Melody

Princess Melody is the main protagonist of The Little Mermaid II: Return of the Sea. She is the daughter of Ariel and Prince Eric and the princess of her father's kingdom. Since she is the only known grandchild of King Triton, she may one day become Queen of Atlantica. She is voiced by Tara Strong.

Physical appearance
Melody is a pretty, yet tomboyish twelve-year-old princess. She is the height of a ten-year-old, though she is actually 12-years-old. She has straight black hair, most often tied back with a green hair tie in a low ponytail, pink lips, and blue eyes. Melody seems to have inherited a fairly even blend of traits from her parents. Most noticeable is her hair (the same color as her father's). She inherited her mother's eyes, nose, and facial structure. It is also possible that Melody inherited Ariel's beautiful singing voice, which is heard in "For A Moment", a duet between Melody and her mother. Eric also gave her his skin tone, smile, and thick eyebrows. For most of the film, Melody is seen in her underclothes, which is a separate pair of white pantalettes and a white camisole; the pantalettes cover the bottom half of her stomach. As a baby, she was wearing a cute and very pretty pink and white dress and her bow also has the same colors. While in mermaid form, Melody retains her camisole, but her pantalettes and legs are replaced by a red tail; her navel is also visible. It is odd that the merteens she meets don't pay notice she does not wear a typical sea-shell bikini top like other mermaids. She also has a pink ball gown and a yellow casual dress both with short puffy sleeves. Since she found it, she wears her locket that has her name on it.

Personality
Melody is sassy but well-mannered, and has respect for her mother Ariel and others. Melody's curious and tomboyish nature leads her to collect all sorts of items from the sea, a parallel to her mother at age 16. Melody's swimming proficiency and ability to hold her breath for long periods comes from her mermaid parentage. Largely because of her mermaid heritage, she was also seen as somewhat of an outcast, as evidenced by the guests at her 12th birthday celebration shunning her. She is also shy around boys, becoming quite flustered when a merboy she found attractive tried befriending her in Atlantica. She later met him again after the wall was disintegrated, with both recognizing each other. Despite being tomboyish, she has a princess canopy bed and a girl-ish styled bedroom.

Abilities
Due in part to her partial mermaid heritage, Melody is a skilled swimmer. She also had inherited some of her mother's superhuman traits, namely speed and strength, the latter of which is demonstrated by her scaling an ice wall with little problems late into the film. She also inherited superhuman endurance, as evidenced by her not being crushed into oblivion when forcibly changed back into a human by Morgana despite the depth she was at. She is also able to speak to marine life.

The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea


Melody first appears as an adorable infant at the beginning of the film. She is about 8 months old at the beginning, she can crawl and hold up her head for herself.

Her parents, Ariel and Eric are celebrating her birth, and have taken her out on a ship to meet with Ariel's father King Triton and six older sisters Aquata, Andrina, Attina, and Adella. Triton presents Melody with a locket which bears her name, meant to remind his granddaughter of her mermaid heritage. However, the celebration is interrupted by Morgana, Ursula's sister. Morgana kidnaps Melody and threatens to feed her to her shark, Undertow, if Triton does not hand over his trident. Though Triton almost does so and blasts Undertow with his trident by turning the shark into an anchovy, Ariel and Eric are able to thwart Morgana's plan. Morgana vanishes, but not before vowing revenge. Morgana is now a threat and until she is captured, Ariel decides that Melody can't know anything about the sea, including her mermaid heritage, Atlantica and her grandfather King Triton (which turns out to be a bad idea). She bans the merpeople from seeing Melody, and later has a large sea wall built to separate their castle from the sea. Meanwhile, Melody's locket is tossed into the sea.

Several years later, Melody grows up banned from entering the sea, but is ignorant of the reason why. Despite the ban, she loves the sea and regularly sneaks out to swim. This causes a difficult relationship between her and her mother. On her 12th birthday, while out swimming, Melody discovers the locket, but she is forced to get back to the castle as she has forgotten about her birthday party. Unknown to Melody, she is being watched in a crystal ball by Morgana and Undertow. Morgana takes this as the perfect opportunity to succeed at the one thing her sister Ursula never could. Later, while Ariel is helping Meldoy prepare for the party, Melody tries to tell her mother her true feelings about the sea, but are interrupted by Eric who leads Ariel and Melody to the ballroom.

During the party, Melody dances with a young prince, but trouble soon arises when Sebastian accidently ruins the dance and destroys Melody's birthday cake. Melody comes over to Sebastain to see if he's alright, but everyone starts to laugh at her for talking to crab. Humiliated, Melody runs out of the ballroom in tears and goes back to her bedroom where she again looks at the locket she found eariler. Ariel comes in to try and comfort Melody, but becomes distracted when she learns that the locket has her name written on it and opens the locket to reveal a picture of mermaids swimming in Atlantica. She confronts her mother about it, noting that Ariel has told her that Atlantica was only a fairytale. Ariel takes the locket away and is shocked to learn that Melody has been sneaking out into the sea. Enraged, Ariel forbids Melody from ever the entering the sea again. Hurt that Ariel refuses to give any answers, Melody takes back the locket and runs out of her room. Wanting to find answers about the locket and it's meaning, Melody takes a rowboat and runs away from home despite Sebastain's protests.

Meanwhile, Melody is lured to Morgana's lair by Undertow. Morgana uses a potion to turn Melody into a mermaid, which excites Melody. However, the spell will only last a few days. While on the ship, Eric watches as Triton transforms Ariel back into a mermaid by using his trident to search for and find Melody. Morgana explains that she can make the transformation permanent if she has the trident, which she claims Triton stole from her. Morgana asks Melody to retrieve the trident. Unknown to Melody, Morgana is lying and only wants the trident for her own selfish purposes. However, only a descendant of Triton can remove it from its resting place, and Melody is ignorant of Triton's connection to her.

While searching for the trident, Melody tries to use the map Morgana gave her and due to the ticklish sea kelp, the whale sneezes forcing Melody off of it and her map gets broken. Later on, she befriends a penguin named Tip and a walrus named Dash, and they join her in her search. The trio manages to sneak into the Atlantican royal palace and make off with the trident before Ariel, Flounder, Sebastian, and Triton arrive. On the way to Morgana's lair, Ariel and Flounder remind Scuttle to get to Triton and Sebastian. Melody returns to Morgana at the same time that her mother Ariel arrives. Ariel attempts to explain the situation, but Melody, angered at Ariel's decision to hide Melody's mermaid heritage, gives Morgana the trident.

Afterward, while revealing her true colors and the truth to Melody, Morgana takes Ariel hostage and traps Melody and Flounder in a cave by sealing the entrance with a thick layer of ice. She leaves them two to die and makes an ice tower where she fight Sebastian, Eric, Triton and the others. Soon afterward, Morgana's spell on Melody wears off. She reverts her human form, starts to drown and falls unconscious, but Tip and Dash get Undertow, Morgana's shark minion, to ram into the ice, and help Flounder carry Melody to the surface. There, she awakes.

While Morgana is using the trident to make Ariel, Flounder, Sebastian, Triton, Tip, and Dash to bow down to her and is about to revive Ursula and her pet eels Flotsam and Jetsam, Melody realizes that now she can climb on Morgana's ice tower because she is now human and has legs. She secretly sneaks up behind Morgana and takes back the trident, causing the others to be freed from Morgana's spell. Melody tells Morgana to stay back, but turns the wrong side of the trident to the Sea Witch. Morgana grabs her leg and pulls Melody to her in order to take the trident back, but Melody stabs her in the tentacle with it. Melody then manages to toss the trident back to Triton, but gets pushed off the ice cliff by Morgana. She screams, falling to her doom, but Dash saves her in the last moment; she falls onto his soft stomach and lands safely. While catching his trident, Triton angrily confronts Morgana and tells her that never again will she nor any of hers threaten his family before imprisoning her in a block of ice.

Later, Melody has regained consciousness and reunites with Ariel and Eric. Melody apologizes to her mother about what happened, but Ariel replies that she and Eric are the ones who are truly sorry, as they realize they should've been honest with her about her mermaid heritage instead of keeping her in the dark about it. Melody explains that she never meant to hurt anyone, but thought she would be better at being a mermaid than a girl; her mother, however, explains to Melody that it doesn't matter whether she has fins or feet - she and her father love her they way she is (their very brave little girl), and express how proud they are of her. Triton and Melody then offically meet other, and Triton offers to allow Melody to become a mermaid permanently or to stay with her parents and let things return to normal. Melody refuses the offer, instead choosing to destroy the sea wall, so that everyone, including Ariel, Eric, Flounder, Sebastian, Scuttle, Triton, Tip, Dash, Carlotta, Grimsby, Chef Louis and Max the dog, could be together again.

Trivia

 * Melody is the first Disney character to be the offspring of a Disney Princess.
 * Although Melody inherited a lot of Ariel's traits in both personality and appearance, her mixture of black hair, thick eyebrows and blue eyes make her a perfect blend of her parents.
 * Despite the unpopularity of the sequel, Melody has a large fanbase. In fact, Tara Strong says Melody is her favorite character that she's ever done the voice for.
 * Melody means "Song" in Greek.
 * Since it was Morgana using Ursula's magic that turned Melody into a mermaid, it is unknown if orange-pink would be her natural mermaid tail color.
 * Although Melody is a princess by birth, she isn't included as an official Disney Princess in the franchise, because of her young age and status as a heroine of a direct-to-video film. However, her mother is.
 * On a related note, not counting Descendants, Melody is so far the only character to be the offspring of one of the Disney Princesses.
 * Melody is the only known grandchild of King Triton.
 * Like her mother, Melody has two friends, Tip and Dash, but unlike Sebastian and Flounder, Tip is a penguin, while Dash is a walrus (a marine bird and marine mammal opposed to a crustacean and a tropical fish).
 * Having taken over for her mother from the first Little Mermaid film, Melody is the third offspring of a predecessor's main character to take over as the protagonist in a sequel, the first being Nicky Ferris (taking over for Sharon McKendrick in The Parent Trap II), the second being Kiara (taking over for Simba in The Lion King II: Simba's Pride), the fourth being Scamp (taking over for Lady in Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure), the fifth being Jane (taking over for Wendy in Return to Never Land), the sixth being Patch (taking over for both Pongo and Perdita in 101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure), and the seventh being Sam Flynn from TRON: Legacy (taking over for Kevin Flynn).
 * The first dress Melody is seen wearing is pink, which is the same color of the first dress her mother wore in the first film.
 * Melody's dream was the opposite of her mother's; while Ariel was a mermaid who wanted to be a human, Melody is a human who wanted to be a mermaid.
 * Melody also shares the same worries for not being a mermaid and she wishes to tell her mom what she feels but she says to Sebastian she would never understand her. In the first film, Ariel wishes to be human and she tells her worries to Flounder, and also tells Sebastian that her father would never understand her fascination with the human world.
 * Melody also inherited her mother's speed. While Sebastian tries to convince her to return home for her birthday party at the palace, he says, after Melody goes into the water again, that she's like her mother. In the first film he tried to tell her mother to take her head out of the clouds and convince her to not think about the human world.
 * Melody finds the musical locket she had gotten when she was a baby, and her mother finds the music box of her late mother; they also recognize the melody.
 * Melody makes the same back pose when she is transformed into a mermaid, just as her mother did in the first movie.
 * It is unknown why Melody was unconscious when she landed on Dash when Morgana pushed her and she recovers in her father's arms just like Ariel it the third movie she was hit by Marina. Melody was concious when she landed on Dash but when Morgana's lair and the icicles collapsed, she was unconscious when Tip pushed them both out the way.
 * Melody is the first sequel hero/heroine who runs away from home to see another world like the ocean. The second is Scamp who runs away from home to live the junkyard dog life. Jane from Tarzan isn't included since she didn't run away to be in the jungle.
 * Coincidentally, Tara Strong, Melody's Voice Actress, later voiced the Ariel parody character Princess Clara from Drawn Together, who resembled an adult version of Melody in all but eyebrows.
 * Melody's hairstyle for most of the film appears to be almost similar to child Ariel from the flashback sequence of the TV series' episode "The Evil Manta".
 * Since it is likely that King Triton's other daughters will be married to princes from other kingdoms and become queens of those kingdoms, it is likely that Melody could one day become Queen of Atlantica.
 * She does share some similarities with Kiara and Scamp.
 * The three of them are the main protagonists of their films.
 * They are stubborn and headstrong.
 * They all runaway from home for certain reasons.
 * ​Melody she ran away because she wanted to be part of the ocean world.
 * Scamp ran away to live the junkyard dog life.
 * Kiara ran away to find Kovu after her father Simba exiled him.
 * They have a strained relationship with their parents for Melody (her mother), for Kiara and Scamp (their fathers) but make amends with them at the end of their films.
 * The only two differences, Kiara and Scamp have a love interest in their films while Melody does not,  Melody and Scamp both have socialized and interacted with main antagonists of their films (Morgana and Buster) while Kiara just briefly interacted with Zira