Review: Elena of Avalor “Royal Retreat”

Do not retreat from this week’s episode.

Spoilers Below

Elena has been invited to attend a royal retreat hosted by King Hector. While she is trying to impress the other royals, Isabel and the grandparents go to vacation on a nearby island. The family takes their ship to the island while Elena has Skylar (for some reason he’s the only jacquin that came along) fly her to the retreat.

Isabel spends the entire episode learning about maposas, which are kinda like dolphins. She learns about their egg laying habits and how the babies get violent when separated from their mothers. I’m glad the show has a character that is so interested in learning new things and no one makes fun of her for it. She is allowed to read books and explore things and just find out how the world works.

Meanwhile, Elena has a difficult situation to deal with. King Hector is a bully. In exchange for glamorous presents, King Hector demands that the other kings give in to his whims. This includes anything from simply laughing at his jokes to helping him capture a baby maposa for his aquarium. Since Elena is the new kid on the block, she ends up being the butt of most of his jokes. Eventually, when Elena finds out that the baby maposa just needs to be reunited with the mother, she gives up trying to conform to Hector’s expectations. She takes off on Skylar to find the mother and save the baby.

Unfortunately, the mother is trapped in some tree roots. Skylar is able to free her but ends up injured in the process. With Skylar hurt and seeing Hector capture the baby, Elena is about to give up. But King Joaquin finally came to his senses and arrives in a rowboat to help Elena. Together, they board Hector’s supposedly indestructible Sea Blaster ship. They manage to save the baby before the mother sinks the Sea Blaster. The other kings, seeing Elena stand up to Hector, leave as well. Elena ends up hosting her own royal retreat on her ship. And no one is bullied there.

In this series, Elena has to deal with a fair amount of terrible people. Sadly, most of them seem to be men. I’m not sure if King Hector is just an awful person to everyone or if he’s especially awful toward Elena because she’s female. Joaquin says he treated the others like that when they were new but we don’t actually get to see that. Either way, Hector is the worst. Thankfully, Elena stands up to him when she knows he is doing something wrong. She also manages to low key shame the others for following along instead of being their own people. And this is what little girls need to see. (Well, OK, maybe not the shaming part but you do what you gotta.) They need to see female characters standing up for themselves and doing what they know is right. It doesn’t matter if she’s bullied because she’s new or because she’s female. The important part is she fought back with her words and actions and not with her fists. Good for you, Elena.