Why people are so mad about that Lilo & Stitch ending

WARNING: This story contains significant spoilers for both the original Lilo & Stitch and its remake.

When it comes to dollars and cents, Disney's Lilo &Stitch live-action remake hasn't hit any speed-bumps. In fact, it's more like the little blue guy has hit the NOS.

But if you pay much attention to the Internet, things haven't been so rosy. Everywhere from X, to Instagram to TikTok, fans of the beloved Hawaii-set animated dramedy have had some pointed words about changes made to the story.

To be clear, that backlash isn't just from certain CBC reporters railing against the insipid evil of live-action adaptations. Instead, fans of the original are upset about both a dumbed-down story they say downplays important elements of Hawaiian culture, and a controversial ending that some believe acts as pro-colonial propaganda.

To understand the reaction, it's important to know the context. The original Lilo & Stitch was something of an accidental success: the 2002 animated feature about a little Hawaiian girl named Lilo who befriends an exiled alien named Stitch was an outlier, both as a 2D, hand-drawn film and for the culture it represented.

It was also beloved for both those reasons: its lush, beautiful art-style nearly revived traditional animation, while its subtly ironic depiction of bumbling, invading American tourists rang true enough to build up a huge fanbase.

The plot relied heavily on the concepts of alienation, home and family: Lilo was bullied by other children and relied on the concept of "ohana" — a communal sense of family — to find a sense of belonging with her elder sister, Nani, who cared for her after their parents died. Lilo also had a fascination with photographing tourists, a subtle dig at the islands' constant influx of them.

And the central theme of ohana is a grounding tenet of all the characters' interactions: in the 2002 original, Nani does everything in her power to keep custody of Lilo when an ex CIA agent-turned social worker threatens to split them apart.

In the end, Nani manages to retain custody of her sister, and all three — Stitch included — remain a family.

Part of the complaint, as critic Caroline Madden wrote for SlashFilm, is the removal of those messages; the 2025 remake "completely erases this cultural commentary," and instead "coasts purely on the aesthetics of beautiful beaches, hula dancing, and surfing."

That is largely apparent in its lack of engagement with or depiction of tourists, and the erasure of Lilo's habit of photographing them.

In the original, the pivotal scene in which Lilo states that their parents told them "Ohana means family, and family means no one gets left behind" causes Nani to reluctantly agree to keep Stitch. In the remake, Nani instead replies that this "isn't reality," and Lilo essentially needs to grow up and forget the concept.

To be fair, that's not where Nani and Lilo's story ends. But as culture writer and film critic Aparita Bhandari told CBC News, the subtly bitter and mature tone the original movie had about living in a perceived paradise that's been cannibalized by outsiders is all but absent in the remake.

"Hawaii is still the backdrop, but it's just a very different kind of a story," she said. "There is irony in there in a different way. But it's not quite that, you know, slightly pointed kind of critique that the original had."

But the change that has raised the most complaints comes right at the end.

In the 2025 version, instead of the family staying together, Nani relinquishes custody of Lilo to the state, which in turn grants guardianship to a neighbour and close friend. Nani proceeds to leave Hawaii to study marine biology in San Diego, with friendly CIA agent Cobra Bubbles (now no longer a social worker at all) staying behind to help care for Lilo and Stitch.

While Bhandari understands the criticism, she says the changes make sense considering how much money has been invested in the remake.

While the original was a scrappy sort of low-budget production with relatively few creators resulting in a more focused and passion-driven project, the remake is anything but.

It represents veritable bags of cash, as the original movie's bizarrely successful marketing campaign made Stitch into perhaps the most popular marketing tool Disney has on offer. Bhandari says the remake aims to reach an even wider audience to ensure profitability.

That's backed up by what Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman told the LA Times in a recent interview.

"To do the kind of box office that I think we're going to do, you need to get everybody," he said ahead of the film's premiere. "And I do believe we will."

With the remake's creators seeking that kind of wide appeal and the "phenomenal" amount of money at stake, Bhandari says they likely only had one thing in mind.

"Are you going to jeopardize a whole bunch of that industry? I don't think so," she said, noting that the studio instead likely wants to make something that's generally more palatable, wholly inoffensive and accessible enough to appeal to the widest of audiences.

And to do that, she says, they perhaps had to tone down certain elements. "Or even if you're not toning down, making it even more kind of basic."

But according to University of Chicago assistant professor Uahikea Maile, that simplified approach to the movie falls in line with a particularly harmful tradition in real life.

Following America's annexation of Hawaii, he says the early 20th century saw a proliferation of media depicting native Hawaiians as "passive, without agency and benevolent." Those narratives, he says, helped to both assimilate Hawaiian people and validate mainland American immigration to the islands.

The subsequent depictions of Hawaii's luaus, "hula girls" and tourist activities became so overwhelming and pervasive, wrote California State University's Megan Medeiros in a 2018 study, that they completely obscured the islands' actual people and culture.

"The continual misrepresentation of Hawaii, specifically through Western media, is the reason why visitors often believe their tourist experience is authentically Hawaiian," she wrote.

Maile says that in the new film, Nani's departure to the mainland — followed by the state taking over care of her sister — only serves to prop up other more insidious tropes.

That includes what he calls the "sort of normalized narrative" that Native Hawaiians often make the choice to leave the islands at the expense of taking care of their families and the place that they call home. It's also a narrative that he says reinforces the idea that "Hawaii is an emptying space for non-natives to secure their own second homes and vacation properties to profit from."

Still, Maile says the disappointing choices on display in the Lilo & Stitch remake are far from the most pressing issue, as discussions around positive or negative media representation tend to distract from and obscure real-life issues, such as how native Hawaiians are organizing against and resisting oppression.

"The truth of the matter is, is that there is much the world can learn from Hawaii that exists beyond the dignified corporate mainstream media representations that we see today," he said. "I encourage people to meet us there, not in Hawaii per se, but in the alternative representations."