Frozen‘s new prequel story creates a big plot hole in the movie sequel, specifically to do with Olaf the snowman and one of the elemental spirits. The story expansion, which comes in the form of a new book released by Disney exploring the romance of Anna and Elsa’s parents Iduna and Agnarr before the events of the Frozen movies.
The Frozen universe has so far been expanded by a number of shorts, including the most recent addition, Disney+’s midquel short Once Upon A Snowman, and a number of books. Adding story details and clarifying others like why exactly Olaf loves summer, the shorts were more than a shameless cash-in on the brand. Such was the huge success of the first movie – and the major merchandising draw for Disney – that expansions were somewhat inevitable, even if Frozen 3‘s probability will likely be discerned more by story opportunity rather than marketing power. The latter is confirmed, but like Frozen 2, more movies will depend on the right story, but that’s where the prequels and midquel stories in book and short form can give fans more.
The latest addition to the Frozen canon is Frozen 2: Dangerous Secrets: The Story of Iduna and Agnarr, which jumps back in time to when Anna and Elsa’s parents were teenagers in the wake of Iduna saving her future husband. The story recounts how they became friends as Iduna attempts to keep her identity secret and Agnarr waits to take his place as the king of Arendelle, before they eventually fall in love. While the story adds to the canon lore of Frozen, in contrast to Once Upon A Snowman solving a plothole from the original movie Dangerous Secrets starts with a plot-hole from Frozen 2. The book establishes that Iduna had a friendship with the air elemental spirit, Gale, and refers to her by the name viewers were first introduced to in Frozen 2, but therein lies the problem, because it was Olaf who named Gale.
In Frozen 2, Gale was named on the spot by Olaf after the element’s mischief led to his “When I Am Older” musical number. It fits with Olaf’s character that he would use a pun based on the spirit being windy, too. That means that an existing backstory with the same name is either a huge coincidence or a plothole: fundamentally, how could Olaf have possibly known? The answer is that he could not, unless the Frozen story left out an explanation for Olaf remembering things he could never have encountered.
In Frozen 2, Olaf did establish the idea that water has memory, leading to the revelation of Iduna saving Agnarr in the forest and Anna and Elsa discovering the truth of their mother’s heritage and the link to how Elsa got her magical powers. That could have been used to explain how he knows Gale’s name, but the reality is that the naming moment in the sequel is a throw-away gag and a cute moment designed as nothing else. The fact that Dangerous Secrets establishes that the elemental spirit was already called that simply makes no sense. It’s magic, but Frozen still needs to stick with narrative logic all the same.
