MAN, can you imagine how subversive it would've been if Mal and Ben genuinely hadn't ended up together?
That would be so cool, for a Disney Channel Original Movie.
Like, Bal breaks up for valid reasons in Descendants 2. They clearly love each other, but they have different goals and values. That "He gave green eyes to the stained glass depiction of you, so he sees who you truly are," can still happen as a kind of closure; Mal does need to be told that who she is is enough. But she still instinctively uses mind magic to smooth over hiccups in her romantic life and feels no particular way toward Ben's goal of freeing the Isle kids.
Them feeling a lot of love for each other but still deciding to remain friends would be great.
(And before you say, "Disney would never turn away from a ship with that much foundation laid," I will respond, "Actually they do that all the time. It's just usually with women and girls of color, like Uma, Audrey, and Lonnie.")
And Ben and Uma were genuinely having a moment on that ship. They are significantly more aligned on their goals than Ben and Mal, and they are a better influence on each other.
While it's not Mal's fault that she was more focused on her own stuff than the altruistic goal of freeing everyone else, it remains the case that we know that wouldn't be a problem for Uma, and the reason we know that is because she says and shows over and over again that she doesn't just want freedom for herself; freeing the others is a driving force for her in a way it never was for Mal. Where Ben's feelings for Mal regularly distracted him from his stated goals wrt the Isle kids, his feelings for Uma would do the opposite.
Mal's fine; she's just not a queen. She and everyone would be happier if it weren't being asked of her.
I'm speaking from the perspective of a writer: this would have been a cool thing to do, instead of the love spell at the end of D2.
