With The Little Mermaid now available to watch in theaters across the world, we’ve finally had one pressing question about this underwater story answered; how Ursula came to be banished from the mermaid kingdom, and why she holds so much hate for King Triton.
The 1989 animated Disney film introduced us to the villainous (and fabulous) character of Ursula (voiced by Pat Carroll). She is a sea witch with magical abilities which she uses to make contracts with the “poor unfortunate souls” that come flocking to her cauldron. The contracts, however, usually do not favor the clients, and she takes their souls as payment when they cannot fulfill their payment. The one soul we gather she wants the most of all is that of Triton, as she uses Ariel as a pawn simply to get to her father.
We never really got to know why Ursula lives alone, other than her pet eel companions, away from the lively and joyous kingdom ruled by Triton, someone she hates so much. The movie didn’t go into it, not bothering to give her any backstory and simply allowing the audience to know that she is simply the bad guy. That being said, there a storyline for her that was eventually dropped from, one that gave us a little more insight into her background. This story has since been utilized for the Broadway musical back in 2007, and has once again surfaced in the live-action do-over.
The story goes that Ursula and Triton are actually siblings, and when their father died they were given joint rulership over the sea. They also received two magical items; Triton his trident, and Ursula a magic Nautilus shell. Over time, though, Ursula’s greed for power grew, and she started to meddle in dark magic, aiming to overthrow Triton so she alone could be the sole ruler of the sea. This is expressed throughout the play and also in the song she sings to Flotsam and Jetsam “I Want the Good Times Back.”
“When daddy dear was floating on his deathbed
He divvied up the kingdom into two
I got his magic shell
And half the sea as well
His trident went to –
You know who his trident went to -don’t you, babies!”
When the Broadway adaptation was closed in 2009, director Glenn Casale worked on a reimagined version for the 2012 Dutch production. Here, instead of Triton and Ursula being only siblings, they were the seventh and eighth of eight siblings, and Ursula, in her quest for power, had killed all the others, only sparing Triton because she saw him as no threat, although he does eventually overthrow her and banishes her.
There was even a book written by author Serena Valentino, who writes stories that look deeper into Disney’s big bads with her Villains series, which also looks at Ursula’s background. In this story, titled Poor Unfortunate Soul, Ursula growing up opts for her octopus tentacles over the fishtails the other merpeople have, and for this Triton banishes her. She leaves the ocean and is adopted by a human father, and when he dies she returns to the sea to find other witches she can work with the enact her revenge on Triton.
The 2023 movie also follows this familial trend and has set up the sibling storyline between Ursula and Triton, adding the dropped storyline from the 1989 animation. It makes sense given that the live-action effort is over two hours long compared to the 83 minutes of its predecessor. Here Disney has a chance to really flesh out the story of Ursula, allowing audiences to get to know the villain just a little bit better and understand why she is in the situation we find her in.
The role is now taken over by comedian and actor Melissa McCarthy, who told People that getting the play the character “seemed like a fever dream.” Many were a little disappointed that the character was not going to be played by a drag queen, given that the character voiced by Carroll was initially inspired by the drag queen Divine, but McCarthy has approached the character with a lot of care.
Well, now we have more of an understanding as to why Ursula has been banished, we can certainly connect more with her hatred for Triton and her scheming ways, even if she is still a total baddie.