Disney's Frozen 2 features Elsa (Idina Menzel) hearing a mysterious voice calling to her throughout the movie, and despite confusion among audiences it has been definitively confirmed it belongs to her mother, Iduna (Evan Rachel Wood).
While the voice was calling Elsa to reveal her past to her, it was ultimately revealed that Queen Iduna (Evan Rachel Wood) - Elsa's mother - had a lot to explain as well. This, coupled with the reveal that the call was Iduna all along, means Elsa was hearing the voice of her long-lost mother.
According to Iduna, Ahtohallan is considered a spirit and is the "mother" of all the other spirits. According to Iduna's notes, Ahtohallan is the source of the magic in the Enchanted Forest as well as those of the spirits, including Elsa's powers.
According to Myth: A Frozen Tale, the fifth spirit is also known as the “human spirit”, but it is assumed to have been represented by humanity in general before Elsa and Anna's births.
She died and was reborn to take on her true form like has happened in so many stories before. With that transformation, Frozen 2 has made Elsa an immortal spirit now. Like how Frozen 2's other four spirits appear as animals but more than just that, Elsa still appears human but is more than just that.
In conclusion, Elsa is only the fifth spirit because of her mothers sacrifice of her powers. Queen Iduna was the fifth spirit all along and chooses to save King Agnarr knowing that as a royal, she would need to be with him to have her royal daughters.
The symbolic explanation for why Elsa froze is more straightforward. Elsa freezes in response to the trauma of discovering her family's colonial past. Similar to the plot in Frozen, Elsa is overcome with emotion and loses control of her powers — she is so overwhelmed by her own ice magic that she is literally frozen.
Then Elsa remembers why she came to Ahtohallan in the first place. She came to Ahtohallan to find out why Arendelle was evacuated and why it was stripped of its natural elements.
It has a slot for November 2024 and November 2025 for “untitled Disney animation”, according to Business Insider. Again, assuming that Frozen 3 is following the same release pattern as its predecessors, it's safe to bet that it will be released November 26, 2025.
The implication, and it's only ever just that, is that Elsa and Anna's mother is herself somehow attuned to the magical forces such that Elsa was given the gift of superpowers. (Why Anna never received such powers is equally vaguely defined: just as Elsa and Anna's father had no powers, so too would she be power-free.
Elysium is the first daughter of Elsa and Jack Frost, protagonists in Frozen and Rise of the Guardians. She is also a Princess of Arendelle and Junior Guardian of Winter. She is the older sister to Elise and is the first heir to the Throne of Arendelle.
While they're in there, Anna and Elsa also discover another twist: They're half-Northuldran. Their mother, it turns out, was a tribe member who saved their father during the battle, escaped with him out of the forest, and later married him.
Why didn't Elsa's mom tell her husband she saved him?
Due to the bad blood between their people, Iduna kept both her heritage and her rescue of Agnarr in the forest a secret for many years, though she finally confessed everything to him shortly before their deaths.
While other people in that scene appeared only in her memories, she actually heard her mother's voice singing to her. The only explanation for this is that Iduna was previously the fifth spirit, and thus her spirit still lies within Atohallan.
Anna's parents rush her to the sacred realm, where discussions with the trolls reveal that Elsa was born with her powers/ depigmentation and deafness, rather than them being due to illness or accident. Grand Pabbie troll heals Anna but removes her memories of Elsa's magic.
In Frozen 2, viewers do get to see Olaf's resurrection, as the snowflakes gathered up by Gale, the wind spirit, are brought to Elsa so that she can re-make Olaf's snowman body and bring him back to life.
Leaving her friends behind, Elsa crosses the Dark Sea to Ahtohallan (with a little help from a kelpie called Nokk), and commands the spirit (in song) to "Show Yourself." She learns that she is actually the fifth spirit of the forest, connecting the other four.
Frozen explicitly shows the audience that Iduna and Agnarr's ship has sunk, killing both of the young princesses' parents. It's later revealed in Frozen 2 that the king and queen were traveling to Ahtohallan, a magical glacier in the north, and Frozen's sequel again confirms that Anna and Elsa's parents died at sea.
When Elsa's ice palace is under attack, the colour of her ice changes depending on her current emotion. For instance, the ice is yellow when she combats Duke Westleton and his soldiers. However, the ice becomes purple or turns into a dark colour when she struggles to control her magic. The colour reflects her fear.
When they showed what was finished of the film to a Story Trust group several months prior to release, many were still confused about who the voice was supposed to belong to. It was after that the decision was made to fully commit to the voice calling to Elsa being that of her mother, Iduna.
Elsa from Frozen was originally intended to be an evil queen with an army of snow monsters. That's according to the animated film's producer Peter Del Vecho, who says they completely re-wrote the ending. "When we started off, Anna and Elsa were not sisters," he told EW. "They weren't even royal.
Trivia. At the beginning of the song, Olaf references a "Samantha." However, prior to the song, he admits to not actually knowing anyone named Samantha and that, while scared, he simply said a name at random. This bit was improvised by Olaf's voice actor, Josh Gad.
In real-life European elemental theology, rocks and earth are represented through gnomes rather than giants. They are the only spirits Elsa did not tame before the curse was lifted.
Wait, so Anna and Elsa have indigenous ancestry now? It seems like it—they learn that their mother was a member of the Northuldra tribe, which is described as being true to the earth and guided by spirits.
