Moana 2 Filmmakers Share First Details About Moana’s “Scrappy” Little Sister

Moana and Maui are returning to the big screen this fall in the highly anticipated Moana 2, but there’s a good chance both beloved characters get out-shined by their tiniest co-star this time around. Taking place a few years after the first film, things have changed a bit for Moana, and those changes include the arrival of her little sister, Simea. The three-and-a-half-year-old, voiced by young actress Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda, is described as Moana’s “mini,” just as optimistic and scrappy as her older sister.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Simea was one of the first big additions to this new Moana story, having been a key part of the tale since it was first being developed as a Disney+ series. Despite all of the changes to the plot and characters when Disney pivoted to a feature film, Simea stayed a core part of the whole thing.

“The relationship between Simea and Moana was the most important thing to try to decode and unravel,” Kevin Webb, one of the lead animators, told EW. “So Moana is not only her big sister, she is a guardian and a leader to her, but she has this unique relationship where she’s the only one who can speak to Simea as a peer and get to the core of her.”

“We were developing Simea’s personality, a lot of it came from, ‘What would it be like to grow up with a big sister as cool and badass as Moana?’ Simea is going to be just as scrappy and fiery as Moana was when she was little,” he continued. “So, we tried to come up with a strong enough personality for her that we could match Moana’s energy on screen, which is a really fun alchemy to play with when you have this 3-and-a-half-year-old version of a character that is very unique in her own way, but is still connected to Moana.”

Simea being so close to Moana plays an important part in the actual story of Moana 2, so much so that the younger sister ends up carrying a lot of the film’s emotional weight on her shoulders.

“She’s a kindred spirit to Moana. She’s not okay with [her sister leaving], but then she knows she’s Moana and she has to go. So, she still gives her that drive,” said co-director David Derrick Jr.

“Simea becomes such an emotional fulcrum of the story,” he added. “She needs to carry with her a lot of gravity for Moana. A lot of people might lean into what I would call symbols of emotions when they’re acting, but that doesn’t feel truthful when you put it onto a child. They experience these things in a very visceral but complex way, where anger can easily mix with sadness.”

Moana 2 is set to be released everywhere on November 27th.