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Spoiler Warning: Extensive spoilers for the 2002 and 2025 versions of Lilo & Stitch

There are few popular contemporary films that resonate more deeply with the Latter-day Saint ethic of family than Disney’s 2002 Lilo & Stitch. Its simple but stirring refrain—“Ohana means family, and family means no one gets left behind”—has made it a modern parable of sacrifice and loyalty. But the 2025 remake, which premiered this weekend as the number-one film in the country, rewrites that ending. And in doing so, it reflects both how our culture has changed in twenty-three years and suggests some ways we may be able to effectively adapt.

While the remake muddles the original’s message about familial sacrifice, it largely manages to sidestep those questions and introduces in its stead a vision of interdependent community care that is genuinely aspirational. While the film’s heart may not be in the right place, the actual solution it models points to the kind of supportive communities we can aspire to.

A New Ending and a New Ethic

The remake follows the original’s first two acts faithfully. As before, we find Lilo living with her older sister Nani after the death of their parents. Nani, just nineteen, struggles to keep custody of Lilo while managing job interviews and the chaotic new “dog” named Stitch, who turns out to be a genetically engineered alien fugitive. Through chaos and conflict, all three characters slowly bond into a makeshift family, climaxing in Stitch’s famous line, “This is my family. It’s little and broken, but still good.”

But the conflict undergirding this is Nani’s desire to ensure that social services don’t take custody of Lilo so they can stay together. The chaos of the film raises the stakes because it distracts from Nani’s attempts to secure a better-paying job.

The original concludes by allowing Nani to succeed in this attempt. The film’s victory still includes and celebrates Nani making a considerable sacrifice for her family. The film concludes with a wildly contrived, but emotionally satisfying loophole—the intergalactic bounty hunters can’t take Lilo, because they are honoring the rules of the local animal shelter paperwork proclaiming Lilo as Stitch’s owner. And their family life is made stable with the addition of two of Stitch’s alien friends moving in.

While the logic of the ending is better the less you think about it, the emotions of the ending resonate because in the end, Nani still needs to sacrifice for her little sister, but that sacrifice pays off in familial happiness. 

The remake, however, opts for a more narratively tidy but emotionally fraught conclusion. This time, the bounty hunters attempt to erase Stitch’s newfound empathy. Lilo also gets kidnapped while trying to rescue him. Nani heroically arrives to rescue them both. But after Nani’s rescue, she doesn’t decide to return to their small, messy family unit; rather, she decides to leave for college to study marine biology. This means Lilo must go into foster care. Fortunately, their neighbor Tūtū is able to step in to care for Lilo.

Sacrifice to Self-Actualization

While this shift is certainly an effort to clean up the original’s messy plot machinations, it is more than that. It tells us something about how our culture has shifted and the kinds of endings that audiences are willing to accept as happy and satisfying.

In the original, Nani’s character is defined by sacrifice. She sets aside her own ambitions to hold her family together. In the remake, she’s encouraged to pursue her dreams first. No one suggests she set aside her family relationships, but choices must be made. The new screenplay makes a choice that they assume audiences will find more resonant. It’s a message consistent with a culture that has come to prioritize individual fulfillment above all else.

There are concerns worth noting in this shift. Family responsibilities have been framed as obstacles and family relationships as supplements to career ambitions and self-actualization rather than a purpose unto themselves. To be clear, the remake softens this with sci-fi conveniences—a portal between Nani and Lilo for virtual visits—but it still leaves us with a regrettable takeaway: in a happy ending, family doesn’t cost anything.

Of course, Lilo & Stitch isn’t the first to take this approach to family. It was trumpeted in Eat, Pray, Love. Disney had previously created a similar narrative in Frozen. 

But it’s this message, and our passive acceptance of it, that produces so many of the ills endemic to our age. Elevating autonomy above relationship produces isolation, not freedom. Our culture today is lonelier, more anxious, and sadder than ever before. These outcomes are the predictable results of the underlying philosophy that Lilo & Stitch’s changed ending reflects.

And as research consistently shows, children removed from their families—even well-meaning ones—fare worse in foster care. 

The film’s ending, for all its narrative cleanliness, undermines the truth that strong families are built through our love and sacrifice, not someone else’s.

A Hopeful Turn

And yet, there’s something to appreciate in the remake’s solution—namely, the introduction of Tūtū, a warm and willing grandmotherly neighbor who volunteers to foster Lilo while Nani studies. In contrast to the original, where the deus ex machina comes from aliens, here the saving grace is an extraordinary, but terrestrial, member of the community.

This isn’t just a plot convenience—it’s a vision of what Daniel Burns from the University of Dallas has called “forged families.” David Brooks has argued that embedding our families within these community support systems provides the best outcomes for everyone involved. These forged families are support systems built from blood ties and then supported by neighbors, friends, mentors, and faith communities. 

By introducing Tūtū, the film ensures that Lilo is still surrounded by love. So even though the film stops short of celebrating sacrifice, it does offer a quietly powerful image: a community member stepping in to allow the best long-term outcome. Let’s be honest: in the long term, Lilo would be better off if her sister had a college degree. 

Unfortunately, while that aspirational image is powerful, in our own culture, that sort of help is increasingly rare. As sociologist Robert Putnam has documented, American social ties have frayed, and neighborly involvement is at a historic low. But the idea that someone like Tūtū could exist—that we could build communities where older adults care for the young and vulnerable—points toward a richer vision of family and society.

But the new happy ending is only possible because Tūtū is not off pursuing her own individualistic dreams. She has the time, energy, and care to support a vulnerable child. However, she is not the main character, and perhaps this sends the message that there is someone else who will sacrifice for her.

While the remake’s ethic may not be rooted in the kind of familial self-giving that defined the original, it uses its sci-fi conventions to sidestep the question altogether. In its place is a different version also worth emulating. Not every family can hold together without help. But the kind of help we should dream of isn’t more institutionalization—it’s more neighbors, mentors, and Tūtūs.

The new Lilo & Stitch reflects the erosion of family-first values. But it also gestures, perhaps unwittingly, toward the antidote: a community-oriented model where interdependence, not independence, is the ultimate good. It isn’t the ending we might have wanted. And it no longer teaches the sacrifice for families that is still core to making a broad community-oriented model work. But it may be the kind of positive message we need at the moment. 

The post Disney’s Family Values: When Ohana Becomes Optional appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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