What unites Eugene and Rapunzel, what forms the basis of their connection, is not just their lonely, isolated, unloved childhoods but the mechanisms they each used and still use to try to fill the voids in their lives. And those mechanisms boil down to- keeping busy, whatever the cost. Rapunzel’s opening song is literally a montage of her desperate attempts to fill an otherwise empty day (and empty life) and Eugene steals for the riches, sure, but mostly for the adventure, the thrill, the chase. The motion and color of it and the ways in which it is the opposite of boredom, the opposite of emptiness.
They are both resourceful and determined, used to doing the best they can with what they have, and as a result they encounter each other and decide to team up. Practicality, not romance, is what drives them together and what keeps them together for much of the movie.
Their methods of filling voids with whatever scheme they can concoct, the skills they’ve both gained from their past experiences, become the means they use to achieve their shared goal: get Rapunzel to the city to watch the floating lights and return her safely home. The scrapes and (mis)adventures they get into on their way are not just filler or fluff; they are opportunities to highlight the natural teamwork they have, the ways in which they complement and complete each other and so help each other: Rapunzel solves the run-in with the group of thugs/misfits with vulnerability and openness; together, they escape from the guards and avoid drowning.
Already this is an improvement on their previous work, their previous “business”. It has more warmth, it has more success, it has more color. But that’s not all. Alongside their adventures, they start to talk to each other. Confide in each other. Nothing huge or dramatic. When he tells her his name he follows it with the dryly delivered “someone might as well know”. And when he asks about the situation at home, his voice is gentle and kind but not full of depth of feeling just yet. But it’s real, honest connection about their pasts and so contains within it the articulation of their emptiness. It’s the realest relationship either of them have ever had. It’s far realer than anything their past endeavors have ever brought them.
When they reach the lights, Rapunzel realizes this and it comes out in her words expressing her fears and worries about the lights. Understandably, she’s scared finally seeing the lights won’t be enough. But then, and here’s the beautiful thing, she’s scared that it will be. “And what if it is,” she says, tears in her eyes and voice. “What then?” This is the moment in which Rapunzel recognizes that she really has never filled the void in her life, the place where real love and human connection should be, and that the lights won’t do it either. Chasing the lights was her noblest effort yet, a beautiful and real and a valid dream, but still not enough. because the lights are not a person and the lights can’t love her back.
Eugene’s answer to this is hopeful- there’s always another dream to chase. But he still doesn’t really have an answer for her. He doesn’t really understand.
Until they see the lights.
Until they see the lights together.
Their golden glow and beauty is enchanting, it’s everything she dreamed it would be. And then, it’s more.
And it’s more because when she turns around, right at the end of the first verse, she sees him. Holding her dream in her hands, watching her watch it, experiencing it with her.
She hands him the satchel and he knows he knows too.
He knows that there is no new dream, no better dream, than her, than a real life of love with the person in front of him.
After the lights happens everything I said in the original post. They’re torn apart and beautifully, magically, unexpectedly Mother Gothel’s ploy to sow discord between them doesn’t work. Rapunzel sees through Mother Gothel’s lie to see the truth of everything, including his reasons for leaving, and when he shows up there is no reproach or misunderstanding to clear away. Like I said in my original post, they understand each other now.
And like I said in the post above, Rapunzel’s bargaining for his life and Eugene’s cutting off of her hair are the means they use to set the other free. And ultimately Eugene wins. He dies and his death, the first time she truly experiences loss, opens her up to a fuller understanding of and use of her magic and her healing. He is restored to her and they live (truly) happily ever after.
But my point with all of this is, the heart of the story and its own specific magic, is that their skills and habits and means- whatever the word we want to use is- garnered by each of their efforts to fill their life with meaning finally fulfilled their true purpose, finally made them happy. Because they stopped being the end goal of their lives and became the means to their true purpose- the life and love they have with each other.
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