Part two to this post! Since I have so many ideas!
-Isa trying to connect with mirabel through embroidery and accidentally breaking a project she was working on for a long time so she has to get the other grandkids to figure what to do before mirabel sees it
-Bruno has to make some sort of speech in front of a bunch of people and he’s getting extremely anxious about it so some of his family tries to do stuff with him the that calms them down but it just makes him worse
-The kids arguing on who’s bruno’s favorite niece/nephew
-Lusia and isa being put in charge of decorating Antonio birthday and they have very separate ideas that more cater to there style than anotonios
-Pepa having a mother daughter day with Dolores
-Alma trying to reconnect with mirabel but only knows stuff she liked before she was 5
-Camilo is asked by so many people to be them at different places at different times that he starts confusing the stories together to the point where hes shifting as the wrong people at the wrong events causing mass confusion in the town
-Mirabel gets hurt in a way that’s almost fatal so her older siblings and cousins don’t let her go anywhere or do anything without one of them breathing down her neck
-All the kids getting sick and having there powers go haywire and the only adult around to help is felix
-Bad things start to happen around the town ie. crops dying, farm animals being eaten by wild ones, weather knocking homes down. Some villagers start to believe its because of the return of bruno. Camilo, isa and mirabel try to figure what’s the real reason is.
-There is a town event where everyone competes against eachother in teams of three. Each set of madrigal siblings decide to compete and get way to competitive.
-Antonio making one of those extremely complatied and hard to follow board games kids make. He makes his family play it and everyone gets way to invested
-Dolores trying to avoid spoilers for a book shes looking forward to reading until she can get home
-Its someone in the families birthday and this time they decide to mix up who usually does things for the party (example julieta-baking, isa-decrorating, Dolores- presents, etc) only for everything to go horribly and everyone that got assigned a new task does it horribly wrong
-Isa dragging her sisters for a spa day of sorts
-Flashback episode to the triplets teen years
-A sherlock spoof episode where things keep going missing in the village and camilo forces lusia to be his “watson” and the “good cop”
-The triplets first birthday since bruno disappearances. Both pepa and julieta want it to be a big celebration with the whole town while bruno just wants it to be a family thing
-Someone tries to kidnap one of the madrigal so they can make money off there power only for them to pick up mirabel. Mirabel messes with them until her family finds her
Bonus: sometimes when bruno is doing something where hes waiting for another character to appear or hes not the main focus you can hear him humming “we don’t talk about bruno”
i like to think with each gift come other things to each of the madrigals
so like, how Isabela knows all these different plants even when she’s never created them, she didn’t look them up and study them, she’s always known. just like she knows the perfects conditions for every plant
camilo’s acting skills were always there, and he can get into any character in record time, being able to interpret them perfectly. he can also tell when someone is being genuine or faking
dolores differentiates between different sounds even when they’re all going off at the same time, and she can hear each and everyone clear as day and differentiate between them. she can also imitate sounds and voices
luisa will tell you the exact weight of smth just by looking at it. and she’ll have a look at you and tell you what your body needs to work on for better muscle or will know what muscle you’ve pulled. gives amazing massages
Pepa can tell you the forecast. she’ll wake up and go “today is going to rain, not gonna be my fault. it will rain for like an hour, at 6:39 in the afternoon” so accurate.
Julieta knows the recipes by heart, she can read any recipe in any language and memorize it forever, but only recipes. reads at the speed of light too, and knows some recipes already that she just knows.
Bruno will have tiny predictions that come true even when he isn’t using his powers. like “i swear, if that kid scores I’m wearing purple tomorrow” guess who’s wearing mirabel’s favorite poncho the next day? or he’ll randomly pull someone aside before a bird poops where they were standing before.
Antonio is an encyclopedia for animals just like isa is for plants. he knows it all, even from fantastical, mythical, and extinct species. he can also imitate their sounds, which he doesn’t need, but you know
“Oh? You take care of everyone at such young age? Here, your gift is healing people with your food”
“You like flowers and love to see the wonders of nature? There, plant magic for you”
“You love animals because it’s more easy to talk to them than with people? Now they can understand you.”
And then there’s Bruno’s gift:
“So you are always worried about the future of your family that it gives you chronic anxiety and you are also a bit of a pessimist? Well, congratulations! You get the gift of precognition. Go, see the future and look as your worst fears regarding it come true. Sleep well!”
I don’t want to be cringe, but I just had a vision that Bruno in a modern version of Encanto would upload his rat soap operas to youtube with titles like “RAT_WEDDING.mp4” (because he’s an old man who doesn’t know much about Youtube) and they would blow up in the ARG world because people would be convinced that there was some secret underlying message or code, especially once they realized that he was totally filming this in someone’s walls. The only person who gets it is Dolores, whom the videos are intended for.
After watching Encanto and seeing how Bruno really is, I can truly see him seeing Pepa stressing on her wedding day and just being like “huh, looks like it’s gonna rain” with a little chuckle and everyone reacting like a record scratch moment
Oh NO. Had the most horrific thought, my heart is hurting. Thought I’d share.
To preface: So, we entertain the running joke about calling Bruno “Hernando” and “Jorge” when his hood is up/bucket is on – we’re playing along! It’s fun! This was a cute little joke by the screenwriters to show that this is a silly, theatrical, creative man who has definitely gotten a bit more eccentric in his decade of loneliness and solitude – UNDERSTANDABLE. Look at all of us after only 21 months, come on.
The deeper level to it that I also acknowledge is that he assumes aliases to get through the things that scare him, in an intentional way, like hey if it isn’t “Maldito Bruno” sneaking out to the kitchen, spackling the cracks, mixing plaster, etc maybe none of that bad luck will leak out, maybe no one will catch me, maybe it’ll be okay, maybe the fix will stick, maybe it will just go right this time. It’s Hernando, it’s Jorge, they’re brave and they fix things and they DON’T cause bad things to happen.
This is a headspace we see from him with his vision ritual and superstitious tics as well, and it is is a VERY common set of internal rules to be working from when you have OCD. (“If I can do it perfectly, nothing will go wrong” – I go into that in a lot more detail in my post about the mechanics of his visions, which I’m STILL working on bc it’s turning into a gd essay)
BUT.
Are we forgetting that Bruno has grown up USED to being one of three? The triplets are a unit – they each have their strengths and weaknesses, they protect each other, they assume different roles to get through difficult times. Consciously or not, would he not need those roles to be filled in their absence?
We have Pepa – the weather-wielder, bold and brave and terrifyingly tempestuous, always ready to stand in front, be the loudest, take the initiative, defend her family – undaunted in the face of any conflict that might make her gentler siblings shrink.
So we have Hernando, who patches the cracks and is afraid of NOTHING.
We have Julieta – the one who heals wounds with her cooking, warm and kind and calm, steady and supportive and observant and tactile – the glue that keeps the three of them together when her more anxious siblings feel ready to shatter.
So we have Jorge, who makes the spackle meant to heal the cracks in the casita and keep everything from falling apart.
He needs his sisters. So, in their absence, he constructs characters that can take up the mantle of protector, of healer, while he tries to maintain the distance he thinks is necessary to keep his family safe.
It’s just him, of course, fixing things from behind the scenes to try and prevent a future only he has witnessed. And he knows this.
What he doesn’t realize, naturally, is that his sisters need him, too. His foresight, his careful attention to detail, his knack for stories, his unerring kindness and humility, his quiet words of support. They are stronger together, always, and they’ve all been scattered and hurting for so long.
Thank you for this extra level of ANGST GOT DAMMIT
