Favorite Characters: Bruno Madrigal (Encanto)

*Spoilers.*

Encanto is pretty much bursting at the seams with characters to love. Even the Madrigals with limited screentime get their moments in the sun, and even those who begin more at odds with Mirabel are revealed to have greater depth and shading. But my favorite of them all is Tio Bruno, the lost Madrigal.

Apart from a few wordless shots in the opening flashbacks, our introduction – or rather, non-introduction – to Bruno, comes in the film’s first song. “The Family Madrigal” features Mirabel running down a list of everyone in the family and their amazing gifts for some village kids, and when she gets to her tio, she’s hit with a wall of townsfolk abruptly singing, “We don’t talk about Bruno!” All she tells the kids is, “They say he saw the future. / One day, he disappeared.”

And that’s the basic perception of Bruno. He’s the dirty secret of the family, the one they refuse to acknowledge but whose absence hangs over Casita like a specter. Like many a misjudged prophet, he was blamed for the bad occurrences he saw in his visions—Tia Pepa holds a grudge against him for ruining her wedding, and every adult in the village has a story about the doom and gloom he foretold for them. He left without warning ten years ago, and Abuela still feels the hurt and anger over him “abandoning” the family. For the younger Madrigals, who either weren’t born yet when he left or were too young to have many memories of him, he’s become something of a boogieman—Camilo tells Mirabel that their tio “sees your dreams” and “feasts on your screams.” The only images we see of him are the severe-looking portrait on his door, a few ominous glimpses in flashbacks, and Camilo’s ghoulish shapeshifting. Everything the family tells us (even as they repeatedly insist they can’t talk about it) paints the picture of a shady character.

So of course, that perception couldn’t be further from the truth. When Mirabel sees Casita beginning to crack and fears that the magic is dying, she seeks out Bruno for help interpreting the last vision he saw before he left. She chases a shadowy figure through dark passages within the walls of the house, but when she slips and is about to fall down a chasm (Casita has a lot of TARDIS-like qualities, just go with it,) the shadowy figure doubles back to catch her from falling. It’s Bruno, looking at her with enormous eyes and a tentative expression. “You’re very sweaty,” is the first thing her tio says to her in ten years.

During her time in the walls, Mirabel pieces together the real story of Bruno’s disappearance. When Mirabel turned five and didn’t receive a gift, Abuela begged him to have a vision, and the result was worrying but ambiguous. Knowing the bad reputation his prophecies had and fearing everyone would assume the worst, Bruno left rather than reveal his vision, not wanting Mirabel to be held to the same judgments that he was.

But although he left, he didn’t leave. “My gift wasn’t helping the family,” he explains shyly, fumblingly, “but I love my family.” So he stayed close but hidden, making a little hovel for himself within Casita’s walls with only rats for company. Over the years, he patched cracks as they appeared and watched his family from the shadows, pretending he was still with them. The sight of the sad little plate he scratched onto the wooden board that serves as his table, matching all the personalized plates around the family table, broke me a little.

Bruno is an odd, sensitive man who was feared and ostracized for his gift, who cared so much for his niece that he lived in the walls for ten years in an attempt to protect her, who couldn’t bring himself to leave entirely because he still loved the people who treated him like a pariah. Despite all he’s been through, he remains so gentle and kind. He’s timid and skittish, full of nervous superstitious tics and the kind of social awkwardness that comes from severe isolation, but as fearful as he is, he can’t bring himself to let Mirabel go it alone when she comes to him for help. At her pestering, he has another vision, and when things go very wrong before they begin to go right, he charges in to try and shield Mirabel from Abuela.

Even though he’s a supporting character who I don’t think makes his real appearance until halfway through the movie, I love that Bruno is such a layered character. He’s tragic and sad, because who wouldn’t be with a backstory like that, and seeing his lonely little plate is a major tearjerker moment. But he’s also a lovable weirdo, having amused himself over the years by creating alternate personas and staging “rat theater” in his hovel. He’s nervous but still brave, scorned but still loving, with lonely eyes but a kind smile. In short, I love everything about him and he deserves the biggest of hugs from everyone he comes across.