down when she was in a bad mood, causing her to fall in love with him. Alma immediately accepted Félix as her son-in-law, and Pepa eventually married him.
Some time later, she and Félix had a daughter (Dolores) and two sons (Camilo and Antonio) together. Pepa besides becoming Agustín's sister-in-law after Julieta married him, she also became the maternal aunt of Isabela, Luisa, and Mirabel. One of the main reasons why she and the townspeople don't like to talk about Bruno is that on her wedding day he told her that "it looks like rain". This caused Pepa to become extremely worried that rain truly was going to ruin their wedding and she freaked out so much that her gift went crazy and made her and Félix get married in a hurricane. Pepa did not have a good opinion of her brother and held onto resentment toward Bruno for this, presumably to mask her worry for when he vanished. After a decade of separation, Pepa finally reunites with her brother again after the fall of the Casita and he reveals that the misunderstanding at the wedding stemmed from his desire to help her relax and embrace her emotions. In the end, Pepa doesn't hold a grudge against Bruno anymore and hugs him happily together with Julieta.
===Official Description===
:Pepa and Félix are a couple rooted in balance. Pepa is "overly dramatic, overly emotional, and, for better or worse, her magical gift is that her emotions control the weather. It goes from sunny to hailing to snow to rainbows and her husband loves that about her.
:Pepa, one of Abuela Alma's triplets, was gifted with the power to control the weather with her emotions. The forecast is often unpredictable, however, as Pepa's emotions are far-reaching and ever-changing.
===Development===
As with the rest of the Madrigal family, Pepa was designed to reflect "family archetypes that are immediately relatable". During the creation process, Pepa's gift was to be indestructible and some artworks showed Pepa as a cigar-chewing biker. Her personality would make her daring and she would also like the extreme sports of motocross, describing her as a wild and free spirit. However, because her gift was too similar to Luisa's strength, it was changed to emotion-affected weather (which was originally going to belong to Julieta).The Art of Encanto After removing this concept, the studio changed Pepa's personality so that she was quite sensitive and shaky to balance with her husband's more cheerful and laid-back personality, making them a balanced combination.
Carolina Gaitan, Pepa's voice actress, describes her character as being relatable to her: "I'm a little bit crazy as well… overly dramatic and sometimes a little bit like a drama queen. But most of all, I think it's about vulnerability. Like, not to be in control of everything… she's emotional and she allows herself to be emotional and I think that's very beautiful about a person, about a character."
===Personality===
Described as "overly emotional and dramatic", Pepa is an impatient woman and can get angry easily, contrasting with her husband Félix's more laid-back personality and positive spirit. Pepa also sometimes lets her temper get the better of her, and often says things that she doesn't mean, however she occasionally apologizes for this. When Pepa gets extremely nervous, she rapidly strokes her braid as she repeatedly mutters "Clear skies, clear skies!" to help her control her emotions and thus her weather. As she feels happy, Pepa is very energetic and therefore it is difficult for her to sit still, enjoying dancing by performing quick dance moves when she is having fun. Unlike her composed sister or her shy brother, Pepa is more outgoing and cheerful than them so she is much more expressive of the three. She has frequent mood swings, going from being happy to angry or vice versa in a moment that alters the weather around her. Pepa can get very nervous, anxious, stressed and sometimes even neurotic very easily. Her emotions sometimes control her more than she can control them, resulting in chaotic weather conditions.
Her temper can easily calm down when supported by the people she loves. Although she can get angry with Félix at times, Pepa loves her husband and always smiles when he supports or helps her, melting into Félix's arms when she dances with him. Félix can calm her by being flirtatious or even simply placing a hand on her shoulder. To a lesser extent, her children can also calm her down and she relies on them to help her whenever she has an emotional meltdown. An example is when her elder son, Camilo attempted to calm her down after learning their family's magic was dying and was dismayed when she accidentally hurt him with a spark of lightning. Much of Pepa's stress is due to the fact that she has to control her temper everyday, not only to prevent bad weather, but also to avoid hurting the people around her. To make her stress even worse, her mother Alma often negatively criticized Pepa for her emotional rants and rarely supported her, which made Pepa feel she couldn't express her emotions freely.
Although she is not ill-intentioned, Pepa can become unintentionally spiteful. She doesn't like to talk about her brother, like the townsfolk, because Bruno told her "it looks like rain" at her wedding and made her anxious to the point of causing a hurricane, quickly getting angry when Bruno is mentioned. But deep down, she truly missed him despite everything that happened between them, her resentment and grudge actually masking how hurt she was of his absence. When Bruno finally returned, she was overjoyed and ran to welcome him back with a hug. Like Alma initially, Pepa has a tendency for things to be perfect, but does not strive on perfection too much like her mother. She wanted her younger son, Antonio's gift ceremony to be perfect and worked to give herself a perfect image to her community by controlling her emotions. However, this is all caused by her mother keeping a tight grip on her. Although Pepa respects Alma, she is also not afraid to get angry with her when she reprimands her when her emotions were too strong for her to control. When she reconciles with her mother and brother after the fall of Casita, Pepa became allowed to express her emotions and powers however she likes.
Despite her rapid emotional swings which can cause her to clash with some of them, she is very caring and loving towards her family. Pepa easily forgave her mother when Alma sincerely apologized to her and the rest of the family for her past mistakes. Like her sister, Pepa cares deeply about her children and wants the best for them. She wanted her youngest son's fifth birthday to be the best day of his life and expressed how proud she was of him several times. During Antonio's gift ceremony, she was shown approaching him along with Félix to congratulate him and hug him when he received his magical gift. After the Casa Madrigal collapses, Pepa's main concern was the well-being of her family rather than the loss of her home where she immediately rushed to Antonio who was crying over the loss of his gift. In the graphic novel it is revealed that Pepa quickly accepted Dolores' romance with Mariano Guzmán and is happy for them, showing her daughter that she supports her. Her affection also extends to her nieces and she is close to them. Isabela is noticeably more connected to Pepa than to either of her parents, with Pepa treating her as if she were a second daughter. She was worried that her oldest niece's marriage proposal would go well and the only time Isabela has a genuine smile about the former proposal is when she dances with Pepa.
===Physical appearance===
Pepa is a 50-year-old woman with fair skin, curly hip-length auburn hair in a braid, and green eyes. She has a small gap between her two front teeth and thin eyebrows. Although not as notable as Julieta, Pepa inherited many of her mother's facial expressions. Pepa is also noticeably taller than her siblings and husband. She wears an orange-and-yellow dress with amber accents, a yellow ribbon on her head, golden sun-shaped earrings, and orange-and-brown espadrilles with golden details and black ribbons around her ankles. Symbolizing her gift, Pepa's collar has suns on it, with raindrop patterns on her dress and lightning-bolt symbols on the bottom of her dress (along with lighting-bolt symbols on her ribbon), and wearing her said sun-shaped earrings. On her wedding day she used the same sun earrings with an identical copy of her current dress, only white with light pink details and instead of using a ribbon she wore a long wedding veil that reached her hips.
===Powers and Abilities===
Empathic Weather Manipulation: Pepa has the power of Empathetic Weather Manipulation, she can control the weather through her emotional state; happiness causes warmth and sunshine, whereas frustration, stress, and sadness causes storms and heavy rain. If Pepa gets deeply upset or frustrated, she can cause snowstorms or hurricanes. When feeling these negative emotions, a cloud will appear over her head and follow her wherever she goes. Depending how strong the emotion she is feeling the cloud will increase in size; in fact, she can even inflict her emotions onto actual clouds instead of having a singular one above her and can cause rain and other types of weather onto there, along with being able to summon a tornado around her. If she calms down and tries to stay positive, usually by saying "clear skies" multiple times, the cloud will go away.
She has very little control over her gift, because if she gets too stressed or scared Pepa can hurt people around her with lightning or strong winds. Initially she could only control the weather when she is happy, such as manifesting rainbows around the Casita and in family photos. However after letting her feelings go and no longer trying to hold them back or hide them, Pepa was shown creating a light hailstorm, one thing she does when she's frustrated despite being happy. Showing her new mastery of both her emotions and her ability, meaning that Pepa maybe can summon any weather anywhere she prefers without having to feel a certain emotion. Despite her powerset, she is not all that powerful because although she can create storms in spaces the size of a room, she is unable to create a large natural disaster even if she tried.
==Appearances==
===Encanto===
Pepa first appears as an infant in her mother Alma's flashback, shortly after she and her siblings were born to Alma and Pedro. After her family was forced out of their home, leading her father to be killed by soldiers, their family became blessed with magic and were given a new home. At the age of five, Pepa, along with her siblings, Julieta and Bruno, were given magical gifts where she was given the ability to control the weather depending on her emotions. In the present, Pepa is getting ready to start the day and heading to the village with the rest of her family to help around. During "The Family Madrigal", Pepa is seen happily dancing with a sun on her head in a field of crops before falling down and getting angry, causing it to rain on the field she was present in. Since the day was also her youngest son Antonio's fifth birthday and gift ceremony, Pepa soon returned home to help prepare for the celebration.
When she returned to the Casa Madrigal, Pepa began to place some rainbow clouds around the house for her son's special day. After that, she anxiously spent the better part of the day agitated over whether her son's gift ceremony that evening would go perfectly, since the previous ceremony had ended with Mirabel not getting a gift or a door. As her husband tried to approach her, Pepa's anxiety created a whirlwind that threatened to ruin the floral arrangements for Antonio's gift ceremony. However, she immediately calms down when Isabela makes her dramatic entrance and presents her with a bouquet of roses to help calm her down. Pepa thanks her niece while Felix calls Isabela "our angel". Later on, when Pepa went to collect Antonio to bring him downstairs for the ceremony, she couldn't find him, generating a cloud over her head. While walking around the Casita looking for Antonio, Pepa argued with Alma that she was losing control of her gift and asked in frustration what her mother wanted from her.
Mirabel eventually found Antonio and brought him down to where Pepa was waiting with her husband and other two children. Pepa expressed tearful pride that Antonio was "all grown up," producing a cloud that began to rain. Félix shooed the cloud away, telling Pepa she was getting Antonio all wet. After Dolores informed them that Antonio's gift ceremony would begin shortly, Pepa and Félix told their youngest son that they would meet him at his door. Pepa then joined Félix at the top of the stairs of the house alongside Abuela. The couple anxiously held hands as Antonio moved closer to the door to receive his gift, afraid the ceremony would fail. When the ceremony proved to be a success, Pepa smiled quietly with her husband and looked excitedly at Antonio on as the boy and his animal friends explored his new room. As the party moved into Antonio's magical bedroom, the Madrigals got together and a family photo was taken, which everyone unknowingly excluded Mirabel from. While dancing with Antonio, Pepa and everyone else heard from a panicked Mirabel that there were cracks in the Casita. When everyone came to investigate, the cracks weren't there and Alma ushered everyone back to the party.
The next morning, Pepa joined her family for breakfast. As she went to sit down, Mirabel cut in front of her and took her seat so she could sit next to Luisa, prompting a small thundercloud over Pepa's head, which Félix easily calmed. She expressed annoyance as Mirabel kept interrupting the family meeting and when breakfast concludes, Pepa joins everyone in the family chant "La Familia Madrigal" before returning to her daily activities. At some point in the afternoon, Pepa went to the nursery to gather the last of Antonio's things and move them to his new room. As she entered the nursery, she heard Mirabel mutter Bruno's name and immediately began thundering. She tried to shoo the clouds away, to no avail, as she scolded Mirabel for bringing up Bruno. Mirabel attempted to ask her what it might mean to be involved in one of Bruno's prophecies, and Pepa tried to change the subject to getting ready for Isabela's proposal dinner, but Félix burst in and insisted on telling Mirabel about Bruno's prophecies.
In "We Don't Talk About Bruno" Pepa scrambled angrily to interrupt Félix and keep him quiet before finally giving in and explaining why they didn't talk about Bruno. She began to tell how Bruno ruined her wedding day by making her nervous with a prophecy and telling her that it "it looks like rain". Due to how much she cared that their marriage went well and she wanted it to be a special day for both of them, her brother's words caused Pepa to get scared thinking that she would ruin the wedding with her gift, causing her and Félix to get married in a hurricane. As she recounted this, Félix constantly interrupted her by describing the day as the best day of his life. Although she did not agree that their wedding was a happy day despite the bad weather, Pepa melted in her husband's arms as she danced with him and then they joined in the verses of their other relatives. After Camilo announced the imminent arrival of the Guzmáns at the house, Pepa helped her family prepare the table for dinner while dancing with Isabela and replaying how Bruno ruined her wedding day, but happy about the imminent proposal.
During the proposal dinner, Pepa sat next to Félix and Julieta. Félix leaned over to whisper to her, passing along what Dolores had learned about Mirabel finding Bruno's last vision. This agitated Pepa, causing her to develop a thundercloud. Alma pointed it out, and Pepa stroked her braid while chanting her mantra, "clear skies," to try and calm herself, to no avail. She whispered to Julieta about Mirabel and the vision. As the tension began to escalate, a bolt of lightning from Pepa's cloud startled Pico the toucan. As Bruno's vision was revealed to the whole family and Dolores proclaimed that they were all doomed because of Mirabel, cracks spread throughout the dining room, everyone's magic began to fritz out, and a gust of wind from Pepa's cloud blew open the window, revealing a crowd outside waiting to congratulate Isabela and Mariano on their engagement. The cloud then began to rain, soaking everyone in the room. As the family evacuated the dining room, Pepa yelled at Mirabel as she passed, demanding to know what she had done, which she says that she has nothing to do with the incident.
After the Guzmáns left and Isabela's proposal dinner failed, Pepa retreated to her room to try and calm herself, but the storm she'd created continued to rage inside the Casa Madrigal. Camilo escorted her to her room and brought her tea and attempted to lead her through calming breathing techniques. But when Mirabel slammed into the wall behind Pepa's room while chasing Bruno, she startled Pepa to the point that she accidentally zapped Camilo with lightning from the cloud above her head, which lead into a series of injuries for the teenager as he wildly shapeshifted into his family members. Pepa later went downstairs to join the other adults in the family, where her anxiety caused a snowstorm above her head, which Félix tried in vain to clear away. As the cracks continued expanding and Alma argued with Julieta and Agustín, the snow from Pepa's cloud continued to increase so Alma told her to calm down, to which Pepa angrily replied to her mother that she was lucky it wasn't a hurricane.
Later that same day, Pepa heard Alma and Mirabel arguing in the courtyard and came to investigate, arriving in time to see their argument escalate to yelling and accusations that the other was the one hurting the magic and the family. This caused the Casa Madrigal begins to destroy around them and the Miracle Candle begins to go out. As the house started to break down and everyone started to stumble on the cracking floor, Pepa was caught by her husband in order to keep her balance and screamed in alarm when she realized that the candle was about to fall out of a window, to which other members of the family in response rushed to save the candle. She watched helplessly as Camilo, Isabela, and Mirabel all tried to reach the candle despite the danger it represented. As the magic starts fading, and the house starts collapsing, the Casita forces everyone, except Mirabel out of the house. After Casa Madrigal collapsed completely and the candle dies along with the magic, Pepa checked on her family to make sure they were unhurt, calling desperately for Julieta to come help her. When Julieta noticed Mirabel went missing, the Madrigals and the other townspeople spread out to search for her.
By the next day, Pepa and the family saw that Mirabel and Alma (who reconcile with each other) returned to Casita's ruins to reunited with their family. During "All of You", she and Julieta listen as Alma apologizes for holding onto the magic too tight, fearing she would lose them too after losing Pedro, and says the miracle isn't magic they possess, rather simply themselves. Although they are initially surprised by how her mother apologizes for her past mistakes and treats them with care, they both forgive Alma and embraced her. When as Alma also reveals that Bruno has returned to the family and guides him to join them, Pepa gasping with joy at seeing him after a decade and ran to scoop her brother up in a hug along with Julieta. When Camilo is confused by his presence by mentioning that they were not talking about him, Bruno begins to apologize to Pepa for her wedding, explaining that he was just trying to help her with her nerves. He encouraged her to show her emotions, to which Félix replied that he was always saying the same thing and calling Bruno "bro". While Bruno continued apologizing, Pepa, Julieta, and Agustín silenced him and said that everything is fine now that he's back before wrapping him up in a big hug.
With family all together, Mirabel rallied them to fix the house and the entire town also pitched in as thanks for all the Madrigals had done for them over the decades. After completing the house, Mirabel added a doorknob the family made just for her to the front door, causing a new source of magic to be born that brings Casita back to life and returning the gifts of the Madrigals, but also making a new front door with all the Madrigals carved into it. Pepa, along with everyone else present, was swept into the house, where she was able to generate a small hailstorm, under which she and Félix danced joyously. The family then celebrated the returned of their home and gifts with a family picture. Pepa stood next to her husband and Camilo as they posed for the photo. While everyone smiled shouting "La Familia Madrigal", Casita unexpectedly brings the entire family together, creating an imperfect, but still happy, family image.
===Once Upon a Studio===
Pepa returns alongside her family at the Disney Animation studio for a group photo with all the characters from the previous films to celebrate the 100th anniversary.
== Video Games ==
=== Disney Dreamlight Valley ===
When it is raining in Dreamlight Valley, Mirabel tells the player about Pepa since the rain reminds her of her weather-controlling aunt.
==Relationships==
==Gallery==
==Trivia==
*Pepa's birthday is on October 17, coinciding with start of the Thousand Days' War.
*A pepa can refer to a sunflower seed or a nugget of gold. Pepa is associated with sunlight, her neckline is shaped like a sunflower, and she wears golden earrings in the shape of the sun.
*Carolina Gaitán, who voiced Pepa, affirms that she arrived two hours early to her first audition to be able to participate in the film, in which she was incredibly nervous and anxious.
*Her gift is similar to another Disney character's power, Elsa, from Frozen and Frozen II as when they are not in a good mood, their powers get out of control. Coincidentally, there was a slight nod to Frozen in the song "All of You", when Bruno told Pepa to "Let it go". The opening piano can also be heard in that part.
*According to Jared Bush, Pepa's room is not able to contain her powers within its walls, so the weather around the Encanto is still affected even when she is in her room.
*Pepa has a much paler skin tone and different hair color than almost everyone in the entire family, reflecting the racial/color diversity in some Latino/Colombian families.
*It is implied that Pepa taught her niece Isabela how to do the dance the latter does on the night of Antonio's gift ceremony when she performs for various townspeople, as Pepa does the exact same dance in the final scene of the film while under a hailcloud as Félix cheers her on. Which is a reference that various aunts often teach their nieces to dance in the Latin culture.
*Pepa is one of five characters to be voiced by the same actress in multiple versions of the film, the others being: Félix, Julieta Madrigal, Alma Madrigal, and Mariano Guzmán, as Carolina Gaitán voiced Pepa in the English and Latin American Spanish dubs of the film.
*According to Jared Bush, Pepa has a sweet tooth and her favorite snack is something with a lot of sugar, but she doesn't let herself because sugar makes her hyperactive.
*At dinner with the Guzmáns, Pepa is the only adult who drinks a glass of juice instead of a glass of wine. Since her Weather Manipulation powers are already unstable when she feels different emotions, possibly she avoids liquor to avoid worsening her condition.
*While Pepa was annoyed she and Félix got married in a hurricane, it is a little-known omen that rain during a wedding is actually often a sign of good luck: it means that the couple will last and hard to unravel. In the present, the two are a happy and loving couple despite their opposite personalities.
==References==
==External links==
*
*Pepa on the Heroes Wiki
es:Pepa Madrigal
fr:Pepa Madrigal
it:Pepa Madrigal
ja:ペパ・マドリガル
pt-br:Pepa Madrigal
Category:Encanto characters
Category:Animated characters
Category:Characters in the Disney animated features canon
Category:Females
Category:Adults
Category:Magic Users
Category:Heroines
Category:Aunts
Category:Siblings
Category:Parents
Category:Spouses
Category:Twins and Triplets
Category:Disney characters
Category:Hispanic characters
Category:Dancers
Category:Lovers
Category:Musicians
Category:Fantasmic characters
Category:Disney on Ice characters
Category:Characters in video games
Category:Disney Sorcerer's Arena Characters