9 Infamous Movie Plot-Holes (Solved By Fans)
3. Why Didn't The Villagers Age? - Beauty & The Beast (2017)
The Plot Hole
It's established in the 2017 live-action Beauty and the Beast remake that the prince's (Dan Stevens) curse extends to the nearby villagers also, causing them to forget the existence of the prince, his formerly human servants, and the castle itself.
But this ultimately generated an additional issue. While it's a given that the prince and his various servants didn't age while cursed, this doesn't explain why the villagers also appear to have remained the same age.
At the very end of the movie, when Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson) is reunited with Mr. Potts (Gerard Horan), they still appear to be about the same age, implying that he hasn't aged in her absence. But why?
The Solution
Within days of the film's release, Redditor Hainted chimed in with a solution. According to them, the entire village was cursed by the enchantress, to the extent that they were actually locked in a time loop for the duration of the curse.
Beyond their lack of aging, there's the fact that Belle (Emma Watson) mentions knowing exactly when everybody in the village wakes up, and also that the village baker has the same tray of goods every single day. Suspicious, no?
Hainted goes on to add that Belle and her father Maurice (Kevin Kline) are themselves actually exempt from the curse, having moved to the village after it took effect.
Though there's some wiggle room for the duration of the curse - a few days makes the most sense - it absolutely tracks with the story as we see it, and adds another unsettling layer to the curse.