Something has been bothering me deeply about Mufasa.

After watching the movie again, I feel the need to address the elephant in the room. Taka didn’t save Mufasa. At all. In the slightest.

Eshe saves Mufasa and Taka. Had she not intervened, they’d have both been crocodile food. You can see in the scene Taka is seconds away from either letting go of Mufasa (not on purpose) or falling in himself.

Analysing the meanings of the names, Taka and Eshe gives some stunning insight into this. Of course Taka is a long-time head canon name for Scar. It’s in the book. But people don’t understand that in Swahili it means “want” or “desire”, but it’s often confused by western audiences for takataka a word meaning “rubbish” or “waste”. Eshe means on the other hand, “life”.

Eshe was the one who saved Mufasa’s life, many times. She took him in, raised him, trained him to hunt, and advised him to leave with her son when the Pride was in danger. For all intents and purposes Mufasa’s debt lies with her, not with Taka. However, the key difference in character between Taka and Eshe is that Eshe never holds such entitled demands or expectations towards Mufasa as Taka does.

So Taka spends the entire movie, as his name suggests, coveting. He spends the first half coveting ownership over his kingdom, looking down upon others and honestly sees Mufasa being his brother as more of a tool than a genuine bond in my eyes. Analysing the lyrics of I Always Wanted a Brother shows this to some extent. The second half he spends coveting Sarabi, and mulling over an imagined debt he believes Mufasa has lived his life in. Most of the audience is lead to believe this too, but we actually see the events take place and that twisted idea that he saved Mufasa is NOT what occurs. He turns Mufasa in at the drop of a hat for encroaching upon what he sees as inherently his. Sarabi. The only female lion they meet, anyone’s game realistically and 100% up to her to choose who she wants from the only two males she has as options.

Taka twists the entire thing into a genuine, unwavering belief that Mufasa should live his life under debt. He resents Mufasa not because of just Sarabi, but because he was incapable of actually feeling happy for his so called brother and acknowledging that the entire dynamic of their pride has changed, and by the time the Sarabi thing happens he genuinely feels betrayed by Mufasa. He didn’t want a brother he wanted a minion at his side and at his bequest.

Maybe I’m just going a bit overboard with this but I genuinely feel as though this is either a major plot hole or a brilliant part of the entire story that is massively overlooked for some “he took my gf” story by the general wider audience.