Mufasa's Death

I’ve been rediscovering the original Lion King movie these past days.

Every now and then I come back to it, either because one of its songs pops up (like Hakuna Matata), someone makes a reference to a character or scene, or some random situation reminds me of a memorable part of the movie.

This time, I started where I normally start, Scar’s song. The version I like the most is the Portuguese one (from Portugal), not only because it was the version I experienced as a kid, but it also sounds more guttural, aggressive and heartfelt than the original. It’s a fun song to play on the guitar. That is where I normally start and stop, but not this time.

This time my curiosity piqued on the details and deep meanings in it, and around it. Starting with the charming, sly conniving, snake-like, authoritarian Scar, and his clique of self-serving hyenas. His thirst for power, which made him kill his own brother and poison his family. Watching Scar’s scenes as an adult now brings a tsunami of information and meaning. It’s not just about captivating animations and catchy tunes.

I was intrigued. What else was waiting for me to uncover?

At the time, I remember playing my friend’s Lion King Mega Drive (Genesis) game, which was a tough cookie to crack, but also an intriguing one. The animations were beautiful, and the gameplay varied, but what stuck to me the most were the two phases of the game. First, when Simba is a cub, and then a grown up Lion. That transition was fascinating, yet uneasy for me to re-experience. Why?

I went on to see a few YouTube videos of Simba coming of age, and arrived at the one where he looks at the water and sees his father’s reflection in it. His father lived on, inside him. Physically his father was gone, but as long as Simba remembers him, he lives on. When someone close leaves our world, a part of them stays embedded within us. I get that now.

At this time, I paused. I didn’t know if I wanted to explore these themes of the movie even deeper. Would I be willing to explore the scene of the movie?

When I first saw the movie as a little kid, the scene that hit me hardest for me was Mufasa’s death. It’s a turning point in the movie. In my head, everything before it was happy and joyful. Everything after was either dark or odd: the teenage phase with Timon and Pumba, the courting of Nala, the comeback, the fight for the throne, were all things that I didn’t want to come back to. Yes, even all the scenes with Timon and Pumba.

Ever since I watched that scene for the first time, I tended to avoid that pivotal scene. This time I allowed myself to give it a look, since I discovered through a YouTube video that there was a Mufasa leit-motif in the scenes where he was a focal point. I had never realised that before.

I braced myself, and first saw the stampede scene. Mufasa not thinking twice about saving his son at all costs, Scar’s decisiveness in disposing his brother, and Simba’s shock and blame of seeing the whole catastrophe unfold before his eyes. The scene hit different.

Now I had a decision to make. Would I want to see the scene where Simba tries to wake up his father? Reluctantly, I did.

Simba is stumbling through the haze looking for his father. He hears a roaring noise, which presents a glimmer of hope that he’s alive, but it was just a loose wildebeest. Eventually, the broken tree where he stood appears, and his father lies below it.

Simba heads toward Mufasa, tells him that they need to go, and pushes him. The transition from delusion, to despair, to realisation and acceptance in those short seconds is a work of art, of humanity. I understood fully all of those, felt them deeply, and cried.

I’m not an easy crier. I can take a lot of pain and digest it, but if very specific emotions are triggered just right, I break down like a castle of cards.

This movie is a true masterpiece. A much needed gem, when currently so much of what surrounds us is sloppy, fast, shallow, click-batty content, that only touches obvious gameable emotions of our species.

With so much of our daily lives becoming commoditised, insightful pieces like this are becoming of a higher value to all of us.

Posted by Pedro Lopes

Oct 24th, 2026

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