WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Cruella, now playing in theaters and streaming on Disney+ Premier Access.
Disney's live-action Cruella, tells the story of how a girl named Estella became the iconic villain Cruella de Vil. Yet, while both fashion and Dalmatians are major parts of the film, it only barely touches on the plot of 1961's 101 Dalmatians, the movie that introduced the notorious baddie to the world. This leaves an essential part of Cruella's tale out of the film, keeping the door open for a sequel that covers the events of the classic animated film from her perspective. In the meantime, there are several ways in which Cruella sets up a 101 Dalmatians that has yet to be made.
101 Dalmatians is told from the perspective of Roger's dog Pongo, who worries about his human's bachelor lifestyle and therefore sets him up with Anita, who also happens to have a fetching Dalmatian, Perdita. In the film, Cruella is a wealthy snob who lives for fur coats and, it seems, not much else. So while Anita defends her because Cruella was a schoolmate, Roger doesn't seem to have met her until he started dating Anita, and therefore has no such loyalty. Cruella's cruel and callous personality inspires Roger, a songwriter, to compose a ditty about the deep-seated evil of Cruella that becomes his first hit. And Cruella more than lives up to Roger's song when she has Pongo and Perdita's 15 puppies stolen so she can turn their fur into a coat.
While Anita, Roger, Pongo and Perdita all make appearances in Cruella, the movie changes many of the relationships from the original film, with the exception of the origin of Cruella's connection to Anita. Cruella establishes that the title character met Anita when they were both in grade school and she was known by her given name, Estella. In this version of the story, Anita's last name is officially "Darling," an acknowledgement of Cruella's references to her as "Anita, dahling," in the animated film. Estella and Anita weren't friends exactly, but as fellow bullied outcasts, the pair stuck up for one another. So while they lose touch after Estella leaves school, when she realizes Anita has grown up to be a journalist who covers fashion, she enlists her help to publicize her alter ego as Cruella.
However, it's not through Anita that Estella meets Roger -- it's through her fashion designer employer, the Baroness. Cruella gives Roger a bit of backstory too, establishing he was the Baroness' lawyer whose true passion was playing piano. While the Baroness makes him cower in fear, when Cruella starts upstaging the Baroness and the Baroness asks Roger to find a legal means to bring her rival down, Roger's lack of options cause her to fire him. Yet, while Roger blames his dismissal on Cruella, it seems it's also the moment at which he decides to become a songwriter full-time, starting his path toward Anita.
According to Cruella, the future villain played an even more crucial role in getting her schoolmate Anita and her acquaintance Roger together. In a mid-credits scene, both Roger and Anita get a surprise delivery, and inside the boxes are Dalmatian puppies. The note inside the box identifies one of the puppies as Pongo, wearing his signature red collar, and one as Perdita, wearing her signature blue collar. Each note is signed by Cruella, prompting Roger to start tapping out the beginnings of Cruella's signature song on his piano.
These revelations put a completely different spin on the events leading up to 101 Dalmatians. In the 1961 film, it seemed Roger and Anita acquired and named their Dalmatians entirely independent of Cruella. Yet, Cruella establishes that the title character wanted the pair to have the dogs. It's unclear how she got them -- they may have been from a litter conceived by one of the trio of Dalmatians she inherited from the Baroness, but that seems unlikely given that at 10 years or older, the dogs would be approaching their senior years. But what is clear is that if Pongo is the reason Anita and Roger got together, Cruella -- possibly inadvertently -- was the one behind their eventual romance.
It's established in the film that Cruella not only doesn't hate dogs, she ultimately bears no ill will to Dalmatians in particular, so her gift of Pongo and Perdita to Roger and Anita appears to be well-intentioned. Given all that, Cruella's path from gifting the duo Dalmatian puppies to coveting the puppies those dogs eventually produce is ripe fodder for Cruella 2.
Directed by Craig Gillespie, Cruella stars Emma Stone, Emma Thompson, Paul Walter Hauser, Joel Fry, Emily Beecham, Kirby Howell-Baptiste and Mark Strong. The film is currently available in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access.