[quote="Rollo"]It's so hard wrapping my head around these characters being involved in this show now. It's going to take a while for me to accept it. I just can't comprehend a universe in which Bunga and Zira encounter one another and Bunga doesn't end up slaughtered.

Zira's going to have to be toned down an immense amount, which is super disappointing as she and her sheer maliciousness is one of the few things about SP I really liked.[/quote]
It's definitely a weird feeling; really have no idea how they're going to play this whole thing out, but Zira already sounds perfectly sinister in her introduction to Kion. If you'll notice though, there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene where Kion is roaring and Zira, Kovu, and Jasiri can be seen standing behind him, almost as if he's protecting them from someone. (Janja perhaps?) We'll see what happens.
[quote="Rollo"]Surprised by how on-model Zira and Vitani look, actually. Although the in-motion animation of the other Outlander lionesses is poor.[/quote]
They definitely seem to have translated Vitani and Zira over into this new animation style fairly well, although I can't help but notice that they didn't give Zira her stripe! (And the notch is on the wrong ear, unless they flipped some of the images for whatever reason.)
[quote="Rollo"]And I think it's already been answered why they were exiled, is it not? They're active worshippers of Scar. Not sure why so many people seem to have difficulty in grasping why Zira and her Pride would not be welcome in the Pridelands. Unless I'm missing something lol?
Anyway, this episode's guaranteed to cause a fuss no matter what. It'll either be really good and we'll be blown away by how well it fits with the original timeline, and it'll manage to develop a few characters even just in the smallest dose, or it'll just be a Big Miss Steak

Looking forward to how it all pans out.[/quote]
We just know why they're the bad guys, but we don't actually know what happened that sent them out of the Pridelands, or why they're Scar worshippers in the first place when his policies clearly destroyed the local ecosystem and left everyone starving. On top of that we don't know the nature of their relationship to Scar or the other Pridelanders; are they former Pridelands residents themselves, a group he took in at some point during his reign, or something else entirely? And who is the father of Zira's cubs? These are the kinds of questions that people are hoping get even halfway addressed. Again, we'll see how far Disney decides to go with this; I'm not expecting too much, but even a fairly general answer that doesn't involve carnage (although if the cave paintings are any indication, there was some sort of aggressive interaction between Zira and Simba) -- which it looks like we'll get -- will probably be enough to please a good number of people. Plus, as I mentioned before, Disney's probably going to make a bigger arc out of this as the series progresses, and introducing Zira to a new audience will definitely contribute to the "darker" nature of the show's future, even if she is significantly toned down.