I’ve been trying to feel my father’s shoes but I never once asked what I wanted to do.
„
~ Ember wishing to live her life the way she wants it.
Ember Lumen is the main protagonist of Pixar's 27th full-length animated feature film, Elemental.
She was a worker at her father Bernie's food store named the Fireplace who was supposed to inherit his business, giving her internal and external pressures out of her lack of interest in such business, as well as the issues between the elemental beings. All of this was changed when he met a water-based inspector named Wade Ripple, whom she was initially worried about making bonds with due to her father's strict elemental ideals. She is also the only daughter of both Bernie and Cinder Lumen.
She is voiced by Leah Lewis, who also voiced Batgirl in Batwheels. As a child, she is voiced by Clara Lin Ding. As a teenager, she is voiced by Reagan To.
Ember appears to be made of fire, with a slender body, long legs, and is even taller than her parents, and with thick eyelashes and eyebrows. Her eyes are colored amber. She also a two-piece black, shimmering mini dress with a crisscross design.
Personality
She is a passionate, hot-blooded and fiery person. Throughout the whole film, Ember's strongest personality trait is how she's prone to short tempers and easy to anger from too much pressure caused by other people and most notably, customers who pester and ask her annoying questions, but had to learn how to keep her cool so her (literally) explosive temperament doesn't affect her dad's shop or endangering anyone, especially since Ember's wrath makes anything around her explode, evaporate into ashes or lit on fire. She's also celibate over Clod's extremely flirtatious nature due to Clod being a kid tree.
She is also adventurous, cheeky and energetic, being daring to deliver fire-related fast food with plenty of passion and effort put into making her dad proud of her for making the shop, the Fireplace, a success. When she was chasing Wade to prevent him from sending a pipe review, she remains clever, resourceful and persistent in her efforts to prevent her dad's shop from shutting down by Wade sending said review to the post office, all despite the unintentionally clumsy and destructive shenanigans that she gets herself into. Nevertheless, she remains as emotional and diligent at her work as a worker of the Fireplace.
She is also faithful to her father and protective of her family, working at her dad's shop since she wanted to make him proud and making his dreams with said shop possible. Very loyal to the point of prioritizing said job as her life over what she wants, if it means a lot to her dad. Almost struggling to keep her relationship with Wade a secret until Wade was brought into his dad's shop and Wade getting banned for "watering down" the fireball tradition. She only acted irritable and yelled her rejection for Wade due to inner struggle. She nearly harms herself in defense of her father's restaurant at the end of the film.
Bonding with Wade, taught her something about multiple elementals that fire and water, could be capable of colliding and combining naturally, and she becomes more loyal, loving and thoughtful of him while she was also quite overwhelmed and stressed out by her own conflicts she was already having with her dad's shop and not wanting to disappoint her dad. Especially when Wade's thoughts that made him cry, were what Ember used to revive Wade from nearly evaporating completely.
She also showed a bit of a sassy and playful side towards Wade when she did a "try not to cry" challenge with Wade and his family, coming across as smug and thinking she'd beat Wade at his own game since Wade is easy to tear up, but Wade ends up surprising her to shed a tear at Wade's extremely romantic remarks and his thoughts of him marrying her after Wade has been dating her.
Role in film
Ember's first appearance in the film is after her parents find a place to live in Element city, and she's born. After Ember's parents remodel the rundown structure that they found into a place to live, and she becomes old enough to think; she adorably spends her childhood helping her parents convert part of their home into a store, and do business with it along with getting enthused when her dad tells her that the owner of the shop will someday be her after showing her the blue flame that holds all of her family's traditions. As time goes by, the store gets more and more customers.
On a day when Ember's dad gets temporarily worn out at the checkout counter, He lets Ember take the wheel with helping a customer. When the customer tries to cheat with a sale, Ember tries to explain how the sale works; after the customer goes from requesting to demanding, Ember gets mad enough to burst fire. After being in shock, Ember's dad asks her what made that happen. After Ember makes an explanation, her dad gives her some words to think with (Take breath, and make connection)
Several years later, a customer complaint gets infuriating and "Take breath, and make connection" doesn't prevent her from getting mad enough to burst fire; Ember nervously apologizes for losing it and takes care of the mess she accidently made. After Ember's dad coughs while he's working, one of his friends asks him when the owner of the shop will Become Ember instead. After Ember's dad states that she might not be able to do deliveries as fast as him, Ember takes it as a challenge. when she comes back beating her dad's time, she ends up seeing him worn out from trying to get things ready for red dot sale; then after he says he can't spend his whole life running the shop, he decides to let Ember do it the next day; but after waiting on a ton of customers at once turns into something she can't take, an explosion starts coming out of her as she runs into the basement so it doesn't happen in front of all those people, and she accidently bursts a pipe
The city inspector Wade Ripple ends up in the store and having to write a ticket for that, and for the way Ember's dad rebuilt the store without permits. Then Ember ends up having to chase Wade to city hall where the tickets get sent to the processing department. After Ember gets ahead of Wade, she uses a line of grill oil to make a wall of fire out of herself and demand handing over the tickets; after that doesn't work, she gets really emotional and states that her dad will never trust her again if she's the reason the shop gets shut down due to the way it was the dream of her family.
After Wade overhears what Ember said to herself, he feels sympathy for her, and ends up on her side with canceling the tickets. When Ember goes back to the shop to find her parents struggling trying to fix what she inadvertently started, Ember's mom tells Ember's dad "WE will get through this just like before". And after Ember gets curious, her mom tells her the backstory of why they left Fireland. Ember feels heart-touching sympathy and swears to her dad that nothing bad will ever happen to the shop again.
While Ember waits at city hall to talk to Gale Cumulus about the shop, she finds out that she came to the wrong place, and Wade has Ember come with him to where Gale presently is (The airball stadium). After Ember introduces herself to Gale, she acknowledges what she knows Ember is about to mention, and Ember finds out that 30 citations were made instead of just 2. After Gale expresses that she doesn't care and calls Ember a Fireball, she stands up to her.
After Gale's team wins the game and Ember congratulates her, they tell each other what their goals are; but after Ember mentions what's been happening with water, Gale talks about forgetting the tickets and just taking apart the shop itself instead; then after Ember panics and states that her dad put his whole life into it, Wade thinks of a plan to have Ember covered. After they notice that the water problem is getting worse, Ember asks Wade how he ended up in Fire town to begin with; then after he tells her that story and Ember realizes her temper was what caused the bad thing that happened, she becomes bound and determined to find where the leak came from
After Ember and Wade find where the leak came from, they try clogging it with sandbags; then Wade has confidence that it will work, and they spend the next day celebrating after Ember pretends that she's going to do deliveries. After the sandbag plan ended up not working, Wade uses vases and flowers to sneak into the shop and break that news to Ember, Ember's dad comes downstairs to check on her, and he notices Wade. Then Ember tries to have Wade pretend he's not an inspector, but that doesn't work; then after Wade pretends that he's a food inspector, Ember's dad feels it in his flames that he's lying; then after it gets confirmed that he was, Ember takes Wade outside and plans to retry what they tried. After Ember gets emotional at the beach while she tells Wade a backstory about her family, she finds out she has an ability to turn sand into glass and uses it to seal the doors that the water was coming from. It works.
In a later scene after Ember meets Wade's family, Ember ends up showing them her knack for manipulating glass, they think it's awesome, and that it's a talent she should do something with. Then Gale calls a few moments later while testing out the durability of how Ember sealed the canal doors, and the tickets finally get canceled confirming that the water problem is solved.
After the next scene when Ember's mom catches her bonding with Wade, her mom starts to try love tests on them; but the process doesn't get finished before Ember hears her dad coming downstairs, and Ember has to have Wade leave before her dad catches him knowing he has something against him. Then Ember's dad tells her about what her grandfather told him before he left Fireland with Ember's mom, and then he thinks about retiring and putting Ember in management. After Ember's parents head to bed, the concept of running the shop makes Ember get emotional somehow.
The next day after Ember gives something to Wade, he takes it as a concept that she wants him to take her to see an actual vivisteria; after that, Wade takes Ember to find Gale in an area where fire was formerly not allowed; then Wade shows Ember a flooded tunnel for her to see a vivisteria in. Gale creates a bubble of air in the water for Ember to jump into so she doesn't get extinguished. After Ember jumps into the bubble of air, Wade takes her through the flooded tunnel. Ember gets enthused when her radiance makes a vivisteria flower bloom. After Wade notices Ember's fire starting to eliminate the air in the bubble, Wade panics, and he moves as fast as he can to get Ember to the other side of the flooded tunnel they were moving through.
After they get out of the flooded tunnel, Ember gets enthused about how she finally saw a vivisteria; then after Wade mildly hints it that he's had a crush on her, he offers to shake hands with her. After Ember figures out how to get in contact with Wade, happy thoughts somehow lead to Ember's main focus being on how her dad wants her to take over the shop. After Wade tries to tell Ember that she can label that as an option instead of a requirement, she turns it down and goes off on a train back to Firetown.
In the next scene, Ember's parents are hosting a grand reopening of their shop to pass the management of it onto Ember; Then Wade shows up at the party to tell Ember more things that make it so they could have a strong bond with each other, and Ember's dad ends up recognizing him because of what he pretended to be in an earlier scene; then after Wade ends up mentioning the way he ended up in the store's basement, Ember's dad accuses him of being the one who burst the pipes; after Wade pleads not guilty of that, he accidently exposes it that it was Ember's temper. After Wade tells Ember a few things and gives an expression that he loves her, she angerly turns it down, and Wade walks away sad. After Ember's dad loses his trust in her because of what she made happen; her dad turns down retiring because he decided not to let Ember take over. Then Ember thinks about some of the memories she made with Wade, and she gets sad after it turned out that there was nothing bad about him.
The glass Ember sealed the canal doors with bursts apart letting in a flood and revealing that the bond she had with Wade was what made the glass powerful in the first place. Ember notices that, and she hurries back to warn her parents and also in defense of the blue flame. While she does whatever it takes to prevent the water from getting in the store, wade comes back after changing his mind about moving away. But after the durability of the glass in the windows turns out as no match for the strong flood, the only option for Ember is to avoid it after it gets in the store and save the blue flame somehow. It at first seems like Ember couldn't save the blue flame when she was pushed into a sector by objects, but Wade had her covered. They both ended up being trapped, and Ember tries to open up what trapped them; Wade tells her not to because he doesn't want her to get extinguished, and Ember finally apologizes for turning down his interest in being her boyfriend. He evaporates in contact with the heat of Ember's fire absorbing the water to keep it from touching her.
After the flood is over and Ember's parents find her, it seems as though Wade sacrificed himself to save Ember's life. After Ember gets really sad about it, she woefully tells her dad that she doesn't want to manage the store, and she calls herself a bad daughter expressing how sad she is about how much she loved Wade. After Ember and her parents do a group hug, it was heartwarming enough to get emotional about, and it turned out Wade didn't really evaporate; he recovers, and it's shown true love when he and Ember kiss.
The shop gets a really nice update, Bernie retires, his friends gain the ownership of it instead of Ember, Gale happily regrets talking about shutting it down, and Ember becomes part of a company that makes glass.
Trivia
Her name: "Ember", means a small piece of fire or flame burning or glowing in coal or wood, smoldering in ashes.
Her family name means "Light" in Latin, which is also a reference to the measurement of light, being the amount of fire/lumens. It's also the source for the English words "luminescence" and "luminescent".
Ember and her family are the first of the fire people to reside in Element City. Soon after, even more fire people live along side them.
Elemental is one of the rare Pixar movies that has no antagonists, and because of that Ember is one of the only Pixar protagonists to not have any enemies.
Heroes
