Encanto has quickly become one of the more popular Disney films in recent years.
And as far as magic goes, Encanto probably has one of the most diverse sets of magical
abilities we’ve seen in any animated movie. Each member of the Madrigal family
has a completely unique magical gift that they use to solve all sorts of problems.
But the question is… Which of these abilities is truly the most powerful,
and which one doesn’t quite live up to the magical hype? Today,
we’re breaking down all of these gifts to see how they rank in terms of power.
I’m Kyle with WickedBinge and this is Encanto Magical Gifts: Weak to Powerful.
For this list, we’ll be ranking based on a few different factors.
First, we’ll be going by how we see the abilities utilized in the film. Second,
we’re going to rank based on how useful such a power would be in the real world. And finally,
we’re going to take into account how others with a similar gift have been shown to use it.
Starting out at the bottom, with the weakest power, we have Abuela Alma.
While Abuela was the keeper of the miracle, she herself didn’t display any actual power. At least,
not in the same way that the other members of her family did. Unlike Agustín and Félix,
Abuela had the role of control in the family. Being the one who was able to raise her children
in safety and help the casita bestow gifts for them made her powerful in her own way.
Abuela Alma had influence in the community and it led to her family being beloved and successful.
There are some people that have speculated that Abuela’s family was the one that passed on the
magical abilities and that she simply hadn’t been aware of it until her husband’s passing,
but we have to argue against that. After all, if that had been the case, her own
gifts would have formed in a more solid fashion. Abuela, while linked to the casita and able to
communicate with it, wasn’t able to foresee its destruction or stop the home from collapsing.
That alone leads us to the conclusion that Abuela Alma is the weakest member of the Madrigal family.
Second from the bottom, we have our protagonist Mirabel. There is a lot of debate about whether
Mirabel actually has a gift and what it could possibly be, as we covered in
our video ranking the Encanto theories. Still, Mirabel ranks higher than her Abuela due to
what we saw throughout the film. Mirabel shared a connection to the casita that none of her siblings
or cousins had, with Mirabel being the only one not cast out with the casita was collapsing around
them. Despite not receiving a gift, there’s no denying that Mirabel was able to foresee the
damage that would occur before it truly did. That doesn’t confirm that Mirabel has the ability to
see into the future or that she has any sort of psychic ability, but it did prove to be useful
in helping to keep the magic from disappearing completely. Not to mention the conclusion of the
film where Mirabel was able to restore the magic to the home even without the candle existing. We
covered in our theory video that Mirabel was assumed to be the new source of the miracle.
While we can’t confirm that and move her higher on this list, we did want to state that the
very possibility of it and the evidence given gives her a higher spot than her Abuela Alma.
Moving on up, next we have the gossip-loving Dolores. Thanks to her super-enhanced hearing,
Dolores was always in the loop of whatever was happening around town, whether she intended to be
or not. She was aware of Bruno still lingering in the house and had been able to pick up on Luisa’s
stress at the magic starting to fail. However, while Dolores was helpful in guiding Mirabel in
the right direction, we had to place Dolores as one of the weaker members of the family. After
all, she hadn’t utilized her power to do much without someone prompting. She had to be asked by
Mirabel outright if Dolores noticed anything with the magic. Abuela only used Dolores to see about
Mariano’s proposal. The only time we saw Dolores spread what she heard without being asked was
after Dolores overheard that Mirabel found Bruno’s vision. Going by Mirabel and Agustín’s reactions
at getting caught, Dolores clearly had a fondness for spreading gossip. She could have really
learned to use her gift to settle disputes or miscommunications between people in the community,
picking up on patterns to the point where she may have been able to anticipate an oncoming problem.
But instead, Dolores mostly just stuck with hearing whatever Abuela wanted her to.
Next on our list we have Mirabel’s mother, Julieta. With Julieta, we see that she is
able to heal anyone that comes to her by simply giving them some food she made. Broken bones,
bee stings, cuts and scrapes… It was a useful gift to have and cut down on the need for the isolated
community to need medical supplies. In fact, all of the triplets have some ability that was meant
to aid the people of the encanto staying away from the rest of the world. However, Julieta’s power
did have limits. People of the encanto were still able to lose their hair, gain weight, and age.
It’s easy to come to the conclusion that Julieta couldn’t change anything that naturally occurred
in the body. After all, as was pointed out in our theory video, Mirabel herself wears glasses.
Our next spot goes to the supposed “perfect granddaughter,” Isabela. Yes,
Isabella was able to create a lot of beautiful flowers by simply willing them into existence.
However, we had to drop her down to one of the weaker members of the Madrigal family
as we never really see her full potential. It wasn’t until Isabela and Mirabel had their
fight that Isabela realized she was capable of making more than roses. If she had been allowed
to explore creating more than pretty looking flowers, Isabela could have helped with the
crops flourishing or creating all new sources of food that shouldn’t be possible in that region.
Following we have the shape-shifter Camilo. Much like Dolores, Camilo was criminally
under-utilized. When we saw Camilo using his powers, it was to replicate different people
in order to fill in for them. Admittedly, we only really see Camilo use his powers to help
a couple of different times. Once when he was seen holding a woman’s child in the beginning,
and once towards the end when he took on different forms to try and reach the candle before it went
out. One impressive thing about Camilo was we see in the beginning that even when taking the form of
a child, Camilo’s able to have the same amount of strength when playfully tossing the baby in
the air before catching it, showing his physical strength doesn’t change when it takes on different
forms. The change in appearance does give Camilo some advantage, though, as we can see from how he
switches back and forth when attempting to reach the candle. While we can surmise that his overall
physical abilities don’t change, he was able to use the new heights to his advantage while
dodging obstacles. If Camilo was more interested in using his powers for more than babysitting or
trying to sneak seconds of food, he would be quite a threat to anyone that dared storm the encanto.
Next up we have Antonio. Antonio was able to use his gift to help Mirabel more than the
other members of the family, which helped move him further up the list. Despite only having his
gift to talk to animals for a short amount of time, Antonio got the hang of it very quickly.
He was able to communicate with the rats and used them to find Bruno and find out
what Mirabel was up to. We’ve seen in other media that having a connection to animals
like Antonio does can lead to a character either not entirely knowing how to use
their powers for their benefit, as with characters like Eliza Thornberry,
or becoming a powerhouse and major threat, such as in James Cameron’s Avatar. Given some time,
Antonio could easily rise to be the latter option. In just a day’s time, Antonio was far
more in the loop than his siblings and managed to help Bruno and Mirabel in a significant way.
Taking the following spot is Bruno. Bruno’s gift to see the future came in handy, but he got a lot
of pushback from everyone around him. Whenever Bruno would foresee something bad happening,
everyone’s response was that he was making it happen himself. Bruno had been in the unfortunate
position of seeing the sense in preparing for the bad while residing in a village
full of superstitious people. This definitely had an impact on how his gift developed-
or didn’t develop- as Bruno began to doubt himself and eventually gave up foreseeing anything.
There have been some people that have ridiculed how Bruno goes about using his powers,
stating that he shouldn’t need to have a specific setup in order to use his ability.
However, we want to make the argument that this proves Bruno is far stronger than he’s assumed to
be. Seeing into the future is impressive enough, but the fact that Bruno needed a wide space in
order to let his power flow freely without worry showed just how much he had to keep contained.
If Bruno was able to use his gift freely without ridicule from the community, he would likely have
eventually mastered channeling his gift in a small space and without ritual. In the film, though,
he needed the steps to create a sense of control or else his own power would have been too much.
Taking the bronze medal of most powerful gift goes to Julieta’s middle daughter Luisa. There was no
doubt that Luisa was the most used of the Madrigal family. Isabela would happily make flowers appear
at random moments. Camilo and Dolores used their gifts when instructed, but mainly had fun with
them. However, with Luisa, she was given far more work than the rest of the family because of her
gift. Through the movie we see Luisa maintaining her training to keep being the strong figure of
the family, showing that while she was naturally given super strength, she also had her own power
behind it. On top of that, Luisa was seen having excellent control of her strength and how much
she used at a time. There are a lot of strong characters in media that could go overboard with
how much force they used, such as with Superman or in Disney’s Hercules. In Luisa’s case, she
was able to vary how much power she used as she jumped from task to task. One moment she would be
carrying children and the next she could hip-check an entire house without demolishing the building
itself. Considering how young Luisa was and how much was demanded of her all the time, meaning
she was working past the point of exhaustion, we had to give her a high spot on this list.
The silver medal of most powerful gift, we have the last of Alma’s children,
Pepa. Being able to control the weather around you is no small task. Pepa was able to create wind,
snow, hurricanes…anything that she wanted. Pepa could easily cover the entire encanto with her
gifts or choose to keep it in a singular area. We even see in Mirabel’s song introducing the family
that Pepa would often be sent to tend to the crops to be sure they got enough water
while the rest of the village enjoyed the perfect day. But much like with Bruno,
Pepa’s gifts were seen as an inconvenience unless she was asked to use them. For the majority of her
time on screen, Pepa is scolded and pushed into suppressing her powers so they aren’t a bother to
anyone else around her. The only one that was seen encouraging Pepa to truly process her emotions was
her husband, with Félix seen trying to shield Pepa from the snow she was creating in her fear.
Like with her brother, we can’t help but believe that Pepa would be formidable if
she had been allowed to really explore her gift. Unfortunately with a community and matriarch that
only wanted clear skies, Pepa would likely not be able to rise up to that ranking.
Finally taking the gold medal of most powerful gift,
we have to have Alma’s late husband, Pedro. There may be some people confused about this ranking,
but we have our reasoning for placing Pedro at the top of our list. It’s widely accepted that
Pedro had some form of magic that we never see him use directly. It would be far too much of a
coincidence for the encanto to form and the castia to come into existence right after Pedro’s death
if he had nothing to do with it. Now we can’t exactly confirm that Pedro is the casita itself.
However, Pedro was able to use his own ability to help get his friends and family to safety. Though
he was killed in the conflict, his death resulted in a safe haven for the people that were fleeing
the old village. If in fact Pedro is the castia, that only further proves how strong his magic was
in order to continue existing. We also want to point out that Abuela was not shown to have any
magical ability herself, but her three children were able to gain gifts when they came of age,
with the casita only solidifying what sort of power they would get. For those that argue the
powers came from the encanto or the casita itself, we have to point out that Abuela
and the rest of the village never really got any powers. Yes, Abuela was the keeper of the miracle,
but from what she revealed of her past, no one in her family line had been shown to have powers
before. It was also hinted through the use of the yellow butterflies in the memory Abuela
shared that Pedro was continuing to linger around the encanto to help his family grow. When Mirabel
and Abuela finally had their heart to heart, we see the butterflies again in a flurry, showing
he was still present in some form. Regardless of the details, Pedro was shown to have some
sort of gift that helped his family. And being able to use one’s magic even after death is an
impressive feat that earned him our top ranking. But let us know in the comment section if you
agree with our ranking. And tell us what we should cover next. Remember to hit that notification bell
and binge our Weak to Powerful playlist. Where we break down who the most powerful characters
are in your favorite cartoons, shows and movies. But most importantly, stay wicked.