Why Did Elsa Get Away With It?

One of the primary messages of Frozen is the importance of love between sisters. Love is (spoiler) what breaks both the curse of endless winter and cures Anna’s frozen heart. It also makes us all feel warm and fuzzy inside. Almost fuzzy enough to forget the numerous times that Elsa has either directly or indirectly tried to kill her sister. The first is mere minutes into the movie when young Elsa slips and falls and ends up launching an icicle at Anna’s head. Later on, Anna won’t stop hounding Elsa to return to Arendelle and ends up receiving an ice blast in the heart for her troubles. Both of these are considered accidents and therefore semi-excusable. Elsa is simply not able to control her powers. We get it. We feel for Elsa….we understand being told to ‘conceal don’t feel’ and then removed from contact with the outside world was not the best course of action her parents could have taken. We are all Team Elsa. And then she creates the snow monster…

Elsa creates a terrifying, demonic beast not on accident or even to protect herself, but to simply hasten her sister’s departure from the ice castle. Wasn’t that a little overkill? Couldn’t she have just created some super long ice slide home or something? Did she really need to forge something so malevolent and terrible that would not only chase them out but ultimately try to kill them? As much as I would like to, I just don’t think we can chalk this up to Elsa’s fear or lack of control. We’ve all seen that she can manipulate her powers pretty well even before she figures out the whole love thing. Don’t you remember her perfectly sculpted ice stairs, ice dress and the intricately designed ice castle?

Then at the climax of the movie, when Anna sacrifices her life for her sister, it would only make sense that Elsa would apologize for the multiple murder attempts. But, no! She doesn’t even mention it! She gets off scot-free by simply removing the winter that she originally caused and then makes an ice skating rink. So then why is Hans the villain? He only tried to kill Anna once…maybe one of the things that Elsa shouldn’t have let go of was taking some responsibility for her actions.