A 'Soul' Writer Explained The Movie's Biggest Mystery & It's SUCH A Relief

It should come as no surprise that Pixar's latest animated movie is a hugely emotional epic, but one element of the flick left a lot of viewers in a state of shocked confusion. The movie's ending might have had you wondering: Did the cat in Soul die? Since the film doesn't really provide a clear answer about Mr. Mittens, one of the writers took to Twitter to clear up all the mystery surrounding Soul's feline star.

Spoiler alert: This post contains spoilers about Soul. Mr. Mittens appears about halfway through Soul as the therapy cat resting on Joe's comatose body. Unfortunately, the cat gets a rude awakening when Joe's soul mistakenly enters Mr. Mittens' body and 22 takes over Joe's body. For a good chunk of the movie, Joe as Mr. Mittens helps guide 22 through the world in his body, but some fans couldn't help but wonder about the fate of Mr. Mittens' soul — if Joe's is inside Mr. Mittens, where did Mr. Mittens' soul go? A brief cutscene showed the cat's soul being conveyed to the Great Beyond, suggesting Mr. Mittens had died as a result of Joe's soul taking over his body.

TBH, even though the cat's soul was super cute, it was a surprisingly grim scene for an uplifting Pixar movie.

The end of the movie only made Mr. Mittens' journey more confusing, as his owner discovers the cat alive and well in the subway after Joe had managed to return to his own body. There's no explanation of how Mr. Mittens' soul was able to travel back to Earth, which would seem an unlikely feat given his soul's express ticket to the Great Beyond. So... what the heck is going on?

Luckily, Soul writer and co-director Kemp Powers heard fans' questions about Mr. Mittens and clarified everything on Twitter, revealing the basis of the return is the lore that cats have nine lives:

Powers said the writers and animators even created a whole scene depicting Mr. Mittens' soul returning to Earth to be played over the end credits, but the team opted against including it.

Hopefully, fans will be able to see this scene as a Pixar short one day. For now, though, Soul fans can rest easy knowing the Mr. Mittens mystery is solved and the cat is alive and well.