This author is probably overthinking things, but I myself have been known to overthink musicals, so this is worth blogging. It turns out that Elsa is wrong — unleashing her powers in this particular manner brings disaster on the people she was trying to spare (though of course she also wants to flee their judgment, so her flight is not solely altruistic).

I love thrilling to Elsa’s race up the ice bridge with my daughter, in large part because I love to imagine her feeling that way one day herself: in control of her own ever-growing powers, able to create vast structures she never imagined, at “one with the wind and sky.” But every time that last verse rolls around—the shimmy into the ice dress, the sassy flip of the braid over the shoulder—I hope that when she grows up she remembers the magic, not the makeover. —“Let It Go,” Idina Menzel’s Frozen ballad: It sends the wrong message..