Spoilers! How the new 'Lilo & Stitch' ending is even more 'emotional'

USA Today

24-05-2025

Spoilers! How the new 'Lilo & Stitch' ending is even more 'emotional'
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Young new star, Maia Kealoha joins Stitch from 'Lilo & Stitch'
Hollywood's newest young star, Maia Kealoha, joins Stitch in studio to talk new remake 'Lilo & Stitch'
Spoiler alert! We're discussing major details about the ending of Disney's live-action 'Lilo & Stitch' (in theaters now). Beware if you haven't seen it yet and don't want to know.
The original "Lilo & Stitch" had a high-flying finale, centered on an air chase between alien spaceships.
But in the live-action remake, director Dean Fleischer Camp ("Marcel the Shell With Shoes On") was keen to bring the story back down to Earth, with a tear-jerking third act that diverges almost entirely from Disney's 2002 animated hit.
For the uninitiated, the Hawaii-set comedy follows a lonely little girl named Lilo (Maia Kealoha) who adopts a "dog" called Stitch. Unbeknownst to her, Stitch is actually a mischievous alien experiment who escaped his home galaxy and is now being hunted by extraterrestrials. As a result, Lilo gets caught in their crosshairs and winds up getting kidnapped herself.
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Here's how the two films' endings differ:
How did the original 'Lilo & Stitch' end? And how was it changed after the Sept. 11 attacks?
At the end of the original "Lilo & Stitch," Stitch pilots a spaceship through a Hawaiian mountain range on a mission to rescue Lilo, who has been held captive on another alien spacecraft.
Initially, the animated movie was set to end with Stitch hijacking a Boeing 747, taking a joyride as he zips through buildings in a crowded Hawaiian cityscape. But after the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the movie was retooled with a new finale before being released in theaters on June 21, 2002.
'The animated film had a very different ending that was impacted by 9/11,' Camp says. 'They had to totally rejigger that third act. It's kind of a miracle that it makes as much sense as it does, and is as powerful and iconic as it is.'
What is the new ending of the 2025 live-action 'Lilo & Stitch' movie?
The live-action movie ends with Lilo and Stitch on a spacecraft together, after Stitch has been abducted by an extraterrestrial mad scientist named Jumba (Zach Galifianakis). But when Jumba's ship crashes into the ocean, the little girl and her furry blue companion get trapped at the bottom of the sea by debris. Stitch frees Lilo from the wreckage, and she attempts to swim with him up to the surface.
Realizing that he's weighing her down, Stitch mournfully pulls Lilo's hands away and sinks to the ocean floor while Lilo floats back up to safety. Lilo's sister, Nani (Sydney Agudong), dives down to retrieve and help revive Stitch, although he nearly pays with his life.
'In some of the ways that we deepened the emotional realities of the human characters, we also did that with Stitch,' Camp says. 'He starts the film as a self-interested weapon of destruction, who only cares about cake and drinking coffee and ruining things. In fact, he only goes with Lilo in the beginning to save himself; he is using her as a meat shield at the animal clinic' so Jumba won't shoot at him.
But ultimately, Camp adds, 'Stitch sacrificing himself for Lilo felt like the natural catharsis for a character who starts off so selfish.'
Is there a 'Lilo & Stitch' end credits scene?
The animated movie ends with Lilo, Nani, Stitch, Jumba and the alien Pleakley (played by Billy Magnussen in the remake) all becoming a happy family, with Polaroid pictures of them reading, dancing, eating and watching movies together. The latter snapshot – of the humans and aliens snuggled on a couch – was inspiring for Camp.
'I was thinking, 'What is something that could work in this live-action adaptation that embodies the essence of that image and how it makes me feel, but is also not the exact same?' ' Camp says.
He landed on a mid-credits scene of Nani visiting Lilo and Stitch, who are being cared for by their neighbor Tūtū (Amy Hill) while Nani attends college. The three of them curl up in bed, with Lilo and Nani each saying, "Good night, sister." Stitch chimes in with his own variation of "Good night, sisters," before drifting off to sleep.
The sweet sequence is a callback to an earlier scene in the film, as Nani lays with Lilo on her bedroom floor and looks at the plastic stars on her ceiling, which form the "Three Sisters" constellation. Stitch's garbled pronunciation (sounding more like "goody, snissers") is also a slight nod to Jenny Slate's talking mollusk in Camp's "Marcel the Shell" movie.
'There's a small moment in 'Marcel the Shell' where I mention a Mitsubishi car and Marcel says, 'Mitzy-bibbi,'" Camp says. "I don't know why that kind of humor just makes me laugh, but that's why that made its way in there.'