What Doesn't Make Sense About The Quest In Raya And The Last Dragon
The latest film from Walt Disney Animation Studios, Raya and the Last Dragon, is a big hit with critics and viewers alike. It boasts a 94 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and an 85 percent audience score, with many applauding the film's gorgeous animation style, star-studded cast, and representation of Southeast Asian cultures.
In less than two hours, Raya and the Last Dragon creates a complex and thrilling fantasy world — one that feels mythical, magical, and dangerous all at once. For the majority of the film, the fictional land of Kumandra is divided by conflict among its tribes, and the titular heroine, voiced by Kelly Marie Tran of Star Wars fame, must unite them, find the last dragon in existence, and defeat some evil monsters in order to save humanity.
But there's one thing about Raya and the Last Dragon's central quest that doesn't quite make sense when you think about it.
Raya and the Last Dragon's biggest unanswered question
In Raya and the Last Dragon, Kelly Marie Tran's Raya sets out to find the fabled last dragon of Kumandra in the hopes that it can help her retrieve all the missing pieces of a magical orb that protects the people of the land from evil spirits. Raya (spoiler alert) eventually finds the last dragon, Sisu, and the film follows their journey to reassemble the broken orb and, hopefully, unify the land's warring tribes along the way.
Raya's challenge is quite compelling, but the film never fully explains why no one else ever undertook the quest and looked for Sisu before she did. If Sisu's existence is widely known, then why wouldn't others have sought her out over the years? To its credit, Raya and the Last Dragon does do a good job of showing why Raya herself was the right person to find Sisu and save Kumandra. However, when it comes to explaining why she was the first person to find the dragon, the film, unfortunately, falls a little short.