I swear I have seen this question posted on social media at least five hundred times “if Dolores can hear everything, how come she never told anyone that Bruno was living in the house?” Or some variant of that question. It is funny, if you listen to the actual words of the song, she explains it herself.
First when Mirabel asks her for help about the magic, Dolores says “The only one worried about the
magic is you… and the rats talking in the walls.” Okay, so that was not in the song, but at the beginning of the movie.
Then in the song she says:
Hey! Grew to live in fear of Bruno stuttering or stumbling
I could always hear him sort of muttering and mumbling
I associate him with the sound of falling sand, ch-ch-ch
It’s a heavy lift, with a gift so humbling
Always left Abuela and the family fumbling
Grappling with prophecies they couldn’t understand
Do you understand?
When she was younger, Dolores could always hear him muttering and mumbling, couple that with the rats that he kept around, she probably started to associate those sounds together. Rats, mumbling, muttering…fear.
Then in another part of the song she says…
He told me that the man of my dreams would be just out of reach
Betrothed to another
It’s like I hear him now
Hey sis, I want not a sound out of you (it’s like I can hear him now)
I can hear him now
“It’s like I can hear him now, I can hear him now!” But you know, she can always hear that scary sound. She just thinks it is in her head, but then at the end of the movie what does she say? “yo I knew he never left, I heard him every day.” It is like the problem with prophecy, sometimes it does not make sense until everything is revealed. Well, Dolores can hear everything, but it probably makes no sense. The adults told her Bruno left. Yet she can still hear him and the rats. She just chalks it up to her mind playing tricks on her.
So no, it was not a plot hole. It was not a mistake. It all makes perfect sense.
