Shenzi is a major antagonist in the 1994 animated feature film The Lion King and the 2019 remake of the same name. She is the female leader of the Hyena Clan.
Background[]
Shenzi is the leader and sole female of the trio. According to Timon in The Lion King 1½, her full name is Shenzi Marie Predatora Veldetta Jacquelina Hyena. Her first name means "savage", "pagan", "uncouth", or "barbarous" in Swahili. Her distinguishing features are five prominent bangs hanging over her face and a mane that reaches all the way to her bangs. She also lacks the dark gray 'stubble' snout of the males, the dark patches around her eyes are shaped to resemble heavily applied eyeshadow, and she has thicker lips with what seems to be black lipstick.
Despite the common belief in the Pride Lands that hyenas are brainless, Shenzi's sense of humor hides a merciless sense of cunning. She is not merely the leader of the trio, but the Matriarch of a Pack of over 200 hyenas, and her powerful leadership and diplomatic skills resulted in incredible gains for her pack, regardless of the cataclysmic results to the Pride Lands. And at the climax of the movie, Shenzi informs the hyenas that Scar has betrayed them. Additionally, despite not appearing in the sequel, it seems that she has successfully hidden from Zira the fact that the hyenas, and not Simba, killed him, allowing her Pack to escape the Graveyard and leave the Pride Lands.
Despite her dislike of Mufasa, Shenzi clearly has a measure of respect and fear for him, as she gets the "shivers" when she hears his name, and though she elbows Banzai before he can repeat the name in front of Scar, she clearly agrees with his opinion that they were better off when Mufasa was in charge (even if he did not like them or allow them to live in the Pride Lands, he at least treated them better and did not abuse or insult them for amusement like Scar). Despite this, she has shown cowardice, along with her partners, on several occasions, including running away from Pumbaa in the final battle and Mufasa during their first encounter.
Shenzi can be just as heartless as Scar, but unlike him, her first duty is to strengthen her clan rather than the pursuit of personal power. She allies the clan with Scar, even though the hyenas dislike the lions simply to provide for them, lies to Scar that Simba is dead to get them into the Pride Lands, and is even unafraid of informing him there is no food or water left, meaning the clan is starving and dehydrated. When Scar tries to pin Mufasa's death on the hyenas at the end, she does not hesitate to inform the clan of his betrayal, resulting in his death. In Simba's Pride, Shenzi presumably has taken the clan away from the Elephant Graveyard to find better hunting grounds.
Personality[]
Of the hyena trio, Shenzi is the most cunning and even-tempered. She rarely loses her composure and is far more focused than her friends, as seen when she did not let Banzai hunt before the assassination of Mufasa.
Appearances[]
The Lion King[]
Shenzi first appears alongside Banzai and Ed in the elephant graveyard into which Simba and Nala venture. The hyenas, secretly under the orders of Simba's uncle Scar, chase the cubs in an attempt to kill them. While in pursuit, Shenzi catches up with Nala and is about to attack her when she is scratched by Simba, which results in three visible blood-like claw marks on her cheek. The hyenas manage to capture Zazu and push him into a "birdie-boiler" and corner the cubs but are thwarted by the arrival of Simba's father, Mufasa. They try to flee but Mufasa quickly subdues them and pins them to the ground warning them not to come near his son again. The hyenas then run off by a frightening roar by Mufasa.
Later while Banzai and Ed are fighting, Shenzi orders them to knock it off. Scar then arrives in the elephant graveyard to berate the hyenas for failing to kill Simba and Nala (though Simba in particular). However, after Shenzi and Banzai ask sardonically whether Scar should kill Mufasa to claim the throne while feasting on a zebra's leg that Scar supplied to them (Banzai: "Yeah. What are we supposed to do - kill Mufasa?"), they unwittingly gave him an idea: he then informs them of the newly-formed plan to kill both Mufasa and Simba during the song "Be Prepared" while promising them unlimited food. Shenzi is the first to shout out, "Long live the king!" about Scar, and the entire pack follow her lead as she laughs madly.
Afterwards, they help Scar carry out his plan to kill Mufasa by triggering a wildebeest stampede. Immediately after Mufasa is killed, Scar makes Simba feel guilty for Mufasa's death, then tells Simba to run away and never return. He proudly watches Simba run away from him with an evil grin as the hyenas show up behind him and commands them to kill Simba, too. When Simba reaches the end of gorge, he hears growling and turns to see Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed approaching him with vicious grins, prompting Simba hurry out of the gorge and come across a big cliff-like hill. Simba is hesitant to go down this hill at first, but when he sees the hyenas catching up with him, he is forced to jump down it. Simba rolls down the hill while the hyenas run and leap down very fast and nearly catch him. Below the hill however, lies a big bed of dense thorny bushes that Simba manages to run through leading him to a desert, while the hyenas stop following him due to these thorny bushes being too wide and dense for them to make their way through. Banzai accidentally falls into this bed, while he, Shenzi, and Ed are trying to stop themselves from landing in it, but only ends up coming out the same way he went in covered with thorns while Shenzi and Ed insanely laugh at his pain. Shenzi logically decides that Simba is as good as dead out alone in the scorching desert, and if he survives and decides to come back, they'll kill him then. Shortly after, the entire hyena clan enters the Pride Lands when Scar assumes the throne.
After several years of overhunting into Scar's reign, the hyenas' excessive presence in the Pride Lands has damaged the ecological balance at the same time a severe drought hits the kingdom. The trio comes to Scar's cave to inform him that there's no food or water and that the lionesses refuse to follow his orders (to which Scar neglects). Scar is furious, but a nervous Shenzi elbows Banzai and he quickly corrects himself by saying that he simply said, "¿qué pasa?" Still touchy about Banzai's remark and angry at being compared unfavorably to his brother, Scar throws them out without listening to their complaints.
When Simba returns as a young adult to overthrow Scar, Shenzi grows worried once Scar sees his nephew alive and well and glares at them, prompting them to gulp and back away. However, they demonstrate their continued loyalty to Scar by joining the fight on his side, but most hyenas are defeated or flee the Pride Lands, while Shenzi and Banzai are ruthlessly beaten up by Pumbaa for calling him a "pig" while Ed watches in horror. Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed follow Scar and Simba at the top of Pride Rock to assist Scar, who has been cornered by Simba. However, when they overhear Scar try to thrust all blame for the events on them to Simba, claiming that Mufasa's death was all their idea, they get angry and alert the rest of the clan to what they just overheard.
After Scar is defeated by Simba, he finds himself surrounded by the fallen hyenas and greets them casually, but they reveal they overheard him calling them the enemies. Scar desperately tries to explain that he didn't really mean what he said, but Shenzi, Banzai, Ed, and the entire clan have had enough of his lies, derogatory treatment, and broken promises of never going hungry again, realizing that Scar was only using them for his own gain. Without hesitation, they close in to leap on Scar and devour him alive as flames rise around them.
The Lion King II: Simba's Pride[]
In the direct-to-video sequel, neither Shenzi nor her companions, although they are passively mentioned by Nuka, who declares that the elephant graveyard has become "even creepier since the hyenas ran off", implying that the survivors of the clan did not return to the elephant graveyard after Scar's death and left for parts unknown. This leaves the final fates of Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed unknown.
The Lion King 1½[]
In the direct-to-video midquel The Lion King 1½, Shenzi serves as one of the three main antagonists (alongside Banzai and Ed). However they only appear twice in the movie as they mostly took part in the events of the original film.
In their first appearance, they attack a meerkat colony while Timon, who is the sentry on duty for the colony, is daydreaming. They fail to catch any meerkats, but this incident drives Timon to leave the colony to find where he truly belongs. This scene occurs shortly before Simba is born.
The hyenas make an appearance again during the film's climax at Pride Rock towards the final battle of the first film. Some anonymous hyenas are seen chasing Timon and Pumbaa into a cave (after the Hula song in the first film) and are driven away by Pumbaa's flatulence. Timon and Pumbaa insult the hyenas to get them away from Simba so that he has a better chance against Scar, while Shenzi tells them, "For your last meal, you're gonna eat those words." Eventually, Timon and Pumbaa are cornered by the hyenas.
Timon first balances plates then performs the can-can, which stalls the hyenas briefly, then breakdances with Pumbaa, which Shenzi applauds to before simply agreeing with Banzai to eat them. Finally, he proposes to Shenzi as a desperate move to buy time for his mother and Uncle Max as they dig a tunnel, which she turns down, becoming more and more disgusted at his proposal. However, Timon decided to risk his life by getting past Shenzi and finish the tunnel which cause her and all the other hyenas to fell into it in time to meet Scar once Simba defeated him.
Timon & Pumbaa[]
Shenzi made occasional appearances in the TV series Timon & Pumbaa. While Jim Cummings reprized his role as Ed, Tress MacNeille and Rob Paulsen replaced Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin as Shenzi and Banzai. While still as vicious and threatening as they are in the movie, the hyenas become more neutral as the show progresses. Though they are at first shown to be more dim-witted in comparison to the original film, they become wiser near the end of their first appearance and in later episodes, often coming up with clever ways to get their meal, though many of them end in failure.
The hyenas have their own segments titled "The Laughing Hyenas", which involve the trio searching for food after running away from the Pride Lands. Outside of their own segments, they appeared in flashbacks in "Doubt of Africa" and "Once Upon a Timon" and made a non-speaking appearance in "Space Ham".
In "Cooked Goose", two snooty cheetahs, Cheetato and Cheetata, have found that the Hyena Trio is disturbing their hunts, so they decide to send them on wild goose chases to get them out of the way. First, they try giving them a treasure map where X marks the spot, but the hyenas don't know how you spell 'X'. Then they try catapulting the hyenas via Serengeti Shuttle into a volcano, but the hyenas just come back, suspicious about the lack of seatbelts, airbags, and lack of peanuts. Finally, they decide to split the hyenas up, telling each one that they are the brains of the bunch and giving them directions to the North Pole. Unfortunately, the hyenas meet up there and realize they've been conned. Back in the Serengeti, they find the Cheetahs again, who are so stuffed from eating that they cannot outrun the hyenas. Just as the hyenas are about to eat them, a wild goose arrives and asks them which way is south, as he's headed for a wild goose convention. The five of them direct him, then chase him.
In "Big Top Breakfast", the hyenas are walking along, complaining about how hungry they are. Shenzi suggests that they pretend to be monkeys and hide in a barrel, and Banzai suggests that "Hey, we can build an environment suitable and comfortable for all species in the class known as Chimpanzee." Ed, however, discovers that the crate the monkey landed with is full of circus stuff. Shenzi promptly constructs an elaborate circus, and posing as ringmaster, gets Simon to dive into their cooking pot. He breaks out and hides in a circus cannon, which Banzai fires. The cannon explodes and the hyenas are left charred and monkey-less.
In "Can't Take a Yolk", Shenzi wakes up and wakes up Banzai, who wakes up Ed. While Banzai and Ed fight, Shenzi spots a mother ostrich nursing an egg and persuades Banzai that the egg would make an excellent breakfast. First, they attempt to creep up on the egg but find it's heavily alarming. They then try to crush the mother ostrich with a large rock but get crushed themselves. Then they try to tunnel up under the egg, but end up tunneling to China, and get crushed by a cart. Then they redirect an elephant to crush both mother and egg but get crushed by the elephant. Finally, Shenzi has them disguise themselves as ostriches and persuades the mother to put her head in the sand, while they steal the egg and substitute a rock. However, as they argue over who gets to eat the egg, it hatches into a huge ostrich, and they are knocked into a canyon and squashed by a large rock.
In "TV Dinner", Shenzi and her companions observe a nature documentary made about an armadillo in the Serengeti. The three of them decide that they too can be stars and get great meals. For the host Martin Pardon, Shenzi demonstrates ballet dancing. When the armadillo gets a movie deal, they are offered jobs but decide that they'd rather be directors and have Martin Pardon for lunch.
The Lion Guard[]
While Shenzi does not return in the series, she is heavily alluded multiple times. According to a promotional video for The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar, Janja, and his clan (who serve as the main antagonists of the first season) are descendants of Shenzi's clan. lan, meaning remnants of the latter clan relocated to the Outlands after Simba dethroned Scar. In addition, in a teaser for the pilot episode, a cave painting of Scar and the hyenas ruling the Pride Lands are also shown. Much like their ancestors, Janja's clan is greedy and over-hunts, and makes numerous schemes to kill the Lion Guard and take over the Pride Lands.
In Season 2, the original hyenas are referenced more, both through paintings of them with Scar, and through mentions by the characters although the trio is not specifically named or referenced to. Janja is apparently unaware of the cause of Scar's death (that the very hyenas he benefacted killed him for his lies and betrayal), believing he was burned alive during his fight with Simba at Pride Rock, and later decide to summon Scar's ghost in order to battle the Pride Lands. In "The Scorpion's Sting", when Bunga and Makini argue over the cause of Scar's defeat, Bunga shows a painting of Timon and Pumbaa distracting the hyenas with their hula dance, which he claims to be the reason why Simba was able to get to Scar.
The Lion King (2019)[]
Shenzi appears in the 2019 photorealistic remake. In this film, Shenzi is portrayed as a serious leader and doesn't have any trace of the comical side of her original. Shenzi's position as the matriarch of her group is also shown clearly to the point that Azizi and Kamari fear her (the novelization based on the film's plot also describes her as a hyena queen). She is also far more defiant, openly declaring that Mufasa doesn't rule over her and doesn't hesitate to try to eat Simba and Nala despite being warned by Zazu that doing so would mean starting a war against Mufasa, reasoning that the hyenas and lions have always been at war and desiring to end Mufasa's bloodline. However, she's still smart enough to know how strong Mufasa is, submitting to him when he rescues Simba and Nala so as to not jeopardize her clan's safety.
Unlike in the original, Shenzi and the hyenas are not allied with Scar from the very beginning. They started an alliance with Scar only after Scar personally came to the elephant graveyard and revealed his plan to overthrow Mufasa with a promise that the hyenas will be allowed to hunt in the Pride Lands. Following Scar's plan, Shenzi and the others start the stampede that resulted with Mufasa's death and chase after Simba who survived. Instead of falling and running through a thorn bush, Simba falls off a cliff. Shenzi orders the boys to go down and make sure he's dead, then she wanders off. Too afraid to go down the cliff and believe that no cub would be able to survive that fall, Kamari and Azizi decide to tell Shenzi and Scar that they ate Simba. However, Simba is shown to have survived the fall much to the hyenas' lies.
After the hyenas begin to live in the Pride Lands, she and her clan became Scar's personal hunting group, with Scar himself leading them, while the lionesses can only watch from the Pride Rock. Overhunting for years, the Pride Lands became a wasteland with most of the surviving herds leaving the Pride Lands in a disastrous famine. Shenzi takes Sarabi to talk to Scar about his kingdom's update. To force Sarabi to become his queen so that the lionesses will accept him as king, Scar enforces a law that the lioness can only eat the hyenas' leftovers, much to his selfish tyranny.
During the confrontation between Simba and Scar, Shenzi and the hyenas support Scar and defend him when Scar orders Simba and his supporters to be killed. In the ensuing battle, Shenzi spots Nala, whom she failed to eat when they first met, and attacks the lioness as she has been wanting to eat her. Despite being smaller, Shenzi puts up a considerable fight against Nala, but is ultimately overpowered and thrown off the rock. Shenzi survives and she, Kamari, and Azizi race to the top of Pride Rock to assist Scar who has been cornered by Simba. However, when they overhear Scar's attempt to pin the blame of Mufasa's death on them by denouncing them as "revolting scavengers" who he planned on killing, they angrily leave to inform the other hyenas that they were being used by Scar.
Furious with his attempt to double cross them, Shenzi and the hyenas corner Scar after he is defeated by Simba. Scar tries to reason with them, but they refuse to buy his excuses with Shenzi saying that there was only one true thing Scar ever said; a hyena's belly is never full. The hyenas attack Scar, who fights back, but quickly overwhelm him with their superior numbers and eat him alive. After Scar's death, Shenzi, Kamari, and Azizi, along with the whole hyena clan, leave the Pride Lands.
House of Mouse[]
Shenzi made cameo appearances in several House of Mouse episodes. She's notably seen with Banzai and Ed near the beginning of the premiere episode "The Stolen Cartoons".
In "House of Turkey", the hyenas are anxiously waiting to eat Mr. Turkey, but when they learn that he's a guest performer and not an entrée, they briefly try to eat Pumbaa.
In "Donald's Pumbaa Prank", she was seen at their table about to eat Zazu.
In "House of Crime", Shenzi can be seen in a cage along with other villains before they all disappear.
The hyenas were also part of the entourage of Disney Villains featured in Mickey's House of Villains; They can be seen in a crowd shot during "It's Our House Now!", with Banzai having particular focus alongside such figures as the Queen of Hearts and Kaa.