Santas Recap: Episode 1 Flashback Explained – Who is Sara?

Tim Allen’s kringle lost some of its jingle on Disney+ The Santasa six-part sequel to Beloved Santa Claus Film franchise where Scott Calvin reflects on his third act.

It’s been 28 years since Scott first transformed into Santa, and the world is now suffering from a lack of Christmas magic. This becomes clear to Scott when he is reunited with Sara, the little girl who left the supposedly lactose-intolerant Claus with soy milk in the original 1994 film. She is now an adult, played in Episode 1 of happy endings‘ Casey Wilson, and things haven’t turned out the way she hoped. She sleeps on her parents’ couch, and her life is “an endless, blurry long day, punctuated by Judge Judys.” It’s easy to understand why someone in her position would have stopped believing.

“Originally, [series creator] Jack [Burditt] I had that scene later in the pilot, and when I read the script I said, ‘This feels to me like it should be the inspirational incident for Scott’s journey,'” director/EP Jason Winer tells TVLine. “Not only does it connect fans to the original by seeing the grown up Sara, but it also talks about how the world has changed. This is the scene… where Scott feels that. Instead of a grateful little girl looking at him with awe and magic in her eyes, she’s a depressed adult living on her parents’ couch, throwing a wine bottle at them.”

This is the moment Scott plants the idea that all these kids who grew up believing in him have stopped believing. “We present that in [Sara], but we’re also saying that maybe that’s true of the world,” explains Winer. “And if that’s the case, how does he feel about it? How does he exist now?”

Allen, as seen in the Q&A video above, goes so far as to suggest that Sara is the emotional lynchpin Santa Claus Franchise. “That was a big connection to the previous film,” he says, and their reunion “strikes him because things are different.” It’s not just that Sara is in a rut, it’s that sites like Amazon and his fictional one competitor Everything Now have accelerated the pace at which commerce has destroyed our collective Christmas cheer.

“Having things delivered over the phone — and they’re delivered instantly — has changed everything about gifting,” Allen observes. “This story is about how we got so used to it that we forgot substance of giving. Once we understood that, it detracted so much from the movement of the story.”

The premiere also introduces Kal Penn as Simon Choksi, CEO of the aforementioned Everything Now. Similar to Calvin in the first Santa Claus In the film, Simon is a single father and businessman whose priorities are slightly out of whack. And it’s no coincidence that his initials are SC. But viewers will have to wait to find out if he’s built to take on the mantle of Santa when Scott decides to retire.

“What I love about Kal’s character is that he represents one of those forces that are tearing at the fabric of magic in our world,” says Burditt. “Throughout the series [Everything Now] is developing technology…where you can push a button and a drone will be at your door in minutes if not seconds. It’s a not-too-distant exaggeration of where we exist now, and I love the way we were able to say something about instant gratification and commercialization.”