The Lion Guard
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| ♥ | This article is dedicated to the late James Earl Jones (1931-2024. |
The Lion Guard is an American animated television series developed by Ford Riley and based on Disney's 1994 animated feature film The Lion King. The series was first broadcast with a television film titled The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar on Disney Channel on November 22, 2015, and began airing as a TV series on January 15, 2016, on Disney Junior. It is the second television series to be based on The Lion King, the first being The Lion King's Timon & Pumbaa (1995–1999). The Lion Guard is a sequel and spin-off to The Lion King, and takes place during the time-gap within Disney's 1998 direct-to-video sequel The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, while the third and final season takes place in parallel with the film's second act, with the final two episodes serving as an epilogue.
The second season premiered on July 7, 2017, followed by the third on August 3, 2019, with the series finale airing on November 3 the same year.
Plot
The show centers on King Simba (voiced by Rob Lowe), his wife Nala (voiced by Gabrielle Union) and their two children Kiara (voiced by Eden Riegel) and Kion (voiced by Max Charles); who as second-born to the throne has been gifted with a power called the Roar of the Elders and becomes the leader of the Lion Guard, a team that protects the Pride Lands and defends the Circle of Life.
Despite the tradition that the Lion Guard has always been made of lions, Kion appoints his friends Bunga the honey badger, Beshte the hippopotamus, Fuli the cheetah, and Ono the egret, and together, they set out to keep their homeland safe and protect it from animals who disrespect the Circle of Life.
Starting in season 2, the Lion Guard's mission becomes harder when Kion's deceased great-uncle Scar returns as a fiery spirit and plans to destroy the Pride Lands. Scar forms an army consisted of animals from the Outlands. This eventually leads to an all-out battle between the Pridelanders and the Outlanders.
At the beginning of season three, the Lion Guard have become teenagers and defeat Scar. They then leave the Pride Lands and travel out of Africa to get to the Tree of Life in Asia to cure Kion and Ono’s battle injuries, Kion having received a venomous scar from Ushari the cobra and Ono losing his eyesight from the poisonous volcanic fumes while rescuing Bunga. Kion's team also gets a new member, a martial eagle named Anga who replaces Ono's position as the keenest of sight after Ono temporarily loses his eyesight, while he gains a new position as the smartest.
Once reaching the Tree of Life, the Lion Guard assists in defending the haven from intruders together with the Night Pride, the group and family who protects the Tree of Life. After Kion and Ono are healed and their enemies are defeated, hyenas Jasiri and Janja (the latter having reformed during the final confrontation with Scar) come looking for them and alert them that Zira and her pride are back. The Lion Guard returns to the Pride Lands, only to find out that the conflict has already been settled. Zira's daughter, Vitani (voiced by Lacey Chabert), has formed her own Lion Guard in their absence, causing an argument between them and Kion's Lion Guard. However, after seeing Vitani's confidence in becoming a leader even without the Roar, Kion allows Vitani's Lion Guard to succeed his Guard as defenders of the Pride Lands. Kion and his friends return to the Tree of Life where Kion marries the Night Pride's leader, Queen Rani, and is crowned King of the Tree of Life with his family and friends attending.
Why It's Disney At Their Best (On TV)
- It continues the story of The Lion King. It also later continues the story of The Lion King II: Simba's Pride.
- Full of action scenes.
- It has positive role models, like how Kion shows he's eager to learn, and he turns to his father and the spirit of his wise grandfather for guidance when he needs it.
- The show introduces kids to general environmental issues and the idea of conservation.
- There are a lot of positive messages, like when Kion learns that being a leader is more about reasoning and being open-minded that it is about physical strength, and he solves many problems with words rather than with might.
- Beautiful, fluid animation that almost rivals the movie series.
- Very catchy theme song, which is nice to hear. The full version is even catchier.
- Scar (the main antagonist from The Lion King) finally returned in Season 2 (as a spirit since he was killed), and he was still an intimidating villain.
- Likable and well-written characters, both old and new
- Kion is a very well-written protagonist, being a very fiercist leader of the Guard, and caring about his parents and sister, Kiara.
- Nala, Rafiki, Simba (despite his slight flanderization in the first few episodes), Timon, Pumbaa, and Scar all are also likable, and have great character development.
- Zira and her children (Kovu, Nuka and Vitani) also make a return in this series after their initial appearance in Simba's Pride, and they're still enjoyable and likable characters.
- Despite Bunga being especially annoying at times, no one can deny that his character design is just wholesome and cute. Let alone his baby design.
- His voice in the Brazilian Portuguese dub is also very cute and charming, and a lot less annoying than his original version.
- It has lots of good songs like Sisi Ni Siwa, A New Way to Go, Tonight We Strike, Of the Same Pride, Panic and Run, Bird of a Thousand Voices, as well as more.
- The show teaches children to be tolerant of many kinds of people and to be aware of them. Additionally it teaches children to not to judge a person they have met because of their background.
- Awesome and phenomenal voice acting, especially with the new actors (such as Rob Lowe, Gabrielle Union and especially David Oyelowo), and old actors.
- Ernie Sabella, Jeff Bennett, James Earl Jones (though only in Return of the Roar) and Kevin Schon all came back to reprise their roles as Pumbaa, Zazu (from "The Morning Report"), Mufasa and Timon (from Timon & Pumbaa), and they still do great jobs at voicing them.
- Nika Futterman, despite some critcizing her as the new voice of Zira, pulls out a very good performance as Zira.
- Hell, Disney even managed to recruit a well-crafted cast of African-American actors, such as Gabrielle Union, Diamond White and Khary Payton.
- Deals with mature issues like death, for a preschool show. For example, Ushari was the first character to die onscreen in a Disney Junior TV series.
- It teaches facts about African animals, even unfamiliar ones such as Aardwolves.
- It doesn’t simply focus on only African animals, instead, it also focuses on Asian animals, like Mama Binturong. Even if no European animals are used, it’s still good the producers focus on animals outside of Africa.
- The series final Return to the Pride Lands was a good way to end the series.
Bad Qualities
- Bunga's voice is especially annoying, flawed, and decisive in general; some of his decisions were rather mean-spirited as well.
- Makucha from Season 3 is a weak and unlikeable antagonist.
- Simba and Kiara here feel rather different due to the slight flanderizations from how they were in the movies, although this is ensured to make Kiara less bland in terms of characterization. For example, Kiara seems like she'll enjoy being a future queen, something never once exhibited in The Lion King II: Simba's Pride.
- Simba, while still likable, went from a kind and helpful father who is very overprotective to Kiara from Kovu and Outlands, but they peace them successfully to a very pointless stereotypical over-caring father towards both Kion and Kiara. And guess what? It really happens from The Return Of The Roar that he scolds Kion ungratefully that he needs Ono, Beshte, Bunga, and Fuli as their incomplete guards! But he didn't do anything wrong in the movies. Though he thankfully redeemed himself in later episodes of the first season, and especially in the second season.
- Kiara, while also still likable, went from a calm and humble daughter to a stereotypical arrogant-like brat. When she bullies Kion because he's a boy it is sexist. However, she does redeem herself as the series goes on.
- Toilet humor courtesy of Bunga, though at least it makes sense since honey badgers fart/spray like that in real life.
- Some of the new designs (especially Simba), while decent, are pretty ugly. Thankfully, Rafiki, Nala, Timon and Pumba still have their nice looking designs.
- In the episode Timon and Pumbaa's Christmas, Bunga literally dabbed for a slight second, which could mean that the episode in question was trying to be hip and cool with the kids.
- Although Nika Futterman was an excellent casting choice for Zira, some fans criticized her new voice, for sounding too feminine.
- While its great to see James Earl Jones return as Mufasa since 1998,
- Thurston the Zebra can be annoying at times due to how dumb he is.
- Hafifu and Majinuni can be annoying as well.
- Many animals are depicted as antagonists simply for being predators or scavengers like hyenas, vultures, leopards, jackals, etc, a tiring trope that only harms the reputations of animals like these in real life though viewers still enjoys it.
- Some bad episodes like "Bunga the Wise", "Can't Wait to Be Queen", "Paintings and Predictions", "The Imaginary Okapi", "Beware of the Zimwi" (depending on your view), "The Savannah Summit" (depending on your view)", "Friends to the End" (the worst episode of the show), "The Tree of Life" and "Poa the Destroyer".
- Scar make the mistake of betraying the hyenas again (something that could be said that because of it caused his own death in both occasions).
- The flash animation it really looks like done by Ánima Estudios when they only focused in Las Leyendas movie franchise.