Blue Ivy Carter might not appear in the first teaser for Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King, but she’s already stolen the show. It turns out that both Beyoncé and her daughter will appear in the film: Queen Bey will appropriately play the Lion King Mufasa’s wife, Queen Nala, reprising her role from 2019’s Lion King remake; and Blue Ivy will play Kiara—Simba’s heir. Neither of these characters makes a major appearance in the film’s first teaser, which Disney released Monday, but X users are already singing their excitement from the rooftops.
Mufasa could help Blue Ivy break another record in show business. She already became the youngest woman to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2019, when she sang on Beyoncé’s “Brown Skin Girl” for the Lion King soundtrack at age seven. (Six-year-old Rumi Carter recently broke that record with a feature on the Cowboy Carter track “Protector.”) With this appearance as Kiara, Blue Ivy will technically become the youngest-ever Disney princess—that is, assuming lions count. Either way, folks are excited.
Like most teasers, this roughly minute-long trailer doesn’t tell us much. Naturally, we get the usual Lion King opening music, and then Rafiki lets us know what we’re here for: “A lion was born without a drop of nobility in his blood, a lion who would change our lives forever.” (In case we didn’t know from the title, he also confirms that lion would be Mufasa, played by Aaron Pierre.) There are ice caves for some reason, there’s a lion cub running on the backs of hippos, and there’s a grown lion fleeing from an alligator’s gaping maw. The only thing conspicuously missing here would be a taste of the music; is this movie not a musical? I guess we’ll have to wait to hear some of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s tunes.
For those wondering how Blue Ivy factors in here, the teaser’s description helpfully lets us know that Rafiki is relaying this story to her character, Kiara. “Told in flashbacks, the story introduces Mufasa as an orphaned cub, lost and alone until he meets a sympathetic lion named Taka (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), the heir to a royal bloodline.” From there, Mufasa heads out on “an expansive journey of an extraordinary group of misfits searching for their destiny—their bonds will be tested as they work together to evade a threatening and deadly foe.”
All of this leaves me with just one question: Are we going to see Scar at all in this movie? And more importantly, if Kiara is showing up, do we also get to meet Scar’s son, Kovu? Inquiring Lion King II: Simba’s Pride obsessives want demand to know!
