My Lion King Forum

Of course we all know how Scar meets his demise in the end. After watching his death over the years, I started to question how the process of his death was actually like.

As a kid, I watched A Bug's Life all the time and Hopper's death struck out to me being pretty terrifying since it involves him being eaten alive by the bird's chicks inside the nest. It's pretty obvious since birds do eat insects like him, especially when feeding their young. I read that Hopper's demise is similar to Scar's death and I can defiantly see that connection.

I always assumed the same thing happened to Scar when the hyenas attacked him after Simba kicked him off the rock, but it's not as indicated as Hopper's death is in that film. All we see from the shadows behind Scar are the hyenas mauling on top of him with the flames rising above. There are two forces that are killing Scar in the process: The flames and the hyenas. The flames alone would cause severe burns that Scar would be suffering from as it increases. Anyone can seriously be burned to death in that process by itself.

My question is on what the hyenas really did to him during the process: Did they actually eat Scar alive or just brutally beat him up as he was meeting his end, leaving him too weak to fight back and being left for the flames to take his body alive?

The fire didn't really have anything to do with Scar's demise.

What we see on-screen is just the flames being utilized to cover the gruesome act depicted by shadows on the wall. They didn't even really cover the spot where Scar and the hyenas actually were, it was all shown to be much closer and in front of everything, hiding the scene. It's just a fancy way to transition to the next shot, in other words.

In the unused alternate conclusion to Simba and Scar's battle, he was actually enveloped by flames after knocking Simba off where they fought and wound up dying that way, but in the final version, the hyenas very clearly devoured him.

They were hungry, angry hyenas. They likely killed and ate him.

I agree that The Hyenas killed then ate Scar.

It was definitely eating. I always thought of it that way. I know ed is like "special", but I always took the liking his lips as a "I'm hungry and angry" in an insane way