The Little Mermaid TV show let Ariel live up to her potential

I’m guessing many women who grew up in the early ’90s have a complicated relationship with The Little Mermaid. Ariel is an impossibly appealing protagonist, the kind that makes you want to spend hours in the pool practicing your perfect emerging-to-the-surface hair flip. But even from a young age it’s easy to see that she’s stuck in a rather regressive story. Ariel transforms herself into a mute human to woo a man she just met. At one point she yells, “I’m 16 years old. I’m not a child anymore!” and rather than treat that exclamation as an ironic one, the film ends with her marrying a guy she’s known for three days. In other words, she’s the perfect encapsulation of the “Disney princess problem.” As a character, Ariel’s inquisitive, spirited, and independent. But the narrative surrounding her is all kinds of troubling.
Yet in trying to capitalize on the phenomenal success of The Little Mermaid film, Disney inadvertently created the perfect solution to its princess problem. In 1992 Disney launched an animated prequel TV show also dubbed The Little Mermaid, which followed Ariel’s adventures before she ever met Price Eric. Removed from the pressure to focus on romance, The Little Mermaid TV show finally gave Ariel the kind of adventure stories she deserves.
Virtually the entire voice cast returned for the series, including Jodi Benson as Ariel and Samuel E. Wright as Sebastian. If the show never quite lived up to the original film in terms of look or tone, it did better by Ariel in nearly every other way. (And it’s unquestionably superior to either of the direct-to-video follow-up films Disney produced.) The show smartly realizes it’s more fun to watch a protagonist enjoy her super cool underwater world than reject it, and the series downplays Ariel’s dissatisfaction to focus on fleshing out the whimsical kingdom of Atlantica with some clever bits of humor—like the ruler of a neighboring shark kingdom who sounds just like Marlon Brando in The Godfather.
Throughout the series, Ariel’s an adventurer first and a princess second; there’s no bottomless pit she won’t explore and no treasure map she won’t follow. She’s bold, fearless, and strong, but she’s also an empathetic nurturer who strives to see the best in people, especially society’s rejects. Much like the movie, the series doesn’t write her as an aggressive “strong female character” or a diminutive female stereotype. But unlike the movie, the series has time to explore Ariel’s personality in stories that aren’t driven by love. In fact, the one time Ariel mistakenly thinks she’s been betrothed, she exclaims, “I’m too young to get married!”
Instead, the show’s dominant relationship is the father/daughter one between Ariel and her father King Triton (Kenneth Mars). Many of the series’ best episodes explore the uneasy dynamic that can emerge between rebellious teens and their overprotective parents. But what the show constantly drills home is that even when Ariel and Triton disagree, they’re always operating from a place of love. In “Charmed,” Triton warns Ariel not to bring any more “human things” into their house. So when she gets a human charm bracelet stuck on her wrist, she runs away from home. Once Triton rescues his daughter from danger, he winds up scolding himself, not her. “I made you afraid to come to me with your problems,” he says, ashamed. It’s a nice reminder for the show’s young audience that parents make mistakes too.
Meanwhile, “Red” explores the same idea from the opposite perspective. When a spell transforms Triton into a little kid, he turns out to be every bit as rambunctious as Ariel. She spends the day trying to keep him out of harm’s way, only to gain a newfound appreciation for the fact that parents set rules in order to protect their children, not to punish them. “It’s not easy being a parent,” Ariel notes when the curse is reversed. “The only thing more difficult is being a kid,” Triton adds. The complex Triton/Ariel relationship is a subtle thread in the original movie (Triton’s line, “Well I guess there’s one problem left… how much I’m going to miss her,” is arguably the film’s emotional climax), but it’s given far more room to breath in the animated series.
And while the film missed the irony of Ariel’s declaration of adulthood at 16, the show emphasizes that she’s very much a young, flawed protagonist who’s prone to fits of teen angst and a little too eager to jump into dangerous situations—something her timid sidekick Flounder frequently lampshades. Ariel cries into her pillow when she feels she’s being treated unfairly, squabbles with her sisters, hates taking piano lessons, gets the giggles at school, and is obsessed with horses (or, in this case, giant seahorses). It’s hard to imagine a more relatable character for girls.