From working on Moana, Miranda knew that Disney would resist moving forward with a film that involved a dozen main characters. (Moana originally had eight brothers who were cut to streamline the film's plot.) So he deliberately wrote the film's opening number, "The Family Madrigal", to prove that it was possible to efficiently introduce such a large family and its internal dynamics to the audience.

At the beginning of the film, Alma is forced by an armed conflict to flee her village in Colombia. She loses her husband Pedro but saves her infant triplets: Julieta, Pepa, and Bruno.

The candle's magic grants "gifts" to each Madrigal descendant, which they use to serve the villagers.

At the age of five, Mirabel is denied a gift from her family's miracle. From this point forward, everyone's expectations of her change and everyone, including Mirabel herself, sees her differently.

One of the candle's first acts of magic is to create a sentient house, the Casita, for Alma and her children to live in.

Vilified and scapegoated for his gift of precognition, Bruno disappeared ten years before the start of the film and is insinuated to be villainous. "We Don't Talk About Bruno" is one of Encanto's biggest musical hits and the longest-reigning chart-topper for Disney in the US Billboard Hot 100 history.

She gives him a stuffed jaguar that she made herself.

On his fifth birthday, Antonio, a wildlife lover, gains the ability to communicate with animals, including capybaras, toucans, hummingbirds, coatis, tapirs, and a jaguar named Parce.

Shortly after Antonio gets his magical gift, Mirabel sees the Casita cracking and the candle's flame flickering, but her warnings go unheeded when the Casita appears undamaged to the others.

A strapping bodybuilder who is described as the "rock" of the family, Luisa was gifted with super strength, but she admits to Mirabel that when the cracks first appeared in Casita, she felt "weak" for the first time in her life.