‘Lilo & Stitch’ Ending Controversy Explained

Fans of the original Lilo & Stitch have been angry with Disney since the live-action adaptation launched earlier this year.

The new version of the 2002 animated film has several extremely controversial changes, but none has drawn more backlash than the change to the film’s ending.

Both versions of the story revolve around the young Hawaiian child Lilo, who is unable to make friends, and her older sister Nani, who has become Lilo’s caretaker after their parents die unexpectedly. One day, Lilo meets Stitch, a mischievous blue alien who pretends to be a dog so Lilo will take him in. Along the way, they all teach each other how to create their own family.

The original’s most famous line is “Ohana means family, and family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.” Well, it seems like “ohana” has a different definition in this version of the story.

Towards the end of both stories, social worker Cobra Bubbles decides the state will strip Nani of her guardianship and make Lilo a ward of the state. In the original film, Lilo and Nani share an emotional goodbye, but a series of events involving alien intervention reverse the decision and make it so Lilo, Stitch, and Nani can stay together forever.

In the remake, Nani harbors dreams of studying marine biology in San Diego. When the state decides Nani should lose custody of Lilo, she agrees it is the right thing to do and has Lilo live with their next-door neighbor, Tutu, a new character created for the remake. Occasionally, the two use alien technology to teleport and visit each other every so often.

Fans and critics alike decried the ending changes, as Nani giving up custody is pretty much the opposite of “nobody gets left behind.”

Director Dean Fleischer Camp told Deadline that the new ending was an attempt at “thematically modernizing” the animated classic and argued the original was too much of a fairy tale and that the original Nani acts “a little too rose-colored glasses for somebody in her situation,” and that it doesn’t make sense for her to “abandon her dreams” after she “inherited the responsibility” of caring for her sister.

Regardless of the unpopular changes, it doesn’t seem to have mattered much, as the 2025 Lilo & Stitch is currently sitting just under a billion dollars at the box office with $973 million worldwide.