YMMV / Return to Never Land

• Awesome Music:
  • "I'll Try". First it rips your heart out as a tender song about the loss of childhood Jane is facing, having grown up in World War II. Then it becomes more and more uplifting, showcasing how she has come to believe in magic over the course of the film, thanks to everything she went through with Peter and the Lost Boys. Jonatha Brooke's rendition of "The Second Star to the Right" is no slouch either.
  • Joel McNeely's score, with special mention going to the main titles theme and "Flight Through Neverland". It's no wonder he was eventually brought back for the Disney Fairies films.
  • "So to Be One of Us", written by none other than They Might Be Giants. That's quite an impressive get for a Disney film, let alone a sequel!
• Base-Breaking Character: Jane. Either she's a disappointing character because her personality either contradicts her play/novel counterpart or is just grating, or she's actually a more relatable character for modern audiences, not to mention she has Little Miss Badass moments that her mom didn't have!
• Broken Base: Viewers seem split over whether or not to consider this one of the better sequels to a Disney Animated Canon movie. Nowadays the consensus appears to have shifted more towards the positive side.
• Contested Sequel: Originally the film was generally considered to be a bland retread of the first movie without the charm or memorability of it, along with other controversial decisions such as the octopus being brought in replacing the crocodile and the Chuck Cunningham Syndrome that hit John and Michael. However, in later years there have arisen some vocal defenders of this movie, who argue the increased stakes and the fact that the first film's more problematic elements are nowhere to be found here help give it a leg up over the original, and compared to most other Disney sequels, it's usually considered at least watchable even if you're not the biggest fan of it. It helps that the book adapts an aspect of the source material that was cut from the original film, making its existence feel somewhat more justified than other sequels. Some of the negativity arises from people who don't believe this movie deserved a theatrical release, which feels like less of an issue to younger viewers introduced to it through TV or home media.
• Die for Our Ship: Jane gets this from Wendy/Peter fans who are bitter about Wendy growing up and marrying someone else. Edward, the "someone else" in question, also has some hate, but to a much lesser extent due to his relatively smaller role.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • The film takes place during World War II. This leaves fuel for how Wendy's life since childhood has been, especially her adolescence during the Great War.
  • Common Crossover: There is a certain amount of fanfics that overlap the events of the film with The Chronicles of Narnia, specifically the first film, as both take place during World War II and feature children who find their way into magical worlds.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Those who are familiar enough with Peter Pan lore know that it doesn't take just "faith and trust and pixie dust" to fly, but also thinking happy thoughts. This is why Jane can't fly at first: she's too hardened by the war to think of something that makes her truly happy.
  • Peter's eventual decision to have Jane be a Lost Girl makes even more sense when you remember he initially brought Wendy to Neverland with the intent of making her the Lost Boys' mother. Now, they know she has an actual daughter, which, in a way, means that by making her a Lost Girl, they're cementing her as a sister figure.
• Harsher in Hindsight: This movie depicts Wendy Darling grown up into an adult and now living a happy life starting a new family. Chipn Dale Rescue Rangers 2022, on the other hand, shows Peter Pan himself all grown up into an adult and living an unhappy life...
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When asked by Hook who is the greatest pirate of all time, Smee reponds with "Blackbeard". The film Pan includes Blackbeard as the antagonist who enslaves Hook. Hook's response to this (he conks Smee on the noggin with his hook then unleashes a Death Glare to the rest of his crew) straddles between this and Harsher in Hindsight since if Pan were Disney canon, he'd have a good reason for not wanting Blackbeard's name ever mentioned at all, let alone as the greatest pirate in history.
  • In the Latin American dub, Peter and a young Wendy were voiced by Héctor Emmanuel Gómez and Karla Falcón, who are both married in real life.
• Jerkass Woobie: Jane can be very abrasive, but she's also a child living in London during the worst of World War II and wakes up every morning wondering if it will be the day that she is told her father was killed in action.
• The Problem with Licensed Games:
  • The tie-in video game for the PS1 and PC (known as Peter Pan: Adventures in Never Land in Europe) was an uninspired sidescroller with slow and sluggish gameplay. It's far from the worst example of this trope, but it's quite disappointing coming from Disney who usually had a better track record. IGN said it best when the reviewer wrote "Anyone who has already hit puberty should feed this one to the crocodiles."
  • The GBA version somehow fares even worse, with ugly visuals, sloppy stage design, and controls that fight against the player every step of the way. It too is a sidescroller, but this time very little of the game is spent flying as most of it is on foot.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Jane has a fair share of common Crossover Ships, most notably with fellow second-generation Disney heroine Melody.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Let's be real. This is a Disney film, and Tinker Bell is up there with Mickey Mouse as one of the brand's most recognizable mascots. Regardless of how effective her death scene is, it was always going to be a Disney Death.
• Questionable Casting: Spencer Breslin appeared in several Disney movies during the Turn of the Millennium, so he voiced Cubby here, despite being 10 years old at the time and sounding much younger than Robert Ellis, the 20-year-old actor who voiced Cubby in Peter Pan. Though you could make the argument that Spencer fits better for the role of Cubby due to sounding more like a kid, unlike the original.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Jane is seen as this by Wendy fans and also gets a lot of Die for Our Ship by Peter/Wendy shippers.
  • The Octopus with popping tentacle suckers replaced the iconic tic-toc Croc.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Tink gets redeemed to some audiences after she becomes nicer to Jane and even willingly helps her to fly when Jane is cornered by Captain Hook.
  • Peter is much more likeable here than he was in the first film. He shows some sympathy for Jane when he finds out why she wants to go home, and is willing to help her by teaching her how to fly. Later, when Tink's light starts to go out, Peter comes up with the idea of making Jane into a Lost Girl to get her to believe, and he later tells Jane that he and the Lost Boys "would do anything for [her]".
    Lost Boys: But she's a girl!
    Peter Pan: You wanna help Tink, don'tcha?
• Strawman Has a Point: Jane's no-nonsense dismissal of all things childish is treated as wrong by the other characters and the narration, and her Character Development revolves around her needing to be reminded that she is still a child. However, she's living through World War II in a town regularly bombarded by enemy airplanes. Therefore, her growing up faster to be more responsible (albeit while also being a killjoy) may seem like a reasonable thing to some. Some would also agree that she's justified in having other priorities than children stories in a time of war and privations.
• Sweetness Aversion: The final scene, where Wendy reunites with Peter and Tinker Bell and even briefly gets to float in midair again, followed immediately by her husband Edward coming home from the war, is clearly intended to be heartfelt and emotional, but for some it comes across as gratuitous fanservice and as a little too overly syrupy even for Disney's standards. This is especially so in comparison to the first film, which ended on a simpler, but still uplifting note, leaving it ambiguous as to whether the Darling children's adventures with Peter really happened or not.
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • Jane telling Peter Pan and the Lost Boys off can induce this feeling for those who got fed up at their childish, selfish (or at least insensitive), and even Double Standard behavior to Wendy in the original movie and to Jane in this movie.
  • Jane yelling at Tinker Bell that she doesn't believe in fairies will also induce this feeling for those who think that jealousy-driven fairy deserves it, for her attempt to kill Wendy in the original movie, and Jane in this movie (to the point that even Jane realizes this), and other general rudeness to Jane. It does result in a Tear Jerker, though. Thankfully, Tink gets better.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Captain Hook gets chased by an octopus instead of the Crocodile, whose disappearance goes unexplained (aside from Hook mentioning that he finally got rid of the croc, but there's still no explanation of how). Several viewers have admitted wondering why Disney didn't just bring back the Crocodile, turning the octopus into a Replacement Scrappy.

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