WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Cruella, now playing in theaters and streaming on Disney+ Premier Access.
Disney’s classic stable -- live-action and animated -- isn’t intended for widescale world-building. The entertainment giant always had a shared universe of sorts with Mickey Mouse and his friends and has even made excursions into more knowing takes like House of Mouse and Once Upon a Time. However, a new fan theory posted by u/TheGalaxyBoi involving Cruella takes a slightly more aggressive approach, presenting the idea that the version of the character in 101 Dalmatians is actually the Baroness, not the woman formerly known as Estella.
Cruella’s primary creative challenge is evoking sympathy for, frankly, one of the biggest monsters in the Disney vault. Cruella De Vil first appeared in the original animated One Hundred and One Dalmatians as a crazed heiress, consumed by entitlement and fixated on the notion of turning Dalmatian puppies into a fur coat. Inducing the audience to root for such a figure, regardless of what stage of life she’s at, constitutes a significant task.
Cruella largely succeeds at it, but doing so created a number of plot incongruities with earlier films, most notably the mid-credits sequence, which shows Cruella delivering Pongo and Perdita to the future Pattersons. The film is officially listed as a prequel to the live-action 101 Dalmatians starring Glenn Close, not the 1961 animated feature, but either way, its path to either of those movies has some significant continuity errors to work around.
The fan theory doesn’t address practical incongruities, such as Roger and Anita’s respective occupations, but rather Emma Stone’s different nature as Cruella. Her harsh background among the lower class and embrace of the '70s punk aesthetic in the film doesn't fit with the spoiled, narcissistic heiress in the Dalmatians movies. As the theory points out, however, the Baroness fits that bill much more closely. She demonstrates the same kind of ruthlessness as the Cruella in later films, as well as the entitlement that comes from being raised in the upper-class.
Cruella adds further fuel to the theory by making the title figure a Bowie-esque persona from Stone's Estella, almost a secret identity for the fashion designer underneath. That would make it easy for a figure like the Baroness to appropriate her name and proceed with her previous life. Jasper and Horace had their differences with Estella in the film as well and might decamp for better prospects, which could include the Baronness.
In the same vein, her love of Dalmatians can easily twist into a psychotic hatred, especially after the trauma of her arrest and imprisonment, and might bring her specifically to Pongo and Perdita. Thus, the coat of puppy pelts becomes a twisted kind of revenge, rather than a horrible thing for its own sake as it was in the Dalmatians films. And Cruella still works as a prequel under the theory, since audiences are still seeing the backstory of the titular villain. The specifics of how the Baroness escapes her fate at the end of the film and re-emerges as the “true” Cruella could conceivably serve as a follow-up to the current movie, forming a smoother bridge between it and the events of 101 Dalmatians.
Of course, all of that requires getting around the movie’s more practical differences between it and its predecessors, which aren’t as elegantly explained away. But the notion of a multiverse is rapidly taking hold in pop culture, and a time may come when Disney wants to more elegantly integrate efforts like Cruella with the movies that inspired it. That way, even if the theory doesn't hold any water today, it can serve as a clever workaround in the future.