Mufasa’s death in Disney’s original “The Lion King” (1994) is, for many children of the ’90s, a traumatic moment in cinema history. When Scar threw his brother off the cliff, his goodbye — “Long live the king” — dripping with sarcasm, audiences were led to believe that, like the helpless young Simba, they had seen the last of the charismatic King of the Pride Lands.
