Mirabel Madrigal

**Mirabel Madrigal** is the main character in Disney's animated movie Encanto. Mirabel is depicted as an imperfect, kind, quirky and emotional 15-year-old girl who is the only member of the Madrigal family who does not receive a magical gift. When their "miracle" begins to fade, Mirabel takes it upon herself to save the magic, learning of her familial troubles.

## Appearances

### Appears in

Encanto

From the outset of the character's development, Mirabel was conceived as the only member of her family without a gift. The film's draft plot depicted her desperately searching for a gift, but the character's motivation was adjusted to a desire to be noticed, which was deemed more relatable for the audience. Mirabel's physical appearance is based on that of tourist guide Alejandra Espinosa Uribe; Mirabel's design began with her skirt, whose extensive embroidery represents her personality. American actress Stephanie Beatriz provides Mirabel's voice; Beatriz first auditioned for the role of Luisa but was deemed perfect for Mirabel.

## Background

“*I will **never**... be good enough for you... will I?* *"No matter how hard I try."*”
―Mirabel confronting Abuela Alma about her treatment towards her.
Born into the Madrigal family, Mirabel is the youngest daughter of Julieta and Agustín, and the younger sister of Isabela and Luisa. In addition to being the niece of Félix, Pepa and Bruno, Mirabel is also the cousin of Dolores, Camilo and Antonio. Mirabel shared the nursery with her cousin, Camilo, who is three months older than her, until he received his gift on his fifth birthday and subsequently moved out of the nursery. On the night of five-year-old Mirabel's gift ceremony, she touched the door handle of her soon-to-be room, excited about what kind of gift she would get. But, her door suddenly faded away, and she didn't get a gift like the rest of her family. This left everyone who attended the ceremony shocked, especially Abuela Alma. Ever since that day, Mirabel has been desperately trying to make up for not having a gift by helping out in an attempt to "make her family proud". Alma and Isabela over the years distanced themselves from Mirabel because she did not have a magical gift and the pressures they carried respectively. Being the only child not blessed with a gift, she is constantly left out by most of her family. Despite this, she genuinely loves her family.

### Development

How with the rest of the Madrigal family, Mirabel was designed to reflect "family archetypes that are immediately relatable". As in the final production, the studio created Mirabel without a magical gift but at the same time empathetic and someone who is always there to help her family. Since the beginning, the idea was for Mirabel to have embroidery in her costume. Despite some of its imperfections, the designs on their clothing were meant to resemble something that would look similar in a teenager’s art book or drawings in a diary.

Mirabel's voice actor, Stephanie Beatriz, described her character: *"Mirabel doesn’t have a gift, which I find extremely relatable, because there have been many times in my life where I felt like I didn’t belong, I didn’t measure up, I wasn’t talented enough to be there, I had that sort of imposter syndrome. But I also discovered by getting older, and working more and more on trusting myself, that I do have something to offer, and it is special, and I am myself. So, you know, not everybody’s gonna love that but the people that do, are gonna love it really hard."*

### Personality

Mirabel often shows a free-spirited and optimistic demeanor; despite being the only Madrigal grandchild without a gift and an outcast by her family, she is still very much sociable and friendly to those around her. Lacking a gift of her own, she admires her relatives and hold them in high regard. Her lack of gift also does not hinder her from getting along with most of her relatives: having a very close bond with her cousin Antonio, comforting him when he needs it. At the same time, he admires her and sees her more as a sister than his cousin. She also is humble and honest, admitting easily that she and her father are both accident-prone. On top of this, Mirabel appears confident as she claims that she does not need a gift to make herself happy and that she is just as special as everyone else in her family.

Despite seemingly living life happily without any power of her own, Mirabel is very much insecure over the fact that she cannot contribute the same way her relatives do. The worst part of not having a gift is being looked down by Abuela Alma and viewed as a nobody in her own family. As she cannot relate with her gifted relatives, she is lonely and feels disconnected from them. Ultimately, her greatest wish is nothing more than to be fully included in the family even if she doesn't have a gift. In her pursuit to find answers behind the magic’s weakening, she is shown to be very persistent as she continually followed Luisa while she was running her errands and pestered her until her sister confesses her problems. She also insisted that her uncle Bruno conjure another vision of the future, despite him being uncomfortable with the idea of it. Later on, Mirabel persisted on reconciling with Isabela by embracing her, and while Isabela is singing about her self-expression and freedom, Mirabel attempts to rush the reconciliation process, but stopped and she eventually helps her sister embrace her true self and they both shared a genuine hug.

While searching for answers on why the magic is dying, Mirabel discovers how much stress each of her family members are under as a result of the expectations set upon their gifts and themselves, which they hide behind effortless façades. She is able to sympathize with Bruno's loneliness, understanding his feelings of being an outsider unable to be an asset to the family and community, and resolves to help him be welcomed back into their family after seeing that he is a good man who just had troubles with his gift. In addition, Mirabel helps to give voice to her family’s problems through her compassion and helps them understand that they are valuable as they are, not because of their gifts. This allows Mirabel to relate to her family members in ways she could not previously do, thus allowing her to form stronger bonds with them.

While Mirabel greatly respects Abuela as both the founder of the magic and the matriarch of the Madrigal family, she is unhappy with the fact that Abuela mistreats her for not being blessed with a gift and frequently disallowing her from participating in familial activities. After learning the source of the miracle dying and trying to tell Abuela how to fix it, Abuela was quick to lash out at Mirabel for "hurting the family" because she didn't get a gift, which greatly hurts Mirabel. Finally fed up with this treatment, Mirabel stands up to Alma and defends her family by saying that she had always seen her as a disappointment and how *no one* would ever be good enough for her or her expectations even with their magical gifts and how Bruno left because she always saw the worst in him, accusing her grandmother of not caring about them. After the destruction of Casita, Mirabel and Abuela have a heart-to-heart conversation away from the family. Though Abuela admits that she had lost sight of what was truly important in her life: her family, and not the gifts they possess; Mirabel, after learning of Abuela's trauma, maturely understood her actions better. Mirabel saw how broken her grandmother was, and forgave Abuela while lifting her spirits by reminding her how she was strong in leading their community and raising her children despite the tragedy she endured. The two then reconciled and mended their relationship. Now, Mirabel is genuinely more confident in her worth, finally seen as an equal in her family and community.

### Physical appearance

Mirabel is a 15-year-old Colombian girl of a 5'2" height, curly chin-length black hair, thick eyebrows, hazel eyes, and visibly dark shade of freckles on her nose and cheeks. Of her sisters, Mirabel is the one who most resembles her mother, Julieta. Mirabel is near-sighted, so she wears lime green round-framed glasses. She wears blue pom-pom earrings, and carries around a mochila bag when going out.

Her attire is a white blouse that has colorful butterfly stitching, with frills of black trimming at the neck and sleeves. She wears a long teal skirt with colorful butterfly embroidery and her name stitched on the waistband, with an indigo petticoat and white bloomers, and sandals with pink linking and black ribbons around her ankles. Mirabel's skirt has many embroidered patterns, like butterflies, flowers, a little version of herself and even some motifs representing her relatives, like a candle (for Abuela), a basket of buñuelos (for Julieta), a chameleon (for Camilo), musical notes (for Dolores), and others. At night, she wears a white ankle-length nightgown with a green ribbon at the neckline.

### Powers and abilities

Mirabel is not bestowed a magical gift like the rest of her family. However, she does have a stronger affinity with the Casa Madrigal than most of her family; she communicates with the Casita like it is a real person, and *Casita* responds to her prompts and helps with her daily routine. Mirabel is skilled in sewing, having embroidered her own clothes and made a stuffed jaguar for her cousin, Antonio. She is also nimble and quick on her feet, displaying skills similar to parkour to navigate through difficult areas like the roof and walls behind the house. She is proficient in singing, dancing, and plays the accordion well. At the end of the movie, Mirabel adds her own doorknob (made for her by her family) to the front door, which restores the magic, bringing Casita back to life, and affirms Mirabel as the new vessel for the magic. The Madrigals get their gifts back, and the front door shows all the Madrigals carved on it, with Mirabel in the middle. This new miracle is born from Mirabel's love for her family. To reflect this, the color of the magic is different from what it was previously. When the candle held the magic, its power was golden. Mirabel's new magic is rainbow colored.

## Appearances

### *Encanto*

Mirabel first appears as a five-year-old girl listening to her grandmother, Abuela Alma tell the story of how their family was blessed with magic and how the Miracle Candle will grant her a magical gift during her birthday. When it is time for her ceremony, Mirabel asks Abuela what she thinks her gift will be, to which her grandmother responds that she is a wonder and whatever gift she gets will be just as special as her. Ten years later, Mirabel is seen helping prepare for her cousin Antonio’s gift ceremony. The Town Kids ask Mirabel what her gift is, but she tries to deflect by explaining her other family member’s gifts. Her cousin Dolores overhears this and explains to the kids that Mirabel didn’t get a gift. Mirabel reassures to the children that she is just as special as the rest of her family, whether she has a gift or not. She proceeds to help her family with preparations, but Abuela advises her to step aside, much to her frustration. She finds Antonio hiding under his bed, fearful that his ceremony will fail like hers did. Mirabel reassures her cousin he has nothing to worry about and gives him a stuffed jaguar as a birthday present, convincing him to stop hiding. However, when Antonio’s ceremony begins, he is still too nervous to walk to his door and asks Mirabel to accompany him. Knowing that Alma will disapprove and how everyone will react, Mirabel initially refuses, but reluctantly agrees to after Antonio whispers that he needs her. Walking Antonio to his door sets off painful memories of her failed ceremony wherein her door vanished instead of granting her a gift after she touched the knob, sparking panic among the rest of the family, including Abuela Alma. Antonio’s ceremony, however, succeeds and he gains the ability to talk to animals. As her family takes a picture without her, Mirabel sings about her insecurities about being the only member without a magical gift and her desire to be treated equally. After the musical number, she begins to see cracks all over the house and when she tries to show everyone, no one believes her as everything seems to be normal.

Later that night, she talks with her mom Julieta and asked her how come she's the only member who didn't receive a gift. Julieta tells her she is just as special as everyone else and wished Mirabel can see that in herself. After that, Mirabel points out how her mom literally healed her wound with a dish she made. During the night when she overhears Alma saying that she believes her, Mirabel decides to jump into action to save the family and the miracle. The next morning, she asked her older cousin Dolores, who was gifted with super hearing, what's going on and she tells her that Luisa's eye was twitching all night. While confronting her older sister, she breaks into a musical number and confesses that she felt so much pressure to live up to Alma's expectations. After the song, Mirabel hugs her sister and says that she carries too much, only for Luisa to return the hug, squeezing Mirabel in the process and reveals to her that her powers became weaker when she saw the cracks. Luisa suggests that Mirabel go to Bruno's old room, recalling that he once had a vision about the family's magic. Mirabel enters to see that it is a giant sand-filled cave and discovers a vision that supposedly shows Mirabel being the cause of the house cracking apart. Upon leaving, Luisa reveals that her strength is fading as Abuela tells Mirabel to stay away from Luisa until she can talk to her and tells her whatever she is doing, she must stop it. When Mirabel asked her family about Bruno, everyone tells her not to mention Bruno because his gift caused so many problems. When her father sees the vision, he tells her to keep it a secret from everyone, but unfortunately, Dolores overhears this conversation and couldn't keep it a secret. When she blabs it during the dinner and proposal to Isabela from Mariano, both were ruined and most of the family blames Mirabel, despite her saying that she had nothing to do with the incident.

Mirabel notices some rats taking the pieces of Bruno's vision and discovers a hidden passage in the walls behind a painting, finding a cloaked figure that she chases. When she falls through the floor, the figure saves her (though it is then revealed the hole is not very deep), revealing himself as her uncle Bruno. Bruno revealed that he never left (as he hid inside the walls of the house) and tells Mirabel that his gift wasn't helping the family, but deep down, he still loves his family. Mirabel asked Bruno if she's hurting her family, but Bruno said that he can't tell her because he doesn't know, but he had a vision on the night when Mirabel didn't get her gift: Alma begged him to look in the future and when he did, he saw the magic in danger, the house cracking, and then he saw Mirabel, but the vision had two different possibilities, a good one and a bad one, like the future was undecided. Bruno didn't know what it meant, but he knew what everyone will think because he's Bruno and everyone always assume the worst, and so he revealed that he shattered the vision and left to protect Mirabel so she would not be ostracized like he was by the rest of the family. Mirabel convince him to make another prediction and Antonio offers them to use his room (after the rats told him). The prediction shows the same thing until it shows that Mirabel has to embrace Isabela to make the candle brighter, much to her utter annoyance.

At Bruno's insistence, Mirabel decides to go along with the plan and tells Isabela that they should hug it out. Isabela scoffs at this and demands Mirabel to apologize for "ruining" her life. When Mirabel sarcastically apologizes, Isabela sends her out of her room, at least until Mirabel calls her a "selfish entitled princess." Stung by those words, Isabela confesses that she felt so much pressure of being perfect all the time *and* she never wanted to marry Mariano, only doing so for the family, causing a small cactus to grow. After this confession and through a song, Mirabel gets Isabela to realize that she doesn't have to be perfect and grow more than just flowers with her gift. After helping Isabela embrace her true self, they share a hug right in front of the candle, fulfilling Bruno's vision. After the song, Isabela playfully calls Mirabel a bad influence.

Alma comes into the house and discovers what's going on as she had been alerted to what happened while apologizing to the Guzmáns for what happened at the dinner and proposal. Mirabel tries to explain what's happening (which is why she was in Bruno's vision), but Alma snaps at her and blames her for hurting the family, Bruno's departure, Luisa's powers failing, and Isabela going wild all because she wasn't given a gift. Finally fed up with this treatment, Mirabel angrily snaps back at Alma and tells her that she will *never* be good enough for her, no matter how hard she tries. When Mirabel looks at her sisters, she realizes that *no one* (even with their gifts) will ever be good enough for Alma and defends Luisa and Isabela by saying they will *never* be strong enough or perfect enough. While reaching her breaking point, she points out that Bruno left the family because Alma always saw the worst in him and she is the reason that the miracle is dying, which utterly shocks and horrifies Alma, while Mirabel also became shocked by what she said. This argument creates a fissure that splits a nearby mountain of the range that protects Encanto and demolishes Casita as the candle melts and extinguishes, leaving the Madrigals powerless. Heartbroken by her failure to save the miracle and supposedly being the cause, Mirabel runs away in shame, while the whole family tries to find her.

The next day, Mirabel has not been found by anyone, either in the family or the town. A tearful Mirabel sits alone by the river where her Abuelo was killed and releases stress until Alma finds her. Mirabel apologizes and says that she never wanted to hurt the family, she just wanted to prove herself that she's worthy, even though she doesn't have a gift. They have a heart to heart talk and Alma revealed the trauma she went through in the past when she lost Pedro, her home, and her village, and apologizes, assuring Mirabel it wasn't her fault, but rather *hers* as she was so afraid to lose their family's miracle and second chance, that she unknowingly put so much emotional trauma on them due to years of suffering and heartache that she never fully healed from. Now knowing and understanding Alma better, Mirabel encourages her by saying that they were given a miracle and are a family because of her, and what can be broken can still be fixed as Alma still has her children, grandchildren, and in-laws for support, so she does not have to bear the burden alone anymore. The two reconcile as they embrace, the first tender moment since Mirabel's gift ceremony, truly fulfilling Bruno's vision.

Shortly afterwards, Bruno arrives on horseback to defend Mirabel by taking the blame for what happened to Casita and confront Abuela, but is utterly surprised to see his mother embracing him instead of yelling at him. The two ride the horse with a resolute Mirabel as they all go back to the Encanto. Once they arrived at the rubble of their home, Mirabel has a warm reunion with her parents, then she convinces her family, magic or not, that they can rebuild their house if they work together. At the same time, Abuela apologizes to her family for holding on too tight, fearing she would lose them too after losing Pedro, and they all reunite with Bruno. Right after that, the whole town gathers together to help the Madrigals fix their house, as a show of gratitude for everything they have done for them. As everyone works, Mirabel is seen raising a pillar with her sisters, when Luisa said that she cries sometimes. Isabela and Mirabel hugged their sister, saying they cry as well. Later, Mirabel sees Mariano sad and asks him what's wrong, which in response, says he has much love inside to give. She then introduces him to Dolores, who finally confesses the love she feels for him. Falling in love by her words, Mariano returns his feelings for her, much to Mirabel and Isabela's joy.

When the house is finally finished, save for the front doorknob, Mirabel is in shock and emotional when she discovers her family made the doorknob for her. Antonio takes her to the front door as she gets emotional seeing that her family is proud of her and of everything she did. When Mirabel adds the doorknob to "her new door" after Alma asks the same question to her that she did back when she was five, a new source of magic is born, bringing Casita back to life, giving back the Madrigals' gifts, but also making a new front door, with all the Madrigals carved on it, with Mirabel on the middle. Casita then brings everyone inside, as Mirabel watches as her relatives use their just gotten back-gifts in ways that make them happy, then Casita brings the Madrigals together for a new family photo, when Casita suddenly brings everyone closer, making an imperfect family picture.