Kit Tanthalos: The Brave, The Loved, and the Not-A-Princess

A study of Kit Tanthalos from Willow, 2022.

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Hello! It’s been a while. I learned that being in law school and updating a blog is a difficult combination. So here I am with something that isn’t related to Star Wars and I didn’t even write recently. However, it is still Lucasfilm, and I had so much fun writing it that I thought I would share it here.

I watched the Willow tv show on Disney+ back when it was still there. I fell in love with the show, and I wanted to talk about it on my podcast. I wrote out an audio essay and was prepared to record, but then life got in the way and I never found the time to do that. I’m currently taking a break from studying for finals and was looking through some of my old files and found this. I thought it would be fun to share here. So, without further ado, I hope you enjoy this fun essay about one of y favorite characters, Kit Tanthalos!

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Willow the tv show is one of my favorite recent fantasy adventure stories. As a kid, I read so many different fantasy stories. And then I went to college, and reading for fun became much more difficult. I couldn’t find a good fantasy story to immerse myself in. Two years after graduating, I decided on a whim to watch Willow, the movie from 1988 starring Warwick Davis. It wasn’t my favorite, but afterwards I decided to give the show a try. It was the fun fantasy adventure that I had been missing for so many years. It has a fun cast of characters, captivating locations, and, most importantly, is super fun. But it also hits on some important ideas as well, and I wanted to take a closer look at one of my favorite characters, Kit Tanthalos: The Brave, The Loved, and the Not-A-Princess with many an asterisk.

-At this point in the podcast, I usually introduce myself and then play our lovely theme song, but as this is a blog you’ll just have to imagine your own orchestral backing track here-

Kit Tanthalos is the princess of Tir Asleen, which is ruled by her mother, the Queen Sorsha. Sorsha is the daughter of the evil queen from the original Willow movie. Kit also has a brother, the prince Airk. When Airk is kidnapped, Kit leads an expedition to go and rescue him, along with her knight and protector Jade, Willow the Sorcerer, Boorman the rogue, Gray the Prince of Galladorn, Elora Danan the chosen one and baker of muffins, and some other guy who dies almost immediately.

From the start, Kit is a force to be reckoned with. She trains with Jade on top of some dangerous looking rocks, she causes a scene at the castle while the King and Prince of Galladorn are there. She almost throws a knife at her brother. And when her mom calls her out and tells her that she’ll be going through with the wedding the following day (which, in defense of Kit, isn’t at all fair), Kit decides to run away. When I first started watching the show, Kit reminded me a lot of Korra from Avatar the Legend of Korra, particularly the Korra from season 1. Korra is also aggressive and puts herself out there, but there’s one key difference: Korra knows exactly what she wants (at least in those early seasons), and Kit is full of doubt.

It’s hard to see at first because Kit hides it well. She volunteers to go and save Airk, she is quick to jump into battle, and she’s ready to speak her mind at all times. She doesn’t show her doubt very often. It takes her a long time to even share that she has any doubts at all.

Out on the shattered sea, Kit has a moment alone with Elora. While the two shared some moments together in previous episodes, this is the first time Kit openly admits that she has doubts. Framed by the night sky filled with stars reflected in the shallow sea below, Kit finally admits that, “Nothing I’ve ever wanted has come naturally to me.” When Elora asks what Kit wanted, Kit says, “To be brave, and loved, and to not be a princess.” Even if those things don’t come naturally to her, I think Kit learns how to be brave, learns how to love and receive love in turn, and although she’s still a princess, she learns how to put that title aside and serve others rather than rule them. Maybe those things don’t come naturally to her, but by the end of the series that’s exactly who she is.

First let’s look at her goal of not being a princess. Whether she wants to be one or not, she is a princess. I also don’t mean to imply that she becomes not a princess by the end of the show. She’s still a princess. Legally, that is. I think being a princess for her is about rules and formality and being something she’s not. Being a princess is about leadership and inspiring others around you and taking care of the common good. While she absolutely cares about other people and wants the best for everyone, she’s not a leader, at least not in the way that a princess or a queen would need to be. That lack of leadership ends up hurting the group as they go searching for Airk, and she’s lucky that she doesn’t get any of them killed, other than that first guy whose name I can never seem to remember. She’s mean to the other group members, she wants to leave Elora behind with Willow, and Elora even runs off without her and is captured by Ballentine and his soldiers, she splits up the party and prevents the entire group from coordinating their plan at the fateful battle of the slaughtered lamb, she’s constantly hurting Jade, and she almost kills them all and gets stuck under a weird sort of ice in the mines of Skellin when she decides to take out her anger and frustration on Elora as the mountain is crashing down around them. There was never good timing for that, but that was especially bad timing. It’s hard to know exactly what she was thinking in all those situations, but I don’t think her decision-making skills are that great, and I don’t think she handled the pressures of being a leader well.

The turning point for her, in my opinion, is when the group finally reaches the end of the shattered sea. There’s nowhere left to go other than back, and Elora begins to despair. That’s when Kit approaches her and says “my fear…it doesn’t get to decide. It doesn’t get to define me. I’m not giving it the power. I’m giving it to you.” Throughout the journey, Kit has fought with Elora at every turn. As she says, she’s not jealous of her being the chosen one, but I don’t think she’s entirely correct when she says that she’s jealous of Madmartigan choosing Elora either. Whatever the case, when she’s finally able to overcome whatever it is keeping her at odds with Elora, when Kit is finally able to give away her power and her sense of leadership to the chosen one, she finally throws off the role of princess, if not in the legal sense. She’s no longer the one responsible for everything. Elora is the true empress, and Kit can start fulfilling her role as Elora’s protector. By taking a step back from what it means to be a princess and letting Elora step into that role, Kit becomes kinder, more empathetic, more understanding of everyone else’s power, and she seems happier and less afraid of being who she is. I also just want to briefly mention the scene after Kit and Elora have jumped over the edge of the shattered sea. Kit is on the rocks and reaches out to help Elora from the water and says “m’lady.” She’s no longer the princess but the gallant knight serving the true queen, and it’s great to see her step into her new sense of self.

As for becoming loved, I think that’s a little more straightforward. Kit and Jade clearly have something going on from the very beginning, though it doesn’t seem like they ever really sat down and had any sort of formal discussion about their feelings. Jade obviously wants Kit, and Kit seems to be unable to openly reciprocate those feelings in the beginning of the show. It’s both frustrating to watch and all too familiar. When Jade reveals that she’s planning on going away to train to become a knight, Kit blows up. She insults the delegation from Galladorn, embarrasses Tir Asleen, and almost skewers her brother. And then later that night Kit tries to leave. She stops by Jade’s room to tell her that she’s leaving, and while Kit is smiling and saying that it’s the right decision, she’s unable to tell Jade why she’s leaving. That inability to articulate what Jade means to her, or to even admit that there’s something out loud, continues through the show. When Boorman tells the two that they “obviously got the hots for each other,” Kit and Jade awkwardly deny the allegation. When Kit is trapped with Elora in the wildwood, Elora says that she knows what Kit is going through, to which Kit tries to assert that she and Jade are only friends. For whatever reason, Kit isn’t able to accept love that is obviously present, and it only ends up hurting herself and Jade.

It takes a lot of work for Kit to finally admit that she loves Jade, and I love watching that journey. Once the bone reavers free the group and let them join the party, we finally start to see Kit try to make things right with Jade. Though she still doesn’t like Elora and probably feels a little raw from their previous conversation, Kit sucks up her pride and asks Elora for her advice. Elora tells her to apologize, and that’s what we see happen. I also think it’s really sweet that when Kit finally confronts Jade, she begins by saying “we need to talk,” and then corrects herself and says that she “wants to talk.” Kit’s desires to be loved, to be brave, and to not be a princess aren’t independent of each other, but often cross over. In this scene, Kit’s initial comment of needing to talk is the princess in her speaking. It takes focus and a concerted effort to realize that she isn’t entitled to speak with anyone and that the best she can do is to ask if Jade would talk with her. As she is unlearning being a princess and trying to be brave, she’s also allowing herself the possibility of openly loving and being loved.

And Kit still isn’t able to tell Jade that she loves her. Partly that’s the fault of the trolls who kidnap her right after Jade confesses her own feelings, but Kit also isn’t quite ready yet. Once everyone escapes Skellin, they head out to the shattered sea and begin their trek across it. It’s only after the training montage that probably takes weeks that Kit is finally able to tell Jade. While the training montage is mostly about the group members preparing to fight the crone, it’s really interesting that the first scene out of the montage is Kit and Jade having a sparring match and Kit telling Jade that she loves her. Being able to love and accept love takes time and effort, and Kit had to learn a lot in order to get to that place.

As for being brave, I think Kit does a really good job of pretending to be brave in the conventional sense. She jumps into action, she volunteers to go save Airk, she splits the party in the third episode and tells Jade she can handle herself. Being brave is complicated. I believe being brave means not letting your fear control you. In many ways Kit already does that in the beginning of the show, and in other ways she becomes brave over time.

First, whenever Kit is fighting an enemy, or in a situation that could escalate to violence, Kit always appears to be afraid. When she and Elora try to rescue Jade from the bone reavers, Kit is constantly looking around at all of the armed and scary looking reavers, and she can’t quite keep the fear from her face or hide the way she seems to shake or jerk around through that encounter. The same is true of the standoff in the Immemorial City with the Gales. I think Kit is terrified when she and Elora are cornered by the gales and evil Airk. At no point in these encounters do I think she isn’t being brave. The odds don’t look good, and yet she’s there in the thick of it, terrified, but doing what she believes is right in order to help people. When it comes to helping others, I think Kit is already brave. It’s only when Kit’s goals are self-serving, or when she’s confronting something she can’t defeat with her sword, that I think she struggles with bravery.

Not to rehash prior points, but Kit wanting to leave Tir Asleen, alone, in the dead of night was one of the first unbrave things we see her do, and it establishes something really important about her character. Yes, she can fight, and yes, she will do what she can to save her friends from physical danger, but when it comes time for her to go after what she wants, or to act in the best interests of those around her outside of a fight, she runs away. We see her fear in her inability to tell Jade that she loves her, or when she tells Jade that she didn’t want to reveal what she suspected about Jade’s past. Kit runs from conversations and feelings that are challenging. She wants to be like her father, the charismatic and swashbuckling hero who saves the day and gets the girl, but like she says to Madmartigan, she isn’t him.

And then, the group reaches the waterfall at the end of the Shattered Sea. Boorman says they have to turn back, and Elora begins to break down. The quest seems over. How do you overcome the impossible?

By that point, Kit has run from so much. But she’s also put herself out there as well. She’s told Jade how she feels, she’s told Elora how she wants to be brave and loved and to not be a princess. She’s still scared, but that doesn’t matter. She approaches Elora, and for the first time she admits that she is afraid, and when she finally says that, she can then choose to not allow fear to control her, to decide what she can and can’t do. She has retaken power away from her fear, and she can give that power to whomever or whatever she wants. And so, without knowing what’s on the other side, she and Elora jump from the waterfall. And that’s how the two of them end up in the Immemorial City, exactly where they wanted to go.

Willow is a story of discovery, of learning who you are. Graydon becomes a sorcerer and a good man, Elora a powerful leader, Jade a knight, Boorman a faithful and loyal protector, Willow a teacher. Kit finally stops running and confronts the things she’s scared of. She stops hiding her love and accepts that she is worthy of love, and that love needs to be expressed, whether it be romantic or platonic. And she learns that she doesn’t need to be a princess (though again, not necessarily in the legal sense). Kit is brave. She is loved. And she isn’t stuck being a princess.

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Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed. I love this show and wish it was still on Disney+.

If you would like to, you can check out my podcast “Determination, Deliberation, and Dragons” wherever you get your podcasts. We are a group of aspiring authors who workshop our original stories, analyze books and films, and interview authors and other creative people.