Directed by Ron Clements & John Musker

Moana invites theory because it isn’t as simple as it pretends to be. Beneath the color and music is a story preoccupied with fear, inheritance, and the cost of staying where you were told you belong.

One interpretation I keep returning to reframes Hei Hei, not as comic relief, but as something closer to a spirit guide. He survives circumstances that should kill him, appears exactly where he’s needed, and unintentionally protects the Heart of Te Fiti at critical moments. His intelligence is questionable, but his presence is consistent. In that way, he functions less like a joke and more like a tether, grounding Moana as she moves further from what is familiar.

Another theory positions Chief Tui, Moana’s father, as the film’s true antagonist. His fear of the ocean, rooted in personal loss, leads him to suppress his people’s history and hide their wayfinding past. As the island begins to decay, he refuses the very action that could save it. The threat to Motunui is not an external monster, but inherited fear. Moana’s conflict, then, is not simply about restoring balance, but about disobeying the limitations imposed by love.

The most unsettling reading suggests that Moana dies during the storm that destroys her boat. After this moment, she awakens unharmed, enters spaces inaccessible to ordinary humans, and interacts primarily with beings who are already divine or dead. The Realm of Monsters reads less like a physical place and more like a mythic threshold. Whether literal or symbolic, the theory reframes the film as a passage between worlds rather than a journey across the sea.

What makes these interpretations endure is not whether they are correct, but what they reveal about why Moana resonates. The film understands transformation as loss, courage as disobedience, and leadership as the willingness to leave what feels safe. It is a story about answering a call you were taught to ignore, and the quiet devastation that comes from staying still.