Zootopia 2 felt like it took ages to come out… because it did. It had been very close to 10 years for a sequel, which isn’t uncommon in the animation world since those movies take so long to make. Still, I imagine they probably had a harder time making sure the script was right rather than just relying on animation magic alone to complete the movie. My family and I watched this on Disney+ during our spring break vacation down in Charleston, South Carolina.

Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps were the obvious heroes of the last movie, and they haven’t been forgotten by the city of Zootopia but it’s not exactly been a ticker-tape parade. Nick becomes a cop with Judy, and they become partners, but they don’t get as much respect as you’d think they would. Their police chief is even threatening to break them up and assign them new partners.

A new case opens up involving the possibility of a snake infiltrating the city. While Zootopia has many animals, snakes are one of the few considered not eligible to live among the other critters.

Sure enough, a big blue snake shows up, and chaos unfolds after that. But just like the first movie, there’s a grand conspiracy behind the main plot, and not everything is as it seems. That said, I don’t think the plot twists are as clever as in the first movie.

My first complaint about Zootopia 2 is that there’s not as much Flash as I wanted. He’s one of my favorite characters in Disney animation, and while he had a nice little spotlight for a bit, I was hoping for more of the goofy sloth.

Also worth saying is that Chief Bogo is a character I don’t fully understand here. After the events of the first movie, you’d think at least Judy would be treated with the utmost respect. Instead, he treats both Nick and Judy like they aren’t house-trained, but can’t fire them due to union agreements.

That said, Zootopia 2 is still a good and faithful sequel to the original, which was phenomenal. It was one of those movies where it felt almost impossible for the sequel to be better than the original, and that holds true here. Still, I think they did the best they could, and it ends up being a pretty good movie overall. There’s a pretty big twist near the very end that didn’t make a lot of logical sense to me, but it is what it is. I’m also not entirely shocked that Zootopia 2 lost the Oscar for Best Animated Picture to K-Pop Demon Hunters, though I haven’t seen that one yet.