Does Uma have water manipulation powers in the movies or book? Or is that a fanon thing?
Short answer: …yes?
Long answer: Uma’s shown as having a bunch of different powers across the movies, uts, and novels, but the only moments I can think of as actually showing her being able to manipulate water are her transformation scenes: when she goes from human to... caecalia? idk whatever she is, and vice versa (once at the end of d2, then again in her first scene in d3), and some of the stuff she does in Under the Sea, if you want to take all that stuff as canon.
However, since the writers didn’t bother to come up with any kind of consistent magic system for the descendants universe, you can take that to mean literally whatever you want. Is the water that rises and swirls around her just part of the transformation, or is it specifically water manipulation? Who knows? Certainly not the writers!
Some other abilities Uma’s been shown to have in canon:
In the novels:
Shapeshifting - she becomes a tiny squid as well as a giant caecalia.
Weather manipuation - she creates a massive storm (I’ve seen some people say this is hinted at in d2 as well, during it’s going down - the sky gets darker and more storm-like and ominous during the number)
Telekinesis? Idk what to call it but she calls the trident towards her and it moves when she does.
In Under the Sea:
Manifesting herself... in water?? As water? A water version of her? She can do the water clone jutsu or smth I have no idea
Manifesting herself and/or an image of herself in bubbles and reflections
Controlling sea life
In the movies:
Spell casting - she can clearly use both a love spell in d2 and use spells with Mal in d3
Shapeshifting, again.
Additionally, she reignites the ember, which... I have no idea what that says about her power. Could anyone with magic have done that? Why can she reignite the ember if only someone related to Hades can use it? It’s meant to be immensely powerful, right? How powerful is Uma?
Also, to find some of this I went back and rewatched under the sea, and paused at a truly spectacular moment:
Celia is Fantastic. reads fortunes, cheeky, realises her own potential and does magic with her shadow. 10/10 would die for
Uma misses her crew, also it’s confirmed that she can create storms and generally affect the weather, and transform into more than one sea creature. in general she seems to be a natural when it comes to magic.
Harry is miserable bc uma’s not there. the crew are still on the ship.
‘But all she felt for this ragged, unruly crowd was deep empathy and affection. Mal wished they could all understand that there were greater things to live for than revenge or violence or pettiness, greed, and graft.’ mal is... suddenly the person most interested in helping the kids on the isle?? i’m not sure how I feel about it but if they’re going to position her as ‘the liberator’ then at least they’re making her act like it
Dr facilier is very fun and also the most decent parent we’ve seen by far
‘Mal would never forget her name, or who freed the Isle of the Lost: UMA.’ okay so at least uma’s still interested in freeing the isle, even if they’re implying it’s only because she knows mal wants to
MDLC has finally realised that it’s spelt ‘deux’, and not ‘doux’
bad things
idk basically everything else??
i might have said this before on this blog but MDLC is really, really bad at making the core four in any way sympathetic to me. this book is by far the worst from that standpoint.
we don’t get to see a lot of the core four actually being friends. they do stuff together (not even that much bc they’re constantly with their significant others instead), but that Bond between them just isn’t there.
carlos honest to god forgets that there’s nothing nice on the Isle. He brings his spa bathrobe with him. He was expecting a hotel. What on earth?????
jay just... doesn’t really think about the Isle. At All.
evie is still going on about kids ‘deserving’ to go to auradon.
mal has done a complete 180 and now loves doing all the things she hated doing in d2.
they’re all kind of spoiled now. it sucks.
dizzy is still on the isle. somehow no one is fighting very hard to get her to auradon anymore.
ben is suddenly way more like his parents in terms of his attitude towards the isle. he still wants to unite them eventually, but he and mal literally negotiate how many kids can come to auradon with him arguing for lower numbers and her arguing for higher. as far as I can tell, when Ben and Mal swapped saliva at the end of d2 they also swapped attitudes towards the isle
hades is whiny, annoying and pathetic. and Mal’s dad (at least they’re hinting Very Strongly at it). he doesn’t match the energy we’ve seen from cheyenne jackson in the trailers at all. we don’t hear a single one of the ideas from the meet hades trailer at any point.
the ‘evil plot’ between him and uma is.... just uma. who is only interested in revenge against mal now. no more interest in the isle. nope, we have to bring down the barrier just so uma can defeat mal.
There’s a royal council. It’s ben, king beast, queen belle, mal, and fairy godmother. they sit and eat scones, served by mrs potts, chip, lumiere and cogsworth. beast is very grumpy because people want to help the villain kids.
carlos’ name in their group chat is ‘c-dog’
‘Ben had sympathy for the kids on the Isle, but he wasn’t sure he really wanted his friends to go back there. Wasn’t it too dangerous?’ WHAT DO YOU THINK IT IS FOR THE KIDS WHO ARE STUCK THERE, BEN
“Dangerous? Not to us,” scoffed Jay. “We know every trick in the book.” Jay. Baby. Last time you went back, you lost Ben in about 30 seconds despite two of you standing with him the entire time. The time before that, Maddy literally came this close to drowning Mal.
‘For a brief moment, back at the Auradon Cotillion, she had been a princess; she had stood on the deck of a magnificent ship, and Ben was
hers. He had looked in her eyes with love—sure, he had been spelled, but who really cared? Except in the end, that’s all it was—a brief moment.’ SINCE WHEN IS THIS SOMETHING UMA WANTED. MELISSA TURN ON LOCATION I JUST WANT TO TALK
“Do we really need to discuss this right now?” King Beast yawned. GUILLOTINE. GUILLOTINE! SORRY BEN YOU’RE JUST GONNA HAVE TO BE LIKE THE REST OF THE CHARACTERS AND ONLY HAVE ONE PARENT.
“We hear from our people that Uma has been seen underwater. She’s out
there, free to wreak havoc and do whatever she wants.” okay but has she though. or is she not bothering you at all. guys.
“It’s just, her mother… her mother almost destroyed my family.” yes. and then her mother was killed. and then YOUR FAMILY TOOK PART IN BRINGING HER BACK FROM THE DEAD AND IMPRISONING UMA FOR LIFE FOR HER MOTHER’S CRIMES
mal is aware that her mother is out there somewhere as a lizard.... and she does not give a damn.
apparently it has not occurred to any of the core four that maybe children shouldn’t have to apply to be able to have decent food. maybe try telling ben to stop sending them trash?? and start sending them stuff that’s edible instead of trying to convince them to come to auradon so they can eat
okay, so facilier’s like a semi-decent headmaster, even if it is of a school of evil. does he like.... get paid?? because he’s working with auradon here. i hate to bring this up disney but keeping someone in prison and forcing them to work for free is uhhhhhh. slavery.
‘if Celia deserved to get in to Auradon Prep, she would.
But it would be on her own merit, not because the VKs swayed the committee.’ WHAT FUCKING MERIT EVIE. SHES LIKE 12. SHE DOESNT NEED TO EARN THE RIGHT NOT TO BE IN PRISON. YOU DIDNT FUCKING WELL HAVE TO.
gaston is a coach. this isn’t a massive problem but I feel like it kind of undermines jay’s relationship with his coach in d1?? also since when does gaston know literally anything about teamwork.
the Marry Hint
cj is back on the isle???
MDLC wrote out the whole of the under the sea mess and i understand it even less than before. was the entire thing a hallucination from hades??? why even put harry, gil and dizzy in there??? was uma using her necklace in some way? how much of it was hallucination?? did any of it happen??
doc brought up the goblins back in the first book. this is the fourth book. nothing has changed for them, except for the things that have got worse
................. mal’s friends seem to have forgotten that she can’t swim. apparently they’re not afraid of her drowning, despite her being stuck underwater.
mal can swim underwater as a dragon apparently??? yes, she’s definitely designed for rapid underwater movement
“A haircut? At this time of night?” asked Carlos. “I’ll never understand
women.” first the friendzone comment in d2, now this??? why are they so determined to make carlos a Certified Heterosexual Bro™
they get the isle kids to watch them graduate. somehow this is written like it’s a good thing.
everyone forgets what happened on the isle. I can only assume this is MDLC’s way around the fact that it won’t be mentioned or thought of at any point during the movie
okay this is actually a serious question now; is there anyone on here in the USA who would be willing to buy the ebook of Escape from the Isle of the Lost and send it to me as a pdf the day it comes out? ofc i’d pay them back via paypal (or ko-fi or similar preferred method)
I was thinking about eftiotl & how auradon changed the barrier like why would they do that the isle is a jail so wouldn’t they want her to go back but instead they had guards on the coast to catch uma & if they did I have a feeling they weren’t gonna send her back but like what were they gonna do with her. thinking about that really scares me
i went back and checked through the book, and thankfully i’m pretty certain they didn’t change the barrier at all. she tries to call out to harry, gil, and other pirates, but they can’t hear her (apart from gil, a very little). given that there’s apparently enough of the sea inside the barrier for uma to sail around the isle, i think this is just the result of the distance between the barrier and the shoreline.
i’m with you on the second part though, anon. i think ben/mal would probably just send her back to the isle, but if anyone else was to catch her… the ‘heroes’ of auradon are the people who literally brought back villains from the dead to send them to a ‘fate worse than death’ and then left innocent children there. I don’t want to know what beast and the rest of them would have done if they found her first.
i am really confused by the disparity between their attitudes towards uma, and towards maddy and her little gang. maddy and the others literally tried to murder mal, and have shown absolutely no remorse/regret, and the core four are fine with the idea of them coming to auradon. uma backed down after one speech from ben, and apparently she’s the greatest threat to auradon. wtf ben??? what happened to ‘i know you want what is best for the isle’? what happened to ‘she’s an angry girl with a bad plan’? it’s been like a year (or close to that) that she’s been out of the barrier and she hasn’t hurt anyone. please, auradon, for once in your lives, engage your critical thinking skills.
Fanfic writers do Uma more justice than the writers that actually created her. We know she’d never put revenge before her crew. If d3 tries to ruin our image of who uma is we should collectively disregard their canons bc I feel like most of the fandom has basically a similar idea of who Uma is, and how she thinks and things she would and wouldn’t do. The writes are so inconsistent with core four’s characteristics and I can only imagine they’ll have the same inconsistency with d3 uma.
You’re so right, anon. This fandom is full of incredible authors who write Uma much more consistently, and compellingly (the same goes for the core four).
I think the thing that surprised me most about this book is how different this Uma is from the Uma we saw in Rise. Melissa might have written her as obsessed with Mal, even back then, but she was also extremely sympathetic and a lot of fun to read about. This time… if I came into the fandom now and this was my first introduction to Uma? I’d hate her.
However, although I don’t have much hope for D3 to have a decent plot, we do know that Uma and her boys are together and working with Auradon at the end of the film; at least we can be reasonably certain that they’re not going to turn her into a full on villain in the film (though we’re still not safe).
