‘Lilo & Stitch’ Disney Remake Controversy Explained: Ending Changed

Warning: spoilers ahead for Disney’s live-action “Lilo & Stitch.”

Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” live-action remake ends with Nani giving away her sister to pursue a degree, which has angered some fans.

The remake has been a financial win for Disney, breaking records for the best ticket sales over Memorial Day weekend by grossing $341.7 million worldwide. In one weekend, it already surpassed the ticket sales of the original 2002 movie and reached the fifth position of the highest-grossing film of 2025.

But negativity is starting to stir after fans discovered that the film has a significant change in the end.

In both the original and the remake, Nani, an adult Hawaiian, struggles to look after her young sister, Lilo, and avoid social services splitting them up after their parents died. Then an alien called Stitch crashes into their lives and wreaks havoc, bringing the sisters closer together.

In the original movie, Cobra Bubbles, a spy posing as a social worker, threatens to take Lilo away, but never carries out that threat.

In the 2025 remake, Mrs. Kekoa (Tia Carrere), an actual social worker, persuades Nani to give up guardianship of Lilo to the Hawaiian government so they can take care of her.

At the end of the movie, Mrs. Kekoa devises a plan for Nani’s neighbor, Tutu (Amy Hill), to foster Lilo so she wouldn’t be far from home. Lilo and Tutu then encourage Nani to follow her dream to become a marine biologist. Nani then goes to the University of California in San Diego to study marine biology.

Fans said the change ruins the core message of the original movie

Some fans criticized the remake’s ending on TikTok and X because it contradicts a catchphrase repeated in the original movie: “Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.”

Other fans criticized the decision for Nani to go to college in mainland America to study marine biology, instead of going to a college in Hawaii.

Some fans accused Disney of trying to persuade parents to give up their children, and persuade native Hawaiians to leave their homes and go to the mainland.

The new movie’s director said the change modernizes the story

Not all fans were critical of the new ending. Laura Sirikul, an LA-based reporter, defended the change in an article for Forbes, saying Lilo is not abandoned because she has found family with Tutu, Stitch, and their other friends.

“The ending is actually paying a service to the phrase, as Nani herself doesn’t get left behind in her life and her dreams,” Sirikul wrote. “Nani is a person, and those aspirations shouldn’t be forgotten or abandoned.”

One TikTok user said in a video posted on Sunday that Nani doesn’t abandon Lilo as they are still family, no matter the distance between them.

Before the backlash, Dean Fleischer Camp, the remake’s director, told Deadline on May 23 that the new ending was an attempt to modernize the story and broaden “the idea of Ohana.”

Camp said that in the original, Nani was “a little too rose-colored glasses” for someone who inherited a lot of responsibility at a young age and had to “abandon” or “defer” a lot of her dreams.

“It just felt like she might not have such an easy time buying into ‘nobody gets left behind’ because she certainly would feel like, well, I’m struggling here,” Camp said.

A representative of Disney and Camp did not immediately respond to a comment request from Business Insider.