How Scar and the Hyenas Got So Tight

            Throughout The Lion King (TLK), Scar is working with the hyenas that live in the Outlands. He uses them to start the stampede that ultimately kills Mufasa and as an army when Simba comes back into the Pridelands. There are so many unanswered questions about when, how, and why Scar and the hyenas teamed up but I’ll be discussing some fan theories that attempt to answer some of them. I will be using Taka, the name Scar was given at birth, to talk about him before the accident in which he got his scar. I will be referencing characters and events from the Six New Adventures books and The Lion Guard (TLG).

The Hyenas Befriended Young Taka

            Taka probably felt lonely and dejected because Ahadi was training Mufasa to be king and neither of them was likely to spend a lot of time with him. We know, based on the story Rafiki tells in A Tale of Two Brothers, that Taka already resents Mufasa when by the time they reach adolescence. It’s possible, and in fact some fans have theorized, that Taka had the seeds of resentment planted in him by the hyenas. Fan fiction and fan comics that incorporate this theory (like albinoraven’s famous Future of Our Past comics) typically involve some kind of long-term plan that the hyena matriarch comes up with to turn Taka against his family with the end-goal of securing a place in the Pridelands.

This theory makes a lot of sense because it's implied in TLK and direcctly stated in Simba’s Pride (SP) and TLG that the Outlands are a really bad place to live and pretty much all of its inhabitants would rather be living in the Pridelands, making the hyenas’ desperation to get away from the Outlands is perfectly logical. If the hyena matriarch came up with a very complex plan that took years of preparation to execute, it would fit into the canon pretty well given that Scar and Zira both had sinister long-term plans. It would take a lot of finessing, assuming that Taka had little to no resentment for his family to start with. The hyenas would likely have convinced him that his father and brother were intentionally shutting him out or that they just didn’t care about him. They would also probably have told him that they were his only real friends and that he shouldn’t trust of care about Ahadi and Mufasa.

Based on the fact that Taka is working with the hyenas at the beginning of A Tale of Two Brothers, this theory holds even more water. He knows them by name and talks to them as if he’s very familiar with them. This suggests that he has known them since he was relatively young and, at the very least, supports the idea that he has been hanging out with them even if there was no grand plan by the hyena matriarch. Taka says that they begged him to join their group. Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed also seem to have ulterior motives when they come up to Taka in the book. Shenzi suggests that if Taka makes Mufasa look foolish then “maybe Ahadi will realize [Taka] should be the next Lion King instead of [his] brother.”

The Hyenas Befriended Scar As An Adult

            If you exclude the Six New Adventures books from the canon, as some fans do, then there is also the possibility that Scar fell in with the hyenas as an adult as he grew more distant from the pride. This would allow for several potential situations to play out. One is that Scar already resented Mufasa deeply and saw a convenient way to get rid of him by befriending and bribing the hyenas. Unlike the last theory, this would mean that he probably wouldn’t have any actual emotional attachment to the hyenas. This would explain the way he treats them in TLK. Another possibility is that the hyenas (and/or the hyena matriarch) saw an opportunity to secure a spot in the Pridelands.

This works especially well if you consider that Scar possessed the Roar of the Elders and was, therefore, the fiercest animal in the Pridelands. In this case, there would probably have been some manipulation on the hyenas’ part. It would be easy to convince him that he was better suited to be king with a title like “the fiercest” already under his belt. That level of power might also have made them fear him because they recognized that he was a force to be reckoned with. There is also the possibility that it was some combination of the factors I’ve listed. The arrangement that Scar and the hyenas develop before the start of TLK is definitely mutually beneficial because Scar gets to take the throne and the hyenas get to live in the Pridelands where they can have regular access to food and water. They could simply have been using each other to get what they wanted.

Yet another possibility is that the hyenas approached Scar after he betrayed and destroyed the Lion Guard that he had been leading. Losing the Roar of the Elders left Scar weak but in using it for evil he proved that he was willing to turn on his own kind. This would have been an attractive trait to the hyenas for someone they could use to get them into the Pridelands. It could have been the hyenas who brought Scar back up to the level of arrogance and lust for power that he had when he demanded that the Guard help him get rid of Mufasa. If they nursed him back to health by feeding his ego and rekindling his ambitions of being king then his association with them would make more sense.

Scar could have approached the hyenas after losing the Roar, because he was likely ostracized by the rest of the pride, but he was likely both physically weak and emotionally crestfallen so he might not have been in the right state of mind to seek out companionship among the hyenas (or anyone else for that matter). In this situation it seems more likely that he encountered the hyenas and they established a relationship with him in hopes of making him into a champion for their cause (namely, getting the hyena clan away from the Outlands).

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!