#if you want to get Raya's trust bring her a pair of dimples

[textuallee]

Look at Those Cheeks!

So let’s talk about dimples in Raya and the Last Dragon.

First of all, Namaari has dimples.

Well, 12-year-old Namaari does. 18-year-old Namaari doesn’t. Dimples are one of the things Namaari lost while growing up. (To read more on this, see “How Does a Kitten Become a Tiger?”)

There are three other characters in the movie who have dimples. I like to think of these dimples as hints to help us connect the dots between these four characters.

Benja and Namaari share the ideal of a better world—a unified and harmonious Kumandra. The difference is that Benja believes they can still be Kumandra again, even without dragons, but Namaari believes it’s an impossible child’s dream that she must give up.

Like Benja, Sisu believes Kumandra can be revived and sees trust as the key to accomplishing this. With this belief, they try to mentor Raya on her hero’s journey (although both make mistakes they pay for with their lives).

Sisu and Namaari connect to each other like two magnets, bound by the power of trust. Sisu trusts Namaari as no one else does, with zero doubt. And Namaari in turn trusts Sisu with what she most holds dear and fears for—her people. (Unfortunately, they're interrupted by Raya before she can make this clear.)

Like Namaari, Tong is a fierce warrior born and bred to protect his people. Beneath the facade of a menacing villain, we find a gentle-hearted caregiver who loves children.

Like Benja, Tong is a father who lost his child (except Benja lost his by throwing her in the river to save her life). When Raya sees her father’s likeness (and her own) in Tong, she’s able to take a big first step in learning to trust people again. (Meeting Boun and Noi were smaller first steps that prepared her for this one.)

Tong helps Sisu learn how to make trust work again for the people of this broken world. They infiltrated Spine, confronted Tong, gave him some really nice gifts (Raya’s trust, new friends to end his loneliness and a little one to take care of, and the hope of bringing his village back to life), and he offered to help them.

Sisu applies this lesson to someone she just realized wants to fix the world as much as they do. She finds it hard to convince her friends to go with her plan, because what she saw deep down in Namaari’s eyes is hard to see for those who aren’t dragons (or don’t trust dragons).

And here’s where I end this long post, with a thank you for reading and a sorry but I told a little lie:

Like her dream of a better world, Namaari never truly lost her dimples. They just became much harder to see.

(And these elusive dimples are even harder to capture as images. If you study certain shots closely frame-by-frame, during the duel at Spine for example, you may catch hints of them at the corners of her mouth.)