My Lion King Forum

(I was unsure whether this belonged here or on the board for the first movie, since it is about that movie but concerns characters from Simba's Pride.)

Basically, I have been wondering why Zira and her similarly-thinking lionesses never appear in the first movie; they look quite different from the normal lionesses, so they would have been rather easy to pick out of the background scenes if they ever showed up in them. Perhaps a better question is why they did not interfere in the fight at the end of the movie on Scar's behalf if they were loyal to him? Zira blames Simba for Scar's death, so logically she must have been around to see at least part of the fight in order to make that assumption. And yet, from what we see, she was not there. Obviously, the real reason is that she didn't exist as an idea when the first movie was written, but can you come up with an in-universe reason for why she and the other Outsiders would be absent?

They were created after the first film was made. The original filmmakers didn't intend to create a sequel, but during the early stages of writing on The Lion King II, someone came up with the idea of having Scar's mate be the villain and she would avenge his death. They would later rewrite Zira from being Scar's mate into being a delusional follower, but the idea stayed the same.

As for where the Outsiders could possibly be during the battle for Pride Rock, I think Scar sent them out as an additional hunting party to find new food sources since the Pride Lands had fallen into a barren wasteland. When Zira and the Outsiders came back, she found that Simba was the new king and naturally assumed that he must have been defeated Scar since the hyenas were also devoted followers that wouldn't have betrayed him. She may have tried to attack Simba as a last ditch effort, and she and the Outsiders were exiled as a result.

I always thought that they were part of the original cohort but after Simba exiled Zira, she no longer had access to those rich meals hence why she looks so emaciated.