Mrises Dawn Bellwether

> *We're on the same team, Judy! Underestimated, underappreciated....Aren't you sick of it?! Predators - they may be strong and loud, but prey outnumber predators ten to one. Think of it; 90% of the population, united against a common enemy. We'll be unstoppable!*
>
> Bellwether to Judy Hopps

**Dawn Bellwether** is a diminutive female sheep and the main antagonist of *Zootopia*. She is the former assistant mayor of the city of Zootopia.Template:Animal-Character

## Official Bio

*"Assistant Mayor Bellwether is a sweet sheep with a little voice and a lot of wool, who constantly finds herself under foot of the larger-than-life Mayor Lionheart."*
## Physical Appearance

Bellwether wears red glasses over her big green eyes. She has her fluffy white wool styled up in a pom-pom shape on her head. Bellwether also has big, floppy ears, and hooves for hands and feet. She wears a deep blue coat over a dress with a leaf-like design on it.
One thing that stands out about Bellwether is her tiny size. Despite being an adult, she is just a few inches taller than Judy, an adult rabbit, and is significantly smaller than every other adult sheep character in the film.

## Personality

 File:Personality-Bellwether1.png  At first glance, Bellwether appears to be meek, shy, helpful, sweet, and energetic, albeit overworked. She sympathizes with Judy Hopps as she feels the two are both under-appreciated and underestimated and offers to be Judy's friend at City Hall. When Judy approaches her for help on a case, Bellwether is eager to assist and excited to be of use since it appears that she mostly does paperwork and secretarial tasks for Lionheart who dumps work on her.
However, this is a facade that disguises her true nature as a deceptive and cunningly diabolical mastermind. She is ruthless, power-hungry, and perfectly willing to eliminate anyone who gets in her way. It's even implied that Bellwether worked behind the scenes to support Judy's exposure of Lionheart's illegal imprisonment of the savage predators which enabled her to take over as Mayor.

 File:Personality-Bellwether2.png  Due to her duplicitous nature, it's hard to determine how much of what she says reflects her true beliefs or is just her political posturing. Bellwether seems to hold a resentment toward predators as she causes a city-wide panic that predators were reverting to their "primitive savage ways". She also appears to want prey animals to have more power in running the city, yet we also see that she's perfectly willing to let prey animals get injured or even killed by the predators she turns savage in order to further her plans.
Therefore, despite her monologuing about leveling the playing field for prey, it seems that Bellwether's ultimate goal is just her own personal power as summed up by her explicit agreement when Judy's says... *"So that's it? Prey fears predator and you stay in power?"* and Bellwether agrees... *"Yeah, pretty much."*
In addition, when she has Judy and Nick trapped in the diorama in the Museum of Natural History and shoots Nick with a presumed Nighthowler pellet, Bellwether shows a disturbingly blood-thirsty side of her personality in her desire to stay and actually watch Nick kill Judy and the unsettling smirk of approval she gives when he clamps down on her neck.

## Role in the Film

 File:Proud Day.png  Bellwether first appears alongside Mayor Lionheart at Judy Hopps' graduation ceremony where she is the first rabbit police officer and is being assigned to Precinct 1, City Center. As Bellwether awards Judy her badge, she tells the young rabbit that it is a proud day for "us little guys". However, she is then rudely brushed aside as Lionheart moves in for the publicity photos forcing Bellwether to squeeze in from the side.
When Judy volunteers to find Mr. Otterton without authorization, Chief Bogo is about to fire her for insubordination, but Bellwether shows up at just the right moment to learn about Judy taking the case. When the Assistant Mayor then texts Lionheart about the assignment, it forces an irritated Bogo into give Judy a chance.

 File:This is so exciting .jpg  Nick comes up with the idea to use the traffic cams to help them find out what happened to Manchas. Judy doesn't have access to those cameras but realizes she can go to Bellwether for help. The Assistant Mayor gives them access to the traffic system and explains she feels good helping them since she feels she is more of a "glorified secretary" than an actual assistant mayor. However, Lionheart calls Bellwether to confirm that she's going to cancel his afternoon meeting, so Bellwether leaves Judy and Nick to continue studying the cameras.

 File:New mayor Bellwether.png  After Bellwether becomes the new mayor of Zootopia, she wants Judy to become the public face of the ZPD to provide a trusted presence for the frightened prey citizens. However, Judy declines and to Bellwether's shock, resigns from the ZPD.
Later, Judy discovers that the predators were being turned savage through a psychotropic serum. Judy and Nick race through the Natural History Museum to get the evidence to the ZPD but they encounter Bellwether and some ram ZPD officers and she thanks Judy for her efforts and tries to take the evidence from them. Judy realizes that only the rams making the serum knew she was back in the city and heading toward the ZPD so for Bellwether to intercept them means that she is involved in the plot.
As Bellwether and her ram henchmen search for Judy and Nick, Bellwether points out that prey make up a majority of Zootopia's population and tries to convince Judy to join their cause. Judy and Nick ignore Bellwether and make a dash for the exit but are knocked into a pit exhibit by one of the rams.
Bellwether takes back the evidence and removes a gun used to shoot predators with paintball-like pellets. She promptly shoots Nick to turn him savage so he will kill Judy thus removing them both as witnesses.

 File:Evil Bellwether.png  As Judy works to avoid a "savage" Nick, she gets Bellwether to monologue about her plans which involve Bellwether rising in power even if she has to dart every predator in Zootopia to accomplish that.
Bellwether continues to watch even as Nick clamps his jaws around Judy's neck and gives a smirk of satisfaction in seeing the death of her foil.

 File:David Koalabell and Michael Tanuyama in American print at 1h 32m 11s.png  However, it is revealed that Judy and Nick switched the serum pellets in the gun with blueberries. Bellwether switches tactics to say she can frame them for their actions since it's her word against theirs, but the Judy reveals that she taped Bellwether's confession with her carrot pen. As Bellwether turns to run, Chief Bogo and the ZPD, arrive and surround her, and she is arrested along with her henchrams.

 File:Bellwether-watch-concert.PNG  Bellwether is last seen in her prison cell watching Gazelle's concert with contempt while her inmates clap their hands to the beat. She later notices one of her inmates touching her wool and angrily swats their hand away before continuing to brood.

## Observations

Generally politicians are not technically adept, yet Bellwether is shown to be very familiar with the operation of the city's traffic camera system. Not only was she able to grant Nick and Judy access, but while preparing the system for them, she pulls up archive footage (not real time) from the previous night's camera activity in the Rain Forest District. That's something you'd expect from an IT technician, not an Assistant Mayor.

While not directly stated, Bellwether's behavior and events shown in the film strongly suggests that she was very competent with the traffic camera system and was actively using it to help select victims for Doug to shoot as well as keep tabs on Judy during her investigation.

Although neither Judy or Nick mention the time that they were in the Rainforest District, when Judy starts scanning, the system had already been synced up to the exact moment of the Jaguar attack which implies that Bellwether had probably already watched their harrowing adventure and set the system to that time.

Using the traffic camera system to monitor Judy would also explain how Bellwether knew Judy was leaving Mr. Big's house and heading toward Manchas' house in the Rainforest District so that Doug was there to shoot Manchas.

Also, once Bellwether was notified by Jesse, one of her ram henchmen, that the subway car lab was being stolen, Bellwether could have used the system to scan the railways to track the single subway car, watched Judy divert the train and seen it crash into the Natural History Museum station. The close proximity of City Hall and ZPD Headquarters to the museum would have allowed Bellwether the opportunity to gather her ram cops and intercept Judy and Nick while they were still inside which provides an answer to Judy's question "How did you know where to find us?"

## Role in *Zootopia: Crime Files*

While Bellwether does not make an appearance in the game, she is mentioned a few times. Her office serves as a major crime scene in Case 6, The Big Catch, during the investigation of the vandalism of the Natural History Museum.

## Trivia

* While designing Bellwether, the animators took inspiration by looking at sheep and lambs from classic Disney films, like *Make Mine Music* and *Melody Time*.
* The term "bellwether" refers to the sheep that leads the flock. This fits with Bellwether, considering the fact that she is the leader of a team of sheep; Doug, Woolter, Jesse, the Sheep thug, and two other unnamed sheep in her private security force.
* Six different outfits were designed for Bellwether, all of them made of wool.
* There are two bits of foreshadowing to Bellwether's connection with the night howlers present when Judy and Nick visit her office.
	+ First is a sticky note can be seen with Doug's name and phone number written on it: (805) 555-0127. Doug is the sniper that darted Otterton, Manchas, and all the other predators that went savage.
	+ When Bellwether is saying *"I think Mayor Lionheart just wanted the sheep vote... Feels good to be appreciated."*, the underlying music changes to the *Night howler Theme* that is also heard when Judy and Nick first crawl into Doug's subway car and discover that he's growing his own night howlers.
* Bellwether's name is often misspelled as "Bellweather" in merchandise.
* Bellwether's final statement *"Fear always works! And I'll dart every predator in Zootopia to keep it that way"*, is very similar to Mr. Waternoose's (*Monsters, Inc.*) final statement to Sulley: *"I'll kidnap a thousand children before I let this company die, and I'll silence ANYONE who gets in my way!"*. Additionally, both are undone when their confessions are recorded by the heroes. Judy with her carrot pen and Mike with a video camera.
* Just before Judy and Nick come to City Hall to ask Bellwether for help with the traffic cameras, there's a scene where Bellwether is carrying a stack of notebooks and trying to get Lionheart to review the work. Distracted, she almost steps on a mouse. In a fun slip past the censors, the irritated mouse flips her off with a "fangul" hand gesture before moving on.

## Relationships

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## Quotes

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## Gallery

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## Videos

Zootopia Movie CLIP - Assistant Mayor Bellwether (2016) - Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman Movie HDZootopia Movie CLIP - Insubordination (2016) - Idris Elba, Ginnifer Goodwin Animated Movie HD
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