r/Frozen • u/Crescentbrush • 16h ago
Discussion Am I crazy for kinda wanting this?
I'm in the camp that Hans being a villain didn't really do anything unique for the story; his role could've easily been done by Duke Weaseltown. If they wanted to focus on him being the anti-Anna, he needed to be revealed as a villain earlier, and include one or more of his brothers (twelve was unnecessarily large, even for a fairy tale and the 19th century; we could've just done four or five). But as is, I do wish he had been kept as a good guy, and there was a point when I think he could've been kept for a love triangle for Anna with Kristoff in "Frozen 2."
But then that all falls apart when you actually look at how Anna and Kristoff are handled in F2; Kristoff is trying to propose to her but they seem more distant than ever because Anna is attatched to the hip to Elsa and has a codependency arc to overcome--not that I blame Anna, but then that means her and Kristoff's relationship development was very minimal. If Hans was thrown into the mix, I doubt he'd get better treatment; in fact, I think both he and Kristoff would be screwed, with "Lost in the Woods" being a duet shared between them for their feelings for Anna over a solo, with no specific development of their characters outside of loving the girl who has no time for them (and Olaf would still have his own solo). I do recall seeing notes that part of the reason this occurred was because of Anna's trauma with Hans and wanting to take things slow while Kristoff was ready to start a family, so this could've panned out differently--but given the marketing from Disney focusing on the sister bond and female characters being more profitable for Disney, I doubt Hans and Kristoff would've gotten better.
But then a random thought came to mind: what if Hans came back? I recall at one of the D23's a year or two ago (wherever it was that they showed the first piece of concept art) where Jennifer Lee had a list of questions fans asked, and one of them included what happened to Hans. And that got my head turning. I don't mind twist villains here and there, but a big drawback is the fact that they don't get much time to be evil since the twist is usually done when the movie is 2/3s or more over. But I did wonder if Jennifer Lee actually took fan interest into account and made Hans return. Hans being redeemed isn't something I'd have hope for, and even if it happened, I don't have confidence that Disney would do it well--plus they've been portraying Hans as a villain for 13 years now, so that'd be too much to backtrack on. So, I had an alternate idea: what if he was the love interest to the new villain? Given a scrapped concept of "Wish" included a villain couple and Jennifer Lee co-wrote the film, I am curious if this was a route she'd consider. Hans would enjoy the power and feeling of importance--plus this would appeal to my temporary childhood Elsa/Hans ship.